Swift Cover Car Insurance

Thursday 10th February

Auckland
@ the Powerstation
Thursday 21st April
2011

Leon Russell’s career runs the musical gamut
from Sinatra to the Stones, the Beach Boys and BB King. He’s
written some of the most-covered songs in the pop songbook,
and three Stones and two Beatles performed on his debut solo
record, yet he isn’t a household name.

This was something
which bothered Elton John. One of Elton’s first champions
in the States, even before the young singer-songwriter set
foot in America, Leon was also one of his greatest
influences as a piano player. When Russell showed up in the
audience of Elton’s career-changing LA Troubadour show, in
the summer of 1970, it was both life-affirming and
terrifying.

Even by 1970, when Russell made his first solo
album, his achievements as a sideman and songwriter were
impressive. He’d started playing clubs in Tulsa while still
in his mid-teens, as rock ‘n’ roll itself was being born. By
his early 20s, he was a member of the hallowed LA studio
band the Wrecking Crew, both with and without Phil Spector.
Leon played with the Byrds, Mamas and Papas, Beach Boys,
Sonny and Cher and many others. As an arranger, he shaped
the sound of such timeless singles as Ike and Tina Turner’s
River Deep, Mountain High, Herb Alpert’s A Taste of Honey
and the Byrds’ Mr Tambourine Man

By the late 60s, Russell
was coming into his own both as a recording artist
(recording with Texas musician Marc Benno under the name the
Asylum Choir) and as a writer. Joe Cocker’s recording of his
sassy Delta Lady (written about Leon’s girlfriend of the
time, Rita Coolidge) became a UK top ten hit. Russell
subsequently lead the band on Cocker’s Mad Dogs and
Englishmen tour and appeared in the movie of the same
name.

Leon’s 1970 solo debut album featured a cast of
admiring stars including Cocker, Eric Clapton, Steve
Winwood, three Stones (Messrs Jagger, Wyman and Watts) and
two Beatles (George and Ringo). Russell also appeared at
George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh, before reaching
his own commercial peak in 1972, when the Carney album spent
a month at number two in the Billboard chart. But the early
70s were also Russell’s purple patch as a
writer.

Superstar (perhaps better remembered by its
lyrical hook ‘Don’t you remember you told me you loved me,
baby?’) became a Carpenters classic; Richard and Karen are
also among the countless artists to record the brooding This
Masquerade, while George Benson’s version was, basically,
the song that broke him as a vocalist. A Song for You,
meanwhile, has inspired a mind-boggling number of covers by
classic vocalists and stars of pop, soul, country and
beyond, including Donny Hathaway, Ray Charles, Whitney
Houston, Christina Aguilera, Michael Bublé, Peggy Lee,
Willie Nelson, Dusty Springfield and countless others.

The release of The Union, his collaboration with Elton John,
has been produced by T-Bone Burnett. Leon continued to chart
albums in the US until the early 1980s, but when Elton
called him to suggest the meeting which kick-started their
collaboration, he was playing an endless series of
low-profile shows, ever the hardworking road musician.
At
68, Russell is about to receive more of the acclaim he
deserves.

‘Working with him was a humbling and moving
experience. There’s no point doing this record if it doesn’t
bring his work to light.’ – Elton John on working with Leon
Russell.

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