In pictures: an intimate portrait of cult musician Arthur Russell

Many musical myths and legends now shroud Russell’s legacy, as well, thanks in part to the privacy he maintained when he was alive. “There’s probably about 12 interviews he ever gave,” says King. “There’s no footage of him being interviewed online.” This makes Travels Over Feeling a fairly unprecedented glimpse into the musician’s inner life, comprised of journal entries, notebooks, diaries, letters, and photographs from his archive at the New York Public Library. In a sense, this is Arthur Russell “in his own words”, with additional commentary from King alongside a range of the musician’s friends, collaborators, and Tom Lee, his longtime partner. 

Compiling the book wasn’t a question of dispelling the folk tales about his life and work, the author adds. “To a degree the myths are rather lovely, and well-intentioned, and inevitable.” King does, however, want people to see Russell as more than just a “doomed genius” – even to understand that he “wasn’t perfect, wasn’t an archangel”. The aim, in short: “To demonstrate that life is messy.”

Below, King talks more about Arthur Russell’s messy life among New York’s avant-garde, the emotional experience of sharing archival material with his family and former loves, and where to start with his sprawling catalogue.

What was it that initially attracted you to Arthur Russell as a book subject?

Richard King: I’ve loved his music for a very, very, very long time. And I’m always interested in periods where received historical narratives or timeframes don’t fit. With Arthur, there’s a sense that he went from being a singer-songwriter, to trying to write an opera, to making disco, to making this beautiful, strange music with his cello. But all those things were happening all the time. So what was attractive, in particular, was being able to demonstrate, through the archive, that life is messy.

What do you think Russell, as an artist, says about the broader avant-garde scene of his era?

Richard King: He was associated with The Kitchen in New York, which in itself was associated with something called New Music. I suppose one way of describing New Music then, in the mid 70s to the late 80s, was avant-garde ideas [and compositions] but in an immediate setting. Street-level avant-garde music, essentially. He and his cohort did scratch a living making that music and regularly playing with each other. We don’t know how well-attended many of these concerts were, above 40, 50, 60 people, but they did happen regularly. And there was an appetite for this. I think what the archive demonstrates is [that] New York was very vibrant, and it was a sufficiently failed economy to allow that music to thrive. 

The other thing Arthur’s life demonstrates… Much in the way that someone like Keith Haring reduced his artwork down to a dozen figures or tropes, and repeated them constantly for what we’d now call brand awareness, Arthur’s contemporaries – people like Steve Reich or Philip Glass – plough[ed] a very distinct musical idiom, and repeated themselves. Arthur didn’t do that. So I think what it also says about the avant-garde is, to be successful, keep doing the same thing ’til people know that’s what you do.

“[Russell] just refused to stay doing one thing… He wrote amazing plaintive songs, and he made records for the dancefloor” – Richard King

Do you think Russell’s refusal to repeat himself is the reason he’s not as well-known as many of his contemporaries?

Richard King: He is heading toward having that recognition now, but at the time he didn’t have it because he just refused to stay doing one thing. He wrote amazing plaintive songs, and he made records for the dancefloor. It was his refusal to be limited by genre.

Today, you might call Russell a ‘musician’s musician’. What do you think gained him this cult status? 

Richard King: We, as a species, have a fascination with discovering things. The fact that more of his materials became accessible after his death also means that we’re able to kind of claim [them] for our own, and project onto them a little.

Also, the quality of the work. He was exceptionally talented. Even if he put out some dance records to turn a buck, to get paid, the tracks still have an incredible integrity to them. That phrase ‘musician’s musician’ is really good, because if you’re a musician you recognise that [integrity], and when you see it in someone, you think: ‘That is actually quite astonishing, to be that talented.’

How did you approach putting all of the materials in Travels Over Feeling together, to paint a portrait of Russell’s life and work?

Richard King: I first went to the New York Public Library two days after America opened up after COVID, in 2021. I was there for a week, and I basically had the library to myself. It took me four days to go through just the papers, not including the audio and video, or the artefacts. There I was, sifting through a definitive portrait of the city from years ago, in this rather eerie environment, immediately post-COVID in New York, where everyone was wearing a mask, people [were] living on the subway, BLM graffiti everywhere, ‘Fuck Trump’ graffiti everywhere. It was a strange energy, and it kind of fit with sifting through the East Village of the 80s.

Anyway, I took thousands of pictures and started trying to piece together a timeline of his life that didn’t try to impose value judgments on what he was doing. I subsequently went back three or four times. One of the things I most enjoyed was [that] when I spoke to his friends and family, I was able to share artefacts from the archive with them on Zoom.

“Even if he put out some dance records to turn a buck, the tracks still have an incredible integrity to them” – Richard King

That must have been quite an emotional experience.

Richard King: Hell yeah. One of the great joys was showing people things they’d never seen before. That does feed into the narrative of Arthur being quite a private person. But all the people I spoke to who were close to him were extraordinary people in their own right, and share something beyond merely having collaborated with Arthur. They’ve all done very interesting things. They’re people with a real sense of purpose, and I got a real sense of the sort of dynamism of the time, that gave that generation the confidence to do what they wanted in the way they did.

Why did you choose to only include text from people with an intimate connection to Russell? And why use images and ephemera to tell the story, instead of a more narrative approach?

Richard King: The ephemera is so intimate, journals, notebooks, diaries, letters, that I wanted a sense of intimacy around [it] on the page. That’s why I chose the people I spoke to. I didn’t speak to anyone who hadn’t met him, or hadn’t lived in the same building, or regularly sat around a table with him, or played in a recording studio or at a show with him.

The estate suggested I look at the archive. As someone who writes about culture and history, something like an entire life in an archive is not an opportunity that comes up very often, so I saw it as a wonderful gift. But I was very conscious that he’s a complicated person, which is manifested in the choices he made musically and career-wise, and he’s complicated in lots of other ways, in his sexuality, his religion, his ability to relate to other people. I realised very quickly that a definitive biography of Arthur is not possible. I wanted to leave something open to the reader, to interpret the artefacts, or to develop their own relationship with them on the page.

For a complete beginner, what’s a good starting point to get into Arthur Russell?

Richard King: Well, because he made music in such different styles, I think there have to be at least three entry points. I would encourage people to listen to Another Thought, which in a very Arthur Russell way, is someone taking tapes after he’s died and doing something with them. That record never came out in his lifetime, and we don’t know what he would have thought of it.

But really… I would dance to “Go Bang” [by Dinosaur L], I would go for a long walk listening to Instrumentals, and I would have a quiet moment, alone in a city with headphones on, listening to “Keeping Up”.

Travels Over Feeling: Arthur Russell, a Life is out now, via Faber.