ASYLUM CHOIR
Late-'60s Pop-Rock Perfection from Leon Russell's First Band
By Kurt Wildermuth
(June 2023)
You've mastered the basics of late-'60s pop-rock: Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys, Kinks, Dylan, Who, Hendrix, Joplin, Doors, Creedence, Stax, Motown. You've explored the second tier: the garage rock and mild trippiness of the box sets Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968 and Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts from the British Empire and Beyond, 1964-1969; the stirrings of singer-songwriters; fusions of pop and rock with new forms such as metal and old ones such as country and jazz.
You've liked much of what you've heard from these sources, so you've acquired a taste for early-'70s pop-rock that carried on late-'60s traditions: the power pop of Badfinger and Big Star; the glam of David Bowie and T. Rex; the folk-rock masterpieces of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and so on, and so ...Where do you go next, time traveler?
Consider visiting the Asylum Choir.
Don't let the name fool you: the Choir consisted of a duo on its first album. Additional musicians appeared on its second, final release, but the assembled multitude never added up to a full choir, not even through the then-limited art of multitracking. In whatever form, the band probably never played in an asylum either.
The duo consisted of Marc Benno, who sang and played guitar and bass, and Leon Russell, who sang and played guitar, piano, and drums. Benno hailed from Texas, Russell from Oklahoma. They met in LA, where Russell enjoyed an active career as a session musician, from early-'60s work with Phil Spector to mid-'60s work as a member of the so-called Wrecking Crew.
Benno and Russell's debut, Look Inside the Asylum Choir, appeared in 1968. It runs all of twenty-six minutes on the original LP, forty minutes or more with bonus tracks on CD (and the bonus tracks consist of mono mixes or alternate mixes). Benno and Russell cowrote all the songs, either just together or with others.
Side 1 opens with "Welcome to Hollywood," a tongue-in-cheek adrenaline burst that came out as the first single. After a show-bizzy introduction, barrelhouse-piano-enhanced verses prefigure the work of Elton John, Paul Williams, and Richard Carpenter. The choruses sound like the Beatles to the point of parody but full of love the way the Move and the Electric Light Orchestra can be (and parts of this album sound markedly like ELO, who formed two years later).
As its title indicates, "Soul Food" pays homage to Southern cuisine with the kind of plastic soul that Russell later made his trademark. Here the tempo's peppier and the feel's poppier than on classic Russell. For example, the bright guitar solo darts in and out so fast you want to rehear the song if only to confirm what just happened.
"Icicle Star Tree" has the dreamy lightness and sensorial imagery of the Beatles circa 1967. Indeed, Neil Innes might have been drawing on this song, not even bothering to revisit Sgt. Pepper or Magical Mystery Tour, when he concocted the Rutles' affectionate homages to this period.
"Death of the Flowers," a neoclassical waltz, switches from Zombies somber to Monkees sweet. This groovy stuff whets the appetite for "Indian Style," which weds lyrical references to meditators and flower children with good-timey piano-based music in the mode of Harry Nilsson and early Randy Newman.
Side 2 opens with a medley, "Episode Containing 3 Songs": "N.Y. Op." presents a fascinatingly far-ahead-of-its-time-for-pop-rock blend of echoey jam, dub, organ, and tape recordings of a phone conversation. It cuts straight into the piano-horn-and-handclap concoction "Land of Dog," which segues into "Mr. Henri the Clown," the best mid-'60s-Kinks musical portrait not written by Ray or Dave Davies.
The tolling bells at the start of "Thieves in the Choir" sound like they might have inspired the opening of John Lennon's "Mother" two years later. The bells speed up and take us into the Asylum Choir's humorously self-referential song, which pulls out all the sonic stops. The ultra-tight rhythm section executes swift tempo changes while gaining strings and horns, jaunty piano, an infectious chorus, a falsetto interlude, and Russell employing his growl as seasoning in the mix.
The closer, "Black Sheep Boogaloo," blasts the album off with two-and-a-half minutes of ecstasy that all by itself justifies the price of admission. The term power pop hadn't been coined yet, so consider this track a power-pop 45 that should have been. A call to twist or indeed boogaloo, the kind of chewy nugget that suggests you'll never reach its center, it employs that dense-yet-light-on-its-feet grinding rhythm that Matthew Sweet has turned into a form of alternative rock. Into or onto that base go the crunch and howl of Creedence (whose first recordings came out that year), punchy sped-up horns, and funny spoken bits in the breaks.
Like the best work of power-popsters and other lovers of period pieces from the '60s and '70s, so much about this album feels both retro in a good way and totally fresh. The original cover depicted a roll of (unused) toilet paper, a choice so controversial at the time that the album was soon reissued with a photo of Benno and Russell on the cover. Toilet imagery was forbidden in those days--the john on the cover of the Mamas and the Papas' If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears (1966) had to be hidden, and the graffiti-laden loo on the Stones' Beggars Banquet (1968) was replaced with an elegant but faux invitation card. Decades later, indie rock bands would use shots of toilets, even the contents of unflushed toilets, for their album covers. The original Look Inside cover would fit right in--and has been restored on reissues.
Likewise, the duo's music, so affectionate toward its sources and painstakingly crafted, would fit in with late-'60s-style sound collages, pastiches, and homages from the 1980s through today. Think of the Paisley Underground bands Rain Parade, Opal, Three O'Clock, and early Bangles (and don't forget these bands' one-off side project, Rainy Day); XTC's psychedelic recordings and Dukes of Stratosphear alter ego; Bongwater and the Shimmy-Disc Records catalog generally; the Flaming Lips; the Fiery Furnaces; the Lennon-Claypool Delerium. If those references signify for you, if you've grooved on the box set Children of Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the Second Psychedelic Era, 1976-1995, you'll probably love Look Inside.
However, you might want to get your sugar fix there and not venture further into the Asylum Choir. Or at least you should go into the second album expecting something different than the first one. If Look Inside delivers high-quality bubblegum, its follow-up tastes more like homemade falafel, hummus, or baba ganouj.
Benno and Russell recorded Asylum Choir II in 1969 and were joined by studio musicians. The guitarist, Jesse Ed Davis, is now best known for work with Taj Mahal, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. One bassist, Carl Radle, worked with Eric Clapton, including in Derek & the Dominoes. The other bassist, Donald "Duck" Dunn, played on more Stax and other classics than this sentence could possibly do justice to. The drummer, Chuck Blackwell, played with Taj Mahal and Leon Russell as a solo artist.
Asylum Choir II wasn't released until 1971, by which time the Asylum Choir was over and Russell had established himself as a star. While Benno and Russell cowrote seven of the songs here, Russell wrote the remaining four by himself, and the collection feels much more like his self-titled, guest-enhanced 1970 solo debut than like the original Asylum Choir.
Eschewing his clipped vocal delivery on Look Inside, Russell lets his drawl hang out. Abandoning that first album's tightly controlled, highly produced, mildly psychedelic freneticism, the band sounds organic, relaxed, pleasantly stoned, a bit ragged.
For an example of the stylistic shift on II, look no further than the Side 1 opener: "Sweet Home Chicago," whose title signals the bluesiness of the music, would make no sense on Look Inside. The soldier's narratives "Down on the Base" and "Ballad for a Soldier" continue that no-nonsense rootsiness. "Hello, Little Friend" and "Tryin' to Stay 'Live" inject some whimsy into the established groove.
Splitting the difference between the first- and second-album approaches are "Straight Brother" and "Salty Candy," which alternate between Russell's bluesy sections and Benno's brightly colored ones. Perhaps the greatest contrast is between the first album's rocking "Black Sheep Boogaloo" and the second's sleepy "Learn How to Boogie," which is buried on Side 2.
Also consider the difference between how Side 2 of each album starts: the first album sports that avant-grade sound collage, whereas the second album delivers "Intro to Rita," a two-minute snippet of studio business in which Russell asks for the singer Rita Coolidge's opinion about two bits of piano playing. Indeed, side 2 of II feels like a window into the recording process. "When You Wish upon a Fag" (relax--it's about smoking cigarettes) has a rehearsal roughness. The album closer, "Lady in Waiting," shambles along, sounding like a demo, maybe bearing the influence of The Band. In 1968-69, the first two albums by those Canadians, drawing on North American roots music and emphasizing loose interplay, strongly influenced the first-tier classic rockers whose music had been the Asylum Choir duo's inspirations.
In other words, filter Look Inside the Asylum Choir through Music from Big Pink and The Band and you might get Asylum Choir II. Put another way: this Southern-fried music sounds more like 1971, when it was released, than like 1969, when it was recorded. Maybe this analysis comes across as fitting angels on the head of a pin. However, the history matters if the music matters. Oddly, Asylum Choir II has been reissued on CD with most of Look Inside as bonus tracks, as though the first album was just a warm-up. Taken in chronological order, the two Asylum Choir albums illustrate how '60s pop transitioned into '70s rock.
Since the end of the Asylum Choir, Benno has released solo albums. He is most well-known as the second guitarist on the Doors' L.A. Woman (1971), which is one damn great album to be best remembered for. He also played guitar with Rita Coolidge and wrote a song by the System on the Grammy-winning soundtrack to Beverly Hills Cop (1984).
Leon Russell's career peaked in the early '70s, when he worked extensively with Joe Cocker, released albums that remain lower-tier classics, and enjoyed hit cover versions of his songs. In the following decades, he experienced partial eclipses and reappearances. His eclipse was nearly total by the time Elton John, a fan from way back, invited him to collaborate on 2010's The Union. Russell died in 2016, his recordings a mix of highs and lows, his time in the Asylum Choir a footnote, even a footnote to a footnote, but a highly entertaining and enlightening one.
Also see our Leon Russell article