Arthur Russell (musician) - Cultural Significance and Influence

Cultural Significance and Influence

Russell was prolific, but was also notorious for leaving songs unfinished and continually revising his music. Ernie Brooks said Russell "never arrived at a completed version of anything." Peter Gordon stated, "his quest wasn't really to do a finished product but more to do with exploring his different ways of working musically." He left behind more than 1,000 tapes when he died, 40 of them different mixes of one song.

In 2007, "This Is How We Walk on the Moon", a song on the 1994 album Another Thought, was used in a UK television commercial for T-Mobile. Artist Johanna Billing exhibited a video of the same title, which included a cover of the song, at Documenta 12 in Kassel and at a gallery in Edinburgh in 2007. A tribute EP, Four Songs by Arthur Russell curated by Jens Lekman was also released in 2007, through Rough Trade Records.

Filmmaker Matt Wolf completed a feature-length documentary on Russell called Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell. It premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival on February 13, 2008.

Tim Lawrence, an author and academic at the University of East London, has written a biography of Russell, entitled Hold On To Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, published in 2009.

Planningtorock covered Russell's song "Janine" on her album W in 2011. And former Everything But The Girl singer Tracey Thorn covered "Get Around to It" on her 2007 solo album Out Of The Woods.

Foals front man Yannis Philippakis has cited Russell as being of particular influence.