Arthur Russell

Arthur Russell was an American cellist and songwriter notable for his experimental and minimalist style. He has been assessed by the admins of this site as INFP

Quotes

 * “The things that I like seem to be so different. They’re not the things that everybody likes.”
 * “The records you listen to when you’re small I think they have a big effect on you”
 * “[The Talking Heads] were all from art school and were into looking severe and cool. I was never into that. I was from music school and I had long hair at the time.”
 * [On playing an experimental record for his friend:] “When the track had finished he turned to me and said, ‘This is second-rate music.’ That was such a weird thing to say. I’d never thought of it in those hierarchical terms. It always seems important to me to avoid such value judgements.”
 * “On [Life During Wartime], there’s a line ‘This ain’t no disco’ which, at the time, I took as [David Byrne] saying ‘Disco sucks’. I took that very personally.”
 * David Tumbo: “If you listen to Arthur’s music and are not familiar with it, then you think, ‘Well how can one person work in all these different ways?”
 * Peter Zummo: “One of the things I first discovered in his group was the idea of bringing people together who had very different backgrounds."
 * Phillip Glass: “He was one of the more eccentric of our community”
 * Tom Lee: “What I saw in Arthur was the kind of person who’s an artist who really pursues it at all costs and doesn’t worry about the nine to five job.”\
 * Mustafa Khaliq Ahmed: “He was often sullen. He had a sense of seriousness about him most of the time; perhaps a sense of foreboding. I never saw him get angry. He was a humble cat – a genuinely nice guy.”