http://counterpunch.com/jacobs12222007.html
Why Leon Russell Still Matters
By RON JACOBS
December 22 / 23, 2007
There's a moment in the film of the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh that
shows how great rock music can be. Bob Dylan, George Harrison and
Leon Russell are singing Dylan's "Just Like A Woman." All three men
join in the chorus, creating an unusual and unique set of harmonies
that could probably only occur with those three voices. It's a
transcendent moment that kept me in a theater in downtown Frankfurt
am Main for most of a day in 1972 as I watched the film over and over
again until the usher asked me to leave before the evening shows
began. There's a performance of "That's the Way God Planned It" by
Billy Preston that is probably the most rocking' song in the original
film and the version of the Beatles' tune "While My Guitar Gently
Weeps" is typically emotive but it's that chorus that keeps me coming
back to this film.
Russell and Preston had more in common than their roles as
accompanists to some of the biggest names in rock music. Their vocal
inflections were gospel through and through, despite their different
backgrounds. Russell was born in Oklahoma and was playing Tulsa
nightclubs by the time he was fourteen. From there he went on the
road with Jerry Lee Lewis. By the mid 1960s he had backed up dozens
of bands as a studio musician working for Phil Spector. Preston was
born in Los Angeles in 1946 and was playing piano for gospel greats
Mahalia Jackson and James Cleveland by the time he was ten. By the
time he was in his late teens he was a member of the Shindig
television show house band. A few years later he was playing with the
Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
Right now I am listening to Russell's 1972 album Stranger in a
Strange Land by Russell and his band The Shelter People. This title
is quite probably taken from the Robert Heinlein novel of the same
name. For those unfamiliar with that work, it is the story of a human
raised by Martians and brought back to earth where he begins a
religion based on love and nonviolence only to be met with
persecution and eventual death. The opening song on the album is
written by Russell and also titled "Stranger in a Strange Land." It
begins with the image of a newborn baby confused upon its arrival on
the planet and ends with a plea to reorder our priorities and "stop
racing towards oblivion." Listen to the children sing. Russell's
classic rock piano honed in the hellfire of Jerry Lee Lewis and
perfected while on tour with the British working class interpreter of
rock and roll Joe Cocker in what was known as the Mad Dogs and
Englishmen tour backs up this holy song. The lead guitarist Jesse
Davis-perhaps the only Native American lead guitarist in the history
of rock-matches the plaintive gospel sounds of Russell and moves this
song into the astral choir loft.
Russell's interpretation of Bob Dylan's songs is unique. He is one of
the few artists that not only captures the always present
subterranean subtext of Dylan's work but makes that subtext even
darker and edgier. The Shelter People disc has four such renditions.
The one that echoes quite hauntingly in my mind is his version of
"It's a Hard Rain Gonna' Fall." Shortened by a couple of verses,
Russell's version on the disc moves this eery telling of an
apocalypse beyond the prescient gloominess of Dylan's many versions
and pushes the telling to a circle of hell that is at once far, far
away yet right inside your heart. There is no escape from that rain
and just in case you didn't understand this when Mr. Dylan told you
about it, Leon Russell is gonna' make sure you get it.
Six of the other tunes here are by Russell himself and run the gamut
from a lilting love song called "She Smiles Like a River" to the
rockers "Of Thee I Sing" and "Alcatraz." The latter is a song about
the takeover of the closed-down prison by American Indian Movement
activists and others in 1970. Also thrown in the mix is a tribute to
Little Richard that steals his licks and rocks the house down and the
title song from the self-titled movie made about the Mad Dogs and
Englishmen tour referred to above. This is an often overlooked album
by one of North America's greatest musical interpreters and rock and
roll pianists.
As evidenced by the song "Alcatraz," Russell was occasionally
political, especially in his earlier work. Two song that were
favorites with some of my GI friends back in 1970-1973 were the
anti-military/antiwar "Down On the Base" and "Ballad For A Soldier"
from Russell's first Asylum Choir album. The first is a bouncy ditty
that ridicules the overused bumpersticker slogan "Freedom Isn't
Free." In fact, as Russell tells it, "My life's a small price to
pay/To teach those commies the American way." When it's over, the GI
telling the story in Russell's song states sarcastically that he'll
get a dollar of his fingers and two dollars for his eyes. How nice it
might be if he could see the freedom he was fighting for, but he
can't because the war took his sight. "Ballad For A Soldier" is told
from the perspective of a young man who finds himself a soldier on
trial for murdering babies because he believed in all the lies about
the glory and honor of war, Russell's tune tells the familiar tale of
the lack of truth in those lies. Like its literary contemporary Born
On the Fourth of July by Ron Kovic and its historical equivalent of
My Lai, "Ballad For A Soldier" should be required listening for every
person thinking of joining Washington's current wars. "We're all
little children playing grown-up games,' sings Russell. "can we burn
the gun before the next time comes?"
Back to that moment in the film. Dylan has an acoustic guitar, Leon
Russell has an electric bass and Harrison has an electric guitar.
Three men playing a song that the audience recognizes with applause
even before Dylan has finished singing the first word. This time
around he's playing it in a slowed down countrified version. It's a
song about women and love. The next song in the film is Harrison's
"Something," also about love. Then comes the reason for the show-the
song "Bangladesh." The all-star revue plays the song with the
assumption that there work will go towards helping the people of
Bangladesh in their struggle to survive war and weather. Somewhere
between those hopes and the country of Bangladesh, money men took
most of the cash for themselves. That, too, is rock and roll.
---
Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the
Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs'
essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's collection on
music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His first novel, Short
Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at:
rjacobs3625@charter.net
.
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