Quotes from Leon Russell

I'm kind of the Forrest Gump of rock n' roll.

I'm always having people come up to me and say I saved their life - but I don't remember it!

When I was born, I had a birth injury in my second and third vertebrae. It gave me what they called spastic paralysis, which is actually cerebral palsy.

I would have to say Sam Cooke is the one I admired most. His artistry and vocal, just the way he did it.

I'm pretty serious about what I do.

I had a whole bunch of bad country songs, so I put 'em all on an album.

I got this book called 'How to Write the Popular Song.' I read that and went through all the things they suggested, and I learned how to do it.

I started out playing 'Chopsticks.'

I had two parts of my body: my left side, which was strong and somewhat dumb, and the other side was weak and hard to control but perhaps smarter. It gave me a very strong sense of the duality of the plane that we live in.

My chops have always been sort of weak, because the right side of my body was paralyzed a little bit. It was very limiting. I have to design stuff I can play, and it took me a year and a half to figure out how to hold a guitar pick.

I'm happy to have a job. I play a little, write a little, perform some. It's not like it's an engineered, well-manufactured plan or anything. I just do what I do.

When you play with another piano player, it's just second nature to play the parts that need to be played.

One of the features of being a piano player is playing as an accompanist for other people.

I had a band with David Gates. There was just a lot of opportunity at that time. But I left for Los Angeles the week after I graduated high school, and I actually left to try to get into the advertising business. That was really why I went out to L.A. My music career was almost an accident.

Watching yourself on film, if you've never watched yourself on film before, you want to go crawl into bed and stay there for a week.

For years, when I was popular, I would face the blank page to write, and I couldn't think of anything that I thought was good enough.

Oklahoma was a dry state, and consequently, there was no liquor laws. And I was able to take advantage of that by playing in nightclubs at the age of 14. It was real handy.

I was afraid of the press.

All my writing takes place during the recording of the master tapes. I never do have songs when I start up an album. I actually write them while I record.

My feet are giving out on me. But I have a wheelchair that folds out on my tour bus. I've also got this little tricycle, so if I want to go someplace, I get those out.

It's like, baseball is a very good game, but it's very difficult to explain to somebody, if you stop and think about it. I just feel my life is like that.

Both economics and politics are false sciences.

I am not aware of my public image or what people think of me. I don't evaluate myself that way.

I belonged to the Columbia Record Club, and that's where my records came from. For some reason, I was in the 'jazz' category. I got Benny Goodman records and Miles Davis, J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding, and that kind of stuff. I really was not a jazz guy at all, but I knew some of those names.