Arthur Russell left us a sudden haze passing away sadly in 1992 and when the dust settled in the mid 90′s alot people including myself started to discover an immense body of wonderful and genre defying music.
For years his songs have been sampled, covered and re-issued and slowly but surely by the turn of the new millennium and with the powerful emergence of the internet word spread about this somewhat forgotten genius.
By 2009 alot my contemporaries felt it was time to go somewhat deeper and with the knowledge that a full blown biography on Arthur by Tim Lawrence was near completion a live band & studio project covering his work was created under the alias of Killer Whale. We knew that his original collaborators could be found and forever bonds were formed and new music created.
Our aim was to work with Arthurs music and rebuild it, with a modern production, using musicians both from New York and London.
The result is ‘The King of New York EP’ including ‘Is It All Over My Face’ and ‘Tell You (today) featuring original Loose Joints members Peter Gordon (saxophone) & Joyce Bowden (vocals).
We wanted to find out more from the NYC downtown era, the ‘Tell You’ sessions and some other fascinating facts about King Arthur
Catch Killer Whale at Bar C.A.M.P Saturday 12th June. More details
I wanted to ask you about ‘Tell You’ and how it came about. It was recorded at Battery Sound. Did you work here often with Arthur?
Peter Gordon: Arthur and I spent a lot of time at Battery Sound. So did David Van Tieghem. It was well equipped but informal, and since it was somewhat out of the way, it was not on the radar of a lot of folks.(Battery was later re-named “Cedar Sound” after the London studio of same name wanted to open a NYC branch and bought the name from the owner.) Battery Sound was located in an old skyscraper building at 90 West Street, on the Hudson river two blocks below the World Trade Center. The studio owner was the son of one of the buildings former owners (who was still somehow vested in the property.)
The studio was somewhat small, but had a room that could comfortably fit a half dozen musicians, with an old Steinway grand, Hammond B3 with Leslie, a nice assortment of synths – Farilight CMI, Linn drum machine (first version), SP12, Juno 6, Voyetra. I believe it was and MCI 2″ 24trk with a Harrison console.
Very crucial was the engineer, Eric Liljestrand. Eric arrived at Battery as an intern and assistant, but ended up as chief engineer and was really an important asset – patient, creative and now a good friend. (Eric since moved to LA, recording albums and for films, and has received two Grammy awards.)
One thing about Battery/Cedar Sound is that there was always tension with the building staff. Whenever we’d arrive with instruments (especially drums or large keyboards) after hours, we had to go through a song and dance about proper received hours for freight.
It also had one of the slowest elevators – it seemed to take 5 minutes to get to to the 9th Floor. ( I later read that months after the 9-11 attacks, workers went in to the 90 West Street building – which had been evacuated, being essential adjacent to the twin towers – and found the corpses of an unlucky few who had been trapped in the elevator during the WTC attacks.)
But it was not uncommon for Arthur, David Van Tieghem and me to have multiple projects going on at once – sometimes these would be back to back. And for each of us, when a musician might come into the studio, they might record tracks for different projects.
The horn section is very prominent part of the composition..was this already scored before the recording or was a spontaneous moment?
Peter Gordon: Peter Zummo and Rik Albani (?), on trumpet recorded their parts separately from me. Frankly, I don’t remember 
this session, per se. Usually when I was in the studio with Arthur, he would be pulling out different tracks and I’d just play, he might give me a written part, or sing something. And then he might just say, “do what you want” and then grab on to something to repeat or work on. It was all very fluid. But usually I didn’t hear the vocals and there was not much sense of which song was which. Often, I didn’t know what would happen until I heard the mix years later!
How did you record your parts. As a section with Peter Zummo?
Peter Gordon: Sometimes – we did on “Kiss Me Again”. But usually not – and Peter recorded much more with Arthur than I did.
Finally, some thoughts generally about the period in NYC when this music was made. Its seems to be a very special creative time. Did you recognize this?
Peter Gordon: We certainly didn’t spend much time reflecting on “These sure will be the good old days in the future.” There was , however, a sense of energy in that we all felt we had this purpose to make this music and art. And the NY economy was very depressed, so it was possible to live very cheaply and devote all ones time to music. We paid each other for gigs and sessions, but others have joked about how it was the same $50 which got handed back and forth among us. But there was a sense of mission. We felt that we were making music which needed to be made, even though we were constantly trying different things to figure out what exactly that was. Arthur and I also saw, in different ways, how certain ideas and concepts existed in seeming mutually exclusive genres, and we wished to break down the borders and allow for a more open musical discussion. This was, among other things, a very populist approach, trying to defy the social hierarchy which seemed to restrict music genres.
I love the utopia that Arthur created, sharing of ideas and experimentation, was this partly due to the challenging environment and also a desire to go against the grain?
Peter Gordon: Going against the grain stems not from a desire but rather is the result of adhering to one’s vision, regardless of the immediate response. For Arthur, the paradox is that experimentation, per se, was the norm for him, and that his embracing of popular forms and dance music was, in fact, his experimentation. This is what made it all so interesting.
One of our main reasons for starting the Killer Whale project was not just for the music to be heard live but also the fact through existing technology we could collaborate with you guys.
Peter Gordon: Thank you! And it does seem that time traveling might be possible.
What do you think Arthur would be up to these days? surely he would go crazy for the Jazzmutant pads?
Peter Gordon: The thing about Arthur is that you could never predict what he’d be up to. He’d probably go nuts with the availability of Protools, Logic, etc. On the other hand, I like to picture Arthur in a house near the beach in Maine, writing songs and symphonies and playing cello, just enjoying life.
Lastly can you recall something really funny about Arthur, there must be so many stories!
Peter Gordon: Well, some of the funniest stories I will never tell! At least not without having a few empty bottles on the table in front of us.
Joyce ‘Tell You (today)’ originally recorded by the late great Arthur Russell under the Loose Joints alias. Where and when was it recorded?
Joyce Bowden: About ‘Tell You Today’. It was the early 80′s, we recorded it at Battery Sound on one of the top floors (right across the street from the World Trade Center, so it might have been taken out when the WTF came down.) I remember waiting outside the door of the studio because the studio owner, Mark Friedman hadn’t shown up and there was a mix up regarding times. There was tension between Arthur and Mark around this and some financial issues. Arthur came in to where I was set up with the microphone and went over the melody and pointed out the changes in the song as the Mark Friedman was syncing up the 2″ tape. Arthur loved the sound of the rewind.
Did you know the song before you reached the session?
Joyce Bowden: I liked the song very much and felt like I could nestle into Arthur’s voice. We’d recently had a romantic encounter of the eternal kind, but didn’t know how or whether to try to resolve that. Not knowing what kind of love it was, but only knowing that it was love – seemed okay since he had a partner and so did I. I really liked Arthur and the room seemed lighted by kinetic energy. He told me to sing whatever I wanted to sing, so I harmonized with him on the verses and he wanted more in the instrumental sections so that’s when the “tell you” improv ended up happening. Arthur really liked the sound of it and told me to just keep going with that. We’d been working in rehearsal on the Flying Hearts songs, but this was only the first or second time Arthur had asked me to record with him, and that experience felt deeply alright. Thereafter, he was my mentor and friend.
Have you ever had this experience with music when the vibrations are moving faster and faster? this was the case then. It until it felt as if we would disappear completely, my head spun very fast that day and the world slowed down.
Was Steve D’Aquisto present?
Joyce Bowden: Steve D’Aquisto was out of town and spoken of but it was Ernie Brooks who was around as a friend and support to Arthur, he was the one who had introduced me in to the Flying Hearts. Loose Joints was a confluence of musicians that mostly had its genesis in the studio. We never performed this live. There were performances but it was mostly esoteric, formed around the sounds of the cello with drum beats and usually his own vocals. You could hear the influences he’d learned about the theory of Taala (tempo) at the Ali Akbar College of Music where he would combine beats in interesting ways.
What intriqued you about Arthur’s desire to blend buddhist thoughts, playful innuendo, fun ideas and pushing the boundaries?
Joyce Bowden: Arthur was in some ways already an enlightened person. The kind of discipline he had was lasting fun, and he did it on his own through a graceful dance-like process of repetition and practice. His music listening was assimilated into a conscious and intact preconscious framework and elements were taken apart from there, contemplated. He gave scope to the process of assimilation. His Buddhist practices which started in earnest at the time he was studying at the AACM in San Francisco continued quietly, and were embedded into the music through this process by the time he was finished with recording. He was undeniably unique. After hearing the Flying Hearts the world I knew changed, it was filled with such fresh sound ideas, and when other people heard it, I think they had to do a double take…. “whoa! what’s THIS?!”
Will there ever be someone like Arthur Russell or was he just too unique?
Joyce Bowden: To answer your question ‘has there been or will there ever be another Arthur’, I think that the next Arthur will take what Arthur gave and expand on it in ways we can’t imagine right now until it’s right in front of us. Then the world will be filled with new color and we will see it in sound.
Press Release
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We are 2 DJ's from London that like recording mixes and staying up late.
Dave likes 10p
crisps. Colin doesn't like worms.
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