Leon Russell: Retrospective

can’t seem to recall when it was I first heard Leon Russell’s passions loosed in song. My oldest friend, Steve, introduced me to him long ago—in Manhattan’s happy hippie times, not far from the legendary Stonewall Inn. It was love at first hear.

Not only did I feel a sense of awe listening to Leon’s voice, but to his piano too—and those melodies, haunting and exquisite, romantic and mysterious, earthy and ethereal. There was nothing anywhere like them.

Both of his earliest albums--Leon Russell and Leon Russell and the Shelter People—had been copyrighted in 1973, which surprises me now, for I’d incorrectly remembered listening to him incessantly in 1970. But now Steve has given me a copy of his Retrospective, mostly a collection of Russell’s best-known music.

Listening once again, I know why Leon Russell is still my favorite song man. True, Van Morrison had caught my attention around the same time, yes, but while I was drawn to Morrison’s rapturous themes, truly a poetic champion’s compositions, I knew that for me Russell would always still strike closest to my heart.

Leon Russell is an American genius, a long-haired swamp-man, a man of passion who infuses his lyrics with an untouchable poignancy. He is the king of melody and of instrumental perfection.

A Song for You, the first cut on Retrospective once served, in my life, as the most gripping of love songs. Under its spell in my early ‘mini-fame’ days I understood Leon’s every word.

My lover and I were not only out of the closet in those heady times, but there were, because we were very public, at least "10,000 people watching", as Russell sings it. Even so, his lyrics crooned, "We’re alone now, and I’m singing this song to you."

A piano trills melodiously as this cut begins. In it Leon sings almost everything

I’d wanted to say to my lover:

I learned in the 80s that Leon, a white heterosexual male, had, late in life, married another singer, a black woman. This had failed to go over with many of his country fans in states like West Virginia, where, I hear, he once introduced his new wife to an astonished audience. I liked such spunk. But more, I loved the work this couple produced together, a joyous wedding album. On it is Island in the Sun, for me, another defining melody, expressing a tempo on the island I now call home.

Everywhere in Leon Russell’s songs there’s a gladness or a sadness that somehow, I often think, matches my own capacities for both. Isn’t it our identity, after all, that makes us love a musician most? Isn’t it that we seem to see our own souls amply reflected?—our own thirsts for living?—our own pasts rising out of long-ago years, softly resurrecting an unmatched sense of beauty that our memory allows us miraculously to maintain?

I believe it was in the late 80s that a few of Leon Russell’s best known songs came to life on popular radio stations. These included not only the aforementioned A Song for You, but also Tight Rope, which is on the Retrospective CD.

There are two "queen" songs on Reptrospective: Queen of the Roller Derby—and, amusingly, Crystal Closet Queen evocative of Little Richard, I suppose, because when I listen to it no desires cross my threshold except those for dancing. The piano and the beat are impossible to beat.

Take it from me. You haven’t lived if you’ve never heard Leon strumming on his guitar, playing that piano like a god, his voice projecting the essence of rural, yet urban American sophistication: starkly honest, uninhibited in feeling, a man on the road who willingly leaves behind him catches of richness, wandering through colorful new haunts lit day and night by sun and moon.

Sit back and enjoy The Ballad of Mad Dogs and Englishmen. Find out what The Masquerade teaches you. Look into Leon Russell’s Magic Mirror and marvel at the images you see. Lady Blue, and Delta Lady must be your sometime companions: rich in rural rhythms, velvety tones common only to a natural, land-bred man.

Thank you, Steve, for reintroducing again me to Leon. And just to think: he once visited this very island. It was back in the 80s, remember? At Brassy’s. You saw him at the supermarket and joked with him, using the title of another of his Retrospective songs to let him know you were a fan. You said,

"I see you’re Back to the Island!"

Oral Majority Online: www.oralmajorityonline.com

Jack Nichols is the author of The Gay Agenda: Talking Back to the Fundamentalists (Prometheus Books, 1996) Of Men’s Liberation: A New Definition of Masculinity (Penguin Books, 1975) and of Welcome to Fire Island: Visions of Cherry Grove and The Pines (St. Martin’s Press, 1976)

richard e. schiff,
richard
e. schiff,
 richard e. schiff
Richard Schiff
 Richard Schiff
Richard Schiff ...

Recorded by
The Backhouse
Bluesers®
1988 at
Coyote Studios
Brooklyn NY