A Quote by Leon Russell

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. — © Leon Russell
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.
When I reissue these Minimal Wave Record songs, I also re-master them. With Oppenheimer Analysis, it turned out that the band still had the master tapes. So, Martin Lloyd from the band and I baked the tapes to restore the quality.
It's funny when you start writing an album and then recording - the songs begin to take on a spirit of their own. Once you start to perform it live, this happens even more so than in the studio. They really start to develop a personality that takes shape over time with the audience.
I want my records to be the most magnificent and glorious-sounding records, but also want them to be the most intense and fragile. And I want that all in the same ten-second bit of music. And it just takes a while to get there, and I don't write the songs and then go and record them, I write in the studio. So it takes a while to kind of piece them together and know that that's what I want it to be like. And I constantly throw the bits up in the air and see how they land, and eventually they kind of keep landing in the same place and that's where it stays.
I actually had a week where I literally wrote four songs and all of them are on my album. But sometimes you'll go a week where you'll write songs and they never see the light of day. So that process takes a long time.
I have always been heavily involved in every album I have ever made. I'm very stubborn when it comes to recording and will only record songs I love, which is why it takes me a long time to make an album.
My dream many years ago would've been to continue to write and record songs in record/album form for years to come, but now records aren't what they were then - and so it doesn't actually feel very good to make a record of songs.
I've been writing music since I was about eight. I would write sporadically. I wrote a lot of music in high school. I guess the oldest song on the record ("I Thought I Saw Your Face") is about eight years old. It's the old "I had my whole life to write my first album and six months to write the second one." I did, to some degree, but actually, a lot of the songs that ended up on the record, I wrote really recently. So it varies.
When you love what you do, you just really fall in love with it. Sometimes you record a lot more songs than the album will even hold. You record like 300 songs and only 12 songs go on the album. It takes time. But if you love what you do, it works out.
I do write. I actually do want to start my music as well. My sister and I are starting a band. I've been playing a guitar for nine years, and she plays piano, and we sing together. We're going to start up something soon. I mostly am writing songs right now actually, but I would love to write a script someday.
I had a long distance relationship going while we were writing the album so a lot of it is about that constant struggle— you look up at the moon and wonder if that person is looking at it too. I was trying to write love songs that weren’t sappy Ben Affleck movie songs, but kind of a … man’s love songs
I read the reviews sometimes, but I don't let it really affect the next album because, for me, when I approach an album, it's usually coming to me pretty naturally. It's not like I set out, like, "Okay, I'm going to write an album this month." It's more like I'm just always writing songs and eventually I start to realize that a group of songs sort of fits together, and I go from there in putting together the album and themes and artwork and things like that.
You have to have a plan. Everything has to be planned. For me, I start with the title of my album, before I even start with the songs. I write down different things that I want album to say, and then the songs come from the different words.
Sometimes when a record's done, I'm satisfied and I won't listen back to it for a while 'cause I'm usually pretty tired of the songs. Then I've got to learn them again to play them live, and sometimes it takes a while to realise it's a really good record.
When we were writing the 'Stage' album, we realized we'd never really done proper covers, where we were taking songs and making them our own and kind of playing around with them. I came up with the idea of doing a cover of 'Wish You Were Here,' but we didn't really want it on the record.
This is an album of songs that I've always loved, tunes that I heard. For the first time in 53 years of recording, I really had control over an entire album, start to finish.
I didn't start writing songs, honestly, until I started making my album. I was always doing poetry, but I never thought I could write songs. I discouraged myself and thought it was so hard. But starting this process and learning just what it is to be a songwriter and performer taught me that you don't have to feel discouraged about anything.
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