Leon Russell – HuffPost 3.31.14

Mike Ragogna: What advice do you have for new artists?

Leon Russell: I think probably my main advice to new artists is if you want to be in the music business you, need to be dang serious about it because it’s a rough business. It’s what my uncle told me when I was going intol the music business. He was a great guitar player and a singer. He was a master sergeant in the air force for twenty-five years and ran gun clubs all over the world. When I told him I wanted to be a musician he said, “It’s a rough a business.” So that’s my advice to them.

MR: Was it a rough business for you?

LR: Oh yeah, it was pretty rough. I started playing in night clubs in Oklahoma when I was fourteen. It was a dry state, and there were no liquor laws so consequently there were no laws about minors playing in night clubs, so I had the oppportunity to start early. I went out to California the week I got out of high school, I was seventeen, and found out that they weren’t goign to have any sense of humor about that, they weren’t going to let me play or even go into the night clubs unless I was twenty one, so I had to borrow IDs. The musicians’ union wouldn’t let you play–they called it “home stay”–they didn’t want people coming into California and playing in night clubs, so in order for me to join the California union, I had to not work for a year. I said, “You’ll have to explain what you’re thinking about that.” I had to borrow union cards and borrow IDs and if they had a different guy at the door who didn’t know me and I’d already given my ID back to the person I borrowed it from. It was tough. I caught pneumonia out there and the doctors wouldn’t help me in the hospital because I was a minor and I didn’t have any adults so they wouldn’t treat me in the hospital, but I got over it more or less. But it’s pretty much a warring state out there.