Arthur's Dailies

His ambition, according to old friend Allen Ginsberg, was to write bubblegum Buddhist music. But the dreamy cello pop and experimental disco electronica fashioned by Arthur Russell during the 70s and 80s suggests something even more expansive than Mr. Ginsberg’s account.

Matt Wolf, the Brooklyn born filmmaker behind Wild Combination: A Portrait Of Arthur Russell, is inclined to agree.
“It was clear that Arthur just had an incredible drive to make music,” says the young documentarian. “He wasn’t afraid to explore all his strands and interests. I feel we are often scared to be funny if we are a serious artist. We are afraid to be serious if we see ourselves as funny. And he wasn’t like that. He was somebody who was able to explore all those things.”
Mr. Wolf’s remarkable film, set to round off this year’s GAZE extravaganza (or 16th Dublin International Lesbian And Gay Film Festival, if you prefer), presents an appropriately dreamy portrait of this intriguing figure from the edges of New York’s impossibly hip downtown scene. For the musically minded, it’s quintessential viewing. Russell, as most musicologists know, presided over the birth of disco at David Mancuso’s Loft. But he was simultaneously involved with the rock pack at CBGBs, with minimal composition, with Philip Glass and Steve Reich at the Kitchen, with jazz, reggae, funk and high classical.
“I was worried it might be hard to represent all those different forces,” says Wolf. “As a director I have to present it as an inevitable chronological process, but for Arthur it was all happening at the same time.”
There were other logistical difficulties with capturing such this legendary polymath on film. Although Wolf quickly persuaded Arthur’s former partner Tom Lee to hand over more than 800 reels of home recordings, there was very little performance footage. Happily, the director’s experience as the editor for The New York Times Magazine’s video segments make him the ideal candidate to fill in the blanks.
“At first I thought I wouldn’t be able to make this film because of that,” admits Wolf. “ It ended up becoming a production restraint. We had to be a bit more creative in finding visual representations. We had to find archival material and then blend that with original stuff we shot. And that, I think, I hope, lends a special quality to the archival material.”
“Every film has its obstacles,” he continues. “You will see some documentaries where they have all this archival material but people don’t want to talk about the subject. Maybe that’s harder.”
In the absence of photographic record, contributions from such notable talking heads as Ginsberg, Ernie Brooks, composer Philip Glass, Jens Lekman and Arthur’s parents slowly tease out the enigma.
“That was the easy part,” says Wolf. “People wanted Arthur’s story to be told. So there was no barrier in terms of talking to people. But I think when you are investigating disco that is a real obstacle, because so many people who were involved have died. And it is difficult for those who are still around because they are not sure they want to flashback to that period. There is so much death and so many drugs to recount. I was lucky. Most of Arthur’s main collaborators are still alive and they have a very present connection with him.”
The film is, of course, exquisitely timed. In the years since 1992 when Arthur died from an AIDS related illness, this obscure footnote has slowly gained a mythological status. Everyone from Jens Lekman to David Byrne (an old cohort) has, of late, added Russell covers to their repertoire. Hercules and Love Affair, meanwhile, are currently channeling his entire disco oeuvre. What, I wonder, has prompted this resurgence of interest?
“I first came to Arthur’s music through the reissues (Calling Out of Context and The World of Arthur Russell) from 2004,” explains Wolf. “But strangely I came to Arthur before that. It was really a description I read of him that inspired my imagination. I heard about this long forgotten disco auteur who wore this plaid shirt and would ride the Staten Island ferry back and forth. That was a very strong image for me.”
Of course it helps that Arthur Russell’s music sounds so darned contemporary.
“Definitely,” says his biographer-in-chief. “It’s like discovering a new artist playing new music. In another sense, Arthur’s lack of irony, his sincerity, that happens to be a very contemporary sensibility. Talking about bands like Hercules and the Love Affair, I think enough time has passed for these guys to approach disco as something new. People have enough distance from the clichés to look upon it as a real artistic movement.”
This gorgeous film ends wistfully, not only on account of Russell’s passing, but for everything he and his colourful Manhattan cronies represented.
“New York is a very different place,” says the native director. “Now I am not one to complain about that. It’s a city, and cities change. But Arthur was in New York at a time when the possibilities in the arts were greater. It was just more possible logistically to experiment in the way Arthur did. There was greater cross-pollination between scenes back when artists were less professionalised. Arthur is a relic of a time when artists had a greater level of freedom. They were less restricted by the demands of the economy. But even within that framework, Arthur was unique.”
I ask him about a scrap of paper we see during the film. It’s an internal memo dated 1979 from within Warner Records, Arthur’s then label. “Who knows what this guy is up to,” it reads. Having immersed himself in the world of Arthur Russell, could Matt Wolf have enlightened them?
“Oh no,” says the filmmaker. “People would ask him where this was leading and he wouldn’t know. It was all about the process and the process went on forever.