Leon Russell Quotes

Find someone you can jam with. That's a big deal. When you play with someone else, you gotta work together to get the thing started and in time, working and in the groove.

Yeah, improvising only really works 100% when you're with somebody.

It's easy to put on a Deep Purple record and say, 'That sounds great.' But why? Part of it is individual practice, but by playing together, a talent of meshing happens.

Ben was more improvisational, and relied less on methodology, and basically is a guitarist who switched to bass, whereas Jeff has a more traditional approach to playing bass in a band, and has a great sense of what his band sounds like, and we lock up nicely.

When I think back now to the recording sessions, there is more improvisation than one hears. It's an ideal combination of arrangements and improvisation. Only a few people are able to listen and say what is composed and what is improvised. It's a unit.

Singing duets is instinctive, intuitive.

Music - opera particularly - is a process which is endurable or successful only if it is achieved by people who love to collaborate.

Yeah, well, it did earlier - but as Bobby and I have played together, our thing as a unit has become so strong that they kind of had to get in where they fit in. And most people do.

When Phil and I hit that one spot where I call it 'The Everly Brothers,' I don't know where it is. 'Cause it's not me and it's not him. It's the two of us together. I sing the lead, and so I can drift off. Then we'll come back in together and the whole thing happens again. It amazes me sometimes.

Marty and I are playing with the same intensity. That's the beautiful thing, man, we're actually better now than ever, probably more intense now than ever, tighter now than ever.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

The magic of playing has to do with how much everyone wants it to succeed. If you have five players in a situation where the music is being improvised and one is determined it is not going to succeed, it won't succeed even if one of the musicians takes control.

Even though I have often recorded alone, I still feel the best music is made by musicians playing off each other.

That said, everything's important, and every musician who plays on the record is an integral part of it.

'Bum's Rush' is a piece about timing, and everything that's in the piece needs to be with the piece. If people are missing, or marking, or unable to use their voices, the impulses that prompt the action are lost, and its logic crumbles.

I don't need to hear Bill to go through a song. I need to hear Keith to go through a song. I know Bill will be playing what I'm playing anyway. I need to hear Keith because it's all there: the time, the chord changes, and all the licks you have to follow.

We've always connected musically in Fleetwood Mac because we're the only people who play more than one note. I'm not the best pianist, but I know how to interlace around what Lindsey's playing.

For me, the conductor is a person who interprets along with me, and we interpret things together.

I always communicate musically. I want my band not only to learn the form and feel of the song by ear, like I do, but also have the freedom to contribute.

I love seeing people collaborate to make great music!

For me, it's always easier playing with a drummer.

I didn't think of myself as a lead player, especially when we did live shows, because me and Keith used to switch around all the time. He'd take a lead, I'd play rhythm. Sometimes even within one song. It wasn't strict and regimented.

To do a comedy team, it requires so much extracurricular stuff, so much compromise, so much intuitiveness to know what the other guy is doing. That's why it's so hard to do it.

There is no roles. No one is keeping any roles. The drummer is also answering everybody and everything. So it is a constant conversation and communication between musicians on an extremely high level with extremely valuable material, motifs, and melodies.

My solo music - I get up onstage, I improvise and it's my improvisation. When I get up onstage with Fred Frith and Mike Patton, then we're improvising together. Then it's not my music; it's our music.