He was big, then he wasn't. Now Leon Russell returns to the spotlight and gets his due. Graham Reid reports.
When Leon Russell left Tulsa for Los Angeles, after having played in teenage rock bands, a career in music wasn't his intention. Yet in last month he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and will get a similar honour from the Songwriters Hall of Fame in June.
That's because Russell - now 68 - spent time as a busy session musician in the 60s with Phil Spector, commanded a global audience as Joe Cocker's band leader, was a star turn at George Harrison's Concert For Bangladesh alongside Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and others, and had a high-profile solo career for five years in the early 70s.
The awards are tributes to the career of this musician who went to LA to ... work in advertising?
"I liked the comic radio ads Stan Freberg did so that's what took me there. Then I discovered what a bloody business it was and discovered session work by accident."
Russell was the pianist in Spector's famous Wrecking Crew, did sessions for the Beach Boys ("dictated by Brian Wilson"), Frank Sinatra ("the thing I remember the most, there were an incredible number of policemen around") and numerous pop acts.
His breakthrough came when Joe Cocker turned Russell's Delta Lady into a hit in '69 ("I was playing on Joe's record and thought it would be an idea to pitch him some songs"). Cocker then had Russell - by this time with chest-length beard and long hair - helm his band on the famous and notorious Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour.
For a short time Russell was inescapable: he was at the Bangladesh concert and on the subsequent album (duetting with Harrison, playing with Badfinger, on his own medley) and had a solo career in which he produced three albums in two years then a triple-record live set.
His songs were covered by the Carpenters (Superstar), George Benson (This Masquerade), Ray Charles and many others.
By his Will O' the Wisp album in '75 however the records were no longer selling. Since the early 80s he hasn't troubled the charts - until last year's album The Union with his old fan Elton John - although he always kept touring.
"I stopped for two years once, but for the rest of the time I was playing and before The Union I was still making records but not on big labels, just on the internet. I think I put 14 out since the last one you heard of."
It was his old admirer Elton John who brought Russell back into the spotlight. In the liner notes to The Union he tells of his partner David Furnish listening to some Russell songs and how he [Elton] got teary when he thought of this great pianist/songwriter now languishing.
He contacted Russell and arranged to meet up, then spoke to producer T Bone Burnet to ask if he would produce an album of them. Elton's lyricist Bernie Taupin also came on board.
The result was an album which sounds peeled off from Elton John's Tumbleweed Connection of 1970 with its songs of Americana and the Civil War, melancholy ballads and a beautiful I Should Have Sent Roses co-written by Taupin and Russell.
"I hadn't spoken to Elton in over 30 years. He opened for me when he was first starting out and after that we didn't see each other. I was surprised to hear from him. We wrote all the songs for the album although there were some lyrics Bernie had written for another project.
'I Should Have Sent Roses was something he'd written part of some years before for a project that didn't work out; that was the first one he gave me. I was always jealous of Elton because I would sit around for months and wait for inspiration, and Elton had Bernie handing him lyrics all the time. What a lucky guy."
The album has brought Russell back into the public arena again and he's frank enough to concede it is what has lead to the forthcoming awards.
But Leon Russell has always been there - sometimes alongside the most famous musicians on the planet, at other times playing uncredited on albums or just slogging it out as a journeyman playing clubs. Always a working musician.
"I've enjoyed all of it in one way or another and it's kept me from working in advertising."
LOWDOWN
Who: Leon Russell
Where: Powerstation, April 21
-TimeOut
