Leon Russell

“I played on a few Frank Sinatra sessions.”

“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.”

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

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

“I didn't start out to become famous, so when it disappeared, I thought, well, that happens sometimes.”

“When I was in grade school, I had a little duet act with a guy who was a beautiful singer, and somebody recorded it on a wire machine. They played it back for us, and I went, 'I hear Donald, but what is that other ugly voice?' It turned out to be me, of course.”

“I've always sort of been at odds with radio programmers.”

“I used to write on pads with a pen but had trouble reading the words the next day. Years later, Bob Dylan taught me to just write and write on a laptop computer. Then I'd print that out. When it was time to write a song, I'd go through the pages and sing melodies to words that moved me.”

“Sometimes one misses the sign posts as you're going down the road. They aren't as obvious as they become when you get to the end of the road, so to speak.”

“I studied classical music for a long time, maybe 10 years, and I realized finally I was never going to have the hands to play that stuff.”

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

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

“I was raised in the Methodist Church, which is a very Germanic, military kind of music they have there. I heard this other music on the radio: Pentecostal. That was right up my street.”

“I've always felt I struck out with Doris Day. Her son, Terry Melcher, was a producer I worked for at Columbia, and one day, he asked me to go to her house to play piano on a song she was doing. So I get there, and she has about 30 dogs running around the place - turns out she's a dog rescuer.”

“I was always trying to write standards, songs that anybody can sing. I figured that's where the money was.”

“For years and years, I would sit in my studio, and I wouldn't have any inspiration. I'd write one or two songs a year.”

“I'm pretty serious about what I do.”

“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.”

“Songwriting was very tough for me... I would go in and sit and hope for inspiration to come, and it was rarely forthcoming.”