- Women on a boat: We're not fishin'. We're just pleasure-seekers.
- George Jones: "Take Me" would be a real pretty song, boy. Let's see.
- [singing]
- George Jones: Take me, take me to your darkest room, Close every window, bolt every door, The very first moment I heard your voice, I'd be in darkness no more...
- Self - Caretaker: The first time I saw Leon I like to come unglued, cause he had long hair and I wasn't used to it.
- Leon Russell: Right now, I'd like to sing a song from the Hank Williams catalog. You all know who Hank Williams is, don't you?
- [singing]
- Leon Russell: A good-bye Joe, we gotta go, down the bayou, Me gotta go, pole the pirogue, down the bayou, My Yvonne the sweetest one, oh me oh my oh, Son of a gun, we're gonna have a big fun on the bayou...
- Jim Franklin: A lot of people are walking around with an incredible amount of painting ability and they just did do it; because, they got scared by it once. Someone told them they couldn't - they weren't doin' it right. Which is absurd! It's absurd. How are you gonna say which painting is done right? Ask Picasso. You know, which painting did you do right? They all look fucked up. You know, that's the way he wanted them to look. You know, he wanted them to look fucked up like the mind is. You know, it's crazy!
- Black girl: Ugly! I didn't know fish got that big.
- Black boy: Shit.
- Black girl: Besides a whale.
- Black boy: Catfish get a lot larger than that.
- Black girl: [to her girlfriend] No, don't look at it. Your baby might come out lookin' like that.
- Jim Franklin: People who do let their kids draw on their walls, usually, wind up with an artist in the family. You know, because, most kids draw. I mean, they just do.
- Jim Franklin: If you could look anything like a butterfly, all your friends would say you were brilliant!
- Leon Russell: [singing] Why do some people have to hurt somebody? The firewater's not the villain...
- Willie Nelson: Gotta do a "Good Hearted Woman" for Eileen. Alright, let's do that now, while I'm thinkin' about it. "Some Other World"? Alright.
- [singing]
- Willie Nelson: A long time forgotten, Are dreams that just fell by the way, And the good life he promised, Ain't what she's livin' today...
- Leon Fan: I'm here to enjoy people, you know. And Leon Russell, also. Leon Russell is the performer and we're the fans or the, you know, people that are enjoying him the most. I think it merges into one beautiful thing.
- Malissa Bates: I didn't finish my song. Let's see, how far was I? You want me to start over? No, I'll start over. Okay.
- [singing]
- Malissa Bates: Jeremiah was a bullfrog, Was a good friend of mine, I never understood a single word he said, But I helped him drink his wine, And he always had a might fine time, Singing now Joy to the World, All the boys and girls now, Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea, Joy to you and me, If I was the king of the world, I'll tell you what I'd do, I'd throw away the cars and bars and the wars, And I'd make sweet love to you, Yeah, I'd make sweet love to you.
- Leon Russell: [singing] Farther along we'll know all about it, Farther along we'll understand why, Cheer up my brother live in the sunshine, We'll understand it all by and by...
- Bill Mullins: Who am I to believe, you know? Who am I to entrust my - feelings and my understanding to what's going on? You know, today or any day? You know, people - people younger than me, I kind of feel sorry for, you know. Who to trust and who to have their trust into, you know? Who - who to believe into, you know? Well, you get disillusioned and you just - it gets all faded out in the purpose of what we're really tryin' to aim our, you know, what we're aiming for is just - has been faded away and something else has taken its place and just everything is just not what it was supposed to be in the first place, you know.
- Leon Russell: The way I see it, it's just, the money is just time certificates and time is only a term that we use in relation to how long we have to live on the is plane, you know.
- Leon Russell: If I stop and worry about it, I'll stop doin' anything. Because I don't know what I'm doin'. But, if I - if I feel like I know what I'm doin', then I - then I know what I'm doin'.
- Eric Andersen: How can you say to me when I walk in a room, you know, "Who are you, man?" You know, it's my session and there's a cameraman holding me back from walkin' in on my session and I'm wonderin' what's goin' on, you know. And they say - you say - "Oh, did I meet you, man?"
- Leon Russell: So, you're a historian, then? You think that there's anything happening right now that is more important than what was happening when somebody grabbed you by the collar and asked you who you were? Do you think that this might be more important than that? Or, do you want to dwell on that for awhile?
- Eric Andersen: Well, I - it wasn't more important. A conversation about filmmaking was not more important than what I was into. That's how I felt. Anyway, but, the introduction, I didn't feel was very - real, you know. That's what I'm saying.
- Leon Russell: Well, it was. You write - you write some very beautiful...
- Eric Andersen: You're jivin'.
- Leon Russell: God damn songs.
- Eric Andersen: You're 42 or, I don't know, 38? Whatever you are. You got famous, man.
- Leon Russell: Your - your daddy's a punk too. Shit, I ain't that old. You don't know me that well to say that shit. 48?
- Eric Andersen: 42, I don't know. How old are you?
- Leon Russell: I'm barely 30 years old. 48?
- Eric Andersen: I don't know how old you are, man.
- Leon Russell: What the fuck difference does it make how old I am? I'm very sensitive about that. I wish we can't talk about it any more.
- Eric Andersen: Being around - so long, you know, that people go through changes - and change, you know.
- Leon Russell: Don't you think its better to go through it at full throttle than rather to hold back?
- Leon Russell: Do you have a regular job out here?
- David Briggs: No. No, I just work when guys can't play the piano on their own songs. They only call me me when a guy can't do his own fuckin' piano work.
- [Leon pours a beer over his head]
- David Briggs: Hey George! Hey Ringo! Here I am, in Tennessee!
- Eric Andersen: It's power, you know. It's power when you're a headliner, man, and you have a band.
- Leon Russell: That's right.
- Eric Andersen: But the precision, you know, power has certain precision. The precision that it was at, I couldn't tell whether it was - whether you were a revivalist, man, you know, tryin' to put somethin' over. Or, whether - where it was - where it was comin' from. I didn't know where it was comin' from.
- Leon Russell: Right.
- Eric Andersen: To this day, I don't know where it's comin' from.
- Leon Russell: That's my illusion, you see. Don't get throwed too far off by that.
- Leon Russell: [singing] I know your image of me is what I hope to be, I've treated you unkindly but can't you see, No one more important to me, Darling can you please see through me, 'Cause we're alone now and I'm singin' this song with you...
- Ambrose Campbell: Leave allowance for others. Because, it was other people that make it so comfortable. At least they make bed, mattress, you can go to shop and ask for it. They make it available for you. You, yourself, make it available for others. Because, you take from life. Give back to life. If you do dat, you're on de way.
- Leon Russell: [singing] I've been a so many places in my life and time, I've sung a lot of songs, I've made some bad rhymes, I've acted out my love in stages, With ten thousand people watching, Oh, but we're alone now and I am singing this song with you...
- Eric Andersen: [singing] Of those who never asked to die and were too afraid to kill, Time runs like a freight train, won't you take me down the line, There's so much much I can never say of the ruins left behind, Oh, my pockets they are empty, there's so much on my mind...
- Ambrose Campbell: Leon Russell. He's great today. Every time you hear him will lead you to dat. Okay, there was somebody else before him. And there will be somebody else tomorrow. And it goes on and on like dat. None of us can stop dis. Whether we like it or not.
- Leon Russell: [singing] Sometimes I live up in Tulsa, I take a little trip down to Nashville too, If there's only one thing I get through to you in this life, Is just that I want to make love to you, Yes, yes, Irene Goodnight, Goodnight Irene, goodnight...
- Leon Russell: [singing] In just a few seconds I began to realize, I gotta believe myself and every word I say, And I gotta try and live in a more perfect way, Yes I do, Oh, the beat keeps going on...
- Ambrose Campbell: Each generation, they still have the same thing. They've got their own work, their own music, their own painting, their own style of dancing, way of talking, way of dis 'n dat and all dat. They should get together, because there was a generation just yesterday, there's today, and there will always be tomorrow. And dat tomorrow is for our children or whoever to come. So, you can't last dat long.
- Leon Russell: So, then, there's the balance between paranoia and trust - that gets the illusion going, you know.
- Willis Alan Ramsey: I'd like to do another one. Have you got time for another?
- [singing]
- Willis Alan Ramsey: Lying on a rock like a snake, Meaning my body to bake, Well, there was beauty for beauty's sake, And I'm swimming naked at the lake, Beauty for beauty's sake...
- Leon Russell: The principal of the mind is sort of predicated on comparing new information to known information.
- Leon Russell: [singing] But for one thing for certain, When it comes to my time, I'll leave this old world, With a satisfied mind, I'm gonna leave this old world, With a satisfied mind.
- [speaks]
- Leon Russell: Give me a tag.
- [sings]
- Leon Russell: I'll leave this old world, With a satisfied mind.
- [speaks]
- Leon Russell: I believe that.