Steven Hall is equal parts funny, spacey, and profound—maybe it’s ’cause of those joints he smokes before meetings. Speaking to the 69-year-old artist, who records as Nirosta Steel, was also an experience unlike any other I’ve had in my career: He was just as likely to pontificate on an ex-boyfriend’s unorthodox sexual technique as he was to explain different modes of Buddhist thought or talk about the trauma he still holds from surviving the AIDS crisis. He warned me, throughout our conversation, against nostalgia and fauxstalgia, although it’s lives like his that those words were made for.
It’s a frame of view not unlike that of My Skyscraper, Hall’s towering second album, released on the independent label Ulyssa. The 83-minute album is built upon the entirety of Hall’s vast, varied career. The record is an immense achievement, so why not liken it to one of the great innovations of human engineering? But wait—what’s that they say about skyscrapers? They’re all just architectural phalluses? Hall would probably be the first to tell you that. His opus is, after all, basically an album-length dick joke: 17 synth-pop and avant-folk songs about gay sex and partying that also happen to be some of the most sublime songs released this year.
Hall was born in Scotland in the ’50s and moved to Wilmington, Delaware, with his family in the early ’70s, where he quickly fell in with legendary poets like Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs. It was through Ginsberg that he met the downtown avant-garde legend Arthur Russell, who would go on to become one of his best friends and closest collaborators, a kindred spirit whose impact, Hall says, is still present in his work today. From there, it’s a blur of weed smoke and odd jobs and life-changing retreats, collaborations with Hong Kong pop stars and experimental theatre troupes, boyfriends in every other city.
Over the course of three phone conversations and email correspondence that spanned several months, Hall attempted to tell me the story of his career—which, of course, is just the story of his life, given how deeply intertwined art, sex, and friendship have been for him.
The following was taken from a phone conversation on July 15, 2026
Pitchfork: The album came out, and it seems like there was this explosion of admiration and support. I’m interested in how the past two weeks have been since you put out the record.
Nirosta Steel: It’s been a blur because, to use an English expression, we were gobsmacked by the whole thing. Three weeks ago I was an Uber driver, and I was semi-retired in terms of doing music because I had moved out here to the Midwest with my husband.
Arthur [Russell] had this idea that he would create a fountain of money that would just fall on his friends. So one of the things about being successful would be that you could help your friends out, particularly the ones who were dysfunctional. Arthur and I tried to champion people who are dysfunctional, because often the best musicians are the ones that are most difficult, and that might be applied to me sometimes. I mean, I was joking with Ernie Brooks, the bass player who’s going to be playing with me at Nightclub 101. I told him that once I had sent a promoter a list of all the musicians who don’t speak to me anymore. It was like 50 people. So that tells you what a bitch I can be, and I’m trying not to be so much of that now, and I try to be graceful and humble.
But at the same time, to accept responsibility for all this… I mean, you can’t say any other word than adoration. I have people contacting me saying I’ve changed their life, and it’s like, really? I mean, I could say that’s silly, but on the other hand, they expect me to be magnanimous and accept that feeling. And so, if they want to send me love, it’s my responsibility to accept it and to try to give it back as much as possible.
The best reaction I’ve had is some musicians have contacted me and said that when they listened to the record, they got inspired to do more music. That is more exciting and more gratifying than any so-called fame or money, because at my age, money means nothing. I have enough money to eat. I have a place to live. I have a really good husband who supports me. Anything else is extra. [The music was] not for everyone, but suddenly it was for everyone. I never considered, in terms of being commercial. I’ve been really lucky to be spoiled my whole life—I’m able to do exactly what I want to do and nothing else.
You left Scotland at 15, but I notice you haven’t lost your accent.
I went to a speech teacher, an elocution teacher, when I was a boy in Scotland to take the accent away, because we lived near Glasgow and we had a Glasgow accent. My parents wanted me to go to a private school and to do better than them. My mother grew up in the slums in Glasgow, in a family of 18. My father was middle class. He was an optician, but they had big ambitions for their children. So we went to a speech teacher two or three times a week to learn how to speak properly without the Glasgow accent, because the Glasgow accent was considered low class, and as you know, in Britain, everybody is placed by their accent, which is kind of a horrible thing, but it’s true.
When I came to America in high school, the kids always liked to ask me to say certain things because it was so funny to them. So, like, one phrase was “turbo”. They liked to see me say "turbo.” Eventually the accent became less and less.
To make My Skyscraper, you basically gave your entire archive to Ulyssa’s Eric Deines, and he kind of compiled it from that. I’m interested in what that experience has been like—maybe for years and years, you have an idea of what makes you good, what people like about you, and then suddenly, you have this person come in and see you from a whole different angle.
The best teachers are the ones that simply give you permission. [Eric] just simply said, “Give me a bunch of stuff.” It was kind of seamless. He just got it. He just understood what I was doing from the get-go, because they’re both artists, Eric and [Ulyssa co-founder] John. I think that gives them a wider appreciation of… they’re not just business guys, they have this creative life and Eric’s a great writer, so that really helped. The blurb he wrote was just great and it perfectly set off the music, I think. It gave people a way of getting into it.
The only criticism we’ve had so far—my husband is monitoring all this stuff on X—is that two tracks, “Boss Trix” and “Go For the Night,” are so well produced and so shiny that the other stuff seems kind of sketchy and more like demos. So one idea that has been presented is redoing some of the songs on My Skyscraper with more of a production thing going on, which I’m into, because I love doing different versions of my own songs or other people’s songs.
The other two tracks that were criticized were “Yhema,” because some people can’t get past that. Some people say they love it until they get to that track and then they stop listening, and other people jump in on X and defend that track and say, “Oh, you know, he’s really trying something!” I was shocked when Eric picked that track because I thought that was a bit far, you know, and then very pleased that he was into it.
This is kind of a basic question, but in every interview I read of yours, you mention a million places you’ve lived. Can you give me kind of a rundown of everywhere you’ve lived?
I’ve smoked so much weed over the years that it’s really hard to remember some whole areas of my life. That’s why the songs anchor me, in a certain way—I can remember some of those people and some of those places just from the songs, but I’ll try and give a quick breakdown of it.
’72, I arrived in America. My mother remarried. Wilmington, Delaware high school. Very liberal. They brought down poets from New York to teach workshops. I was qualified as a creative writing teacher in the high school district there, so I was teaching creative writing and poetry to high school kids as a high school kid myself. The other people in that program—it was a government program—were older professional writers, but somehow I lucked into it because the administrator recognized something about me that was different, and I was already writing poetry.
The poets that came down from New York thought that I was doing something interesting, so I sort of hit it off with one of the poets, Larry Fagin. I ended up going up to New York and visiting him and staying with him—straight guy, but totally friendly, as everyone [was] in those days. There were no issues about sexuality. John Giorno, the gay poet, one of my heroes and part of that William Burroughs circle, said that, in the ’80s, you could get a straight guy. It wasn’t a big deal, not only because things were relaxed, but because of the drugs that were available, particularly Quaaludes.
So yeah, when I was in high school, 16, 17, I started going up to New York, to the Lower East Side, to stay with Larry Fagin. That was in the so-called now-famous Poets Building, 437 East 12th. In that building, I was in this place that I dreamed about when I was a boy in Scotland. I always wanted to go to America. I’d watch Hollywood movies. I wanted to live in a Hollywood movie, I wanted to be in New York, see the skyline. That’s why my name is Nirosta Steel. The Chrysler Building is made of Nirosta Steel. The skyline of New York is exciting to me.
And so going up to visit this guy and staying with him, I’d go up for a weekend, and my parents were totally cool with it. In that building, Allen Ginsberg was upstairs. Rene Ricard lived in that building for a while, the Warhol superstar, who I also dated. Four or five different poets lived in that building as well. Richard Hell of Television lived in that building, and Arthur lived on the top floor. That’s literally how I met Arthur, because I was working with Allen. Even before that, just hanging out in the New York scene, meeting musicians, artists, dancers, and just being taken around and treated as an equal in New York… at that time I was 17, and they talked to me just like I was one of them. So there was a total freedom in terms of getting respect among what were my peers at that time. Of course, there was a lot of drugs, a lot of speed at first, then a lot of cocaine, and then a lot of crack.
Then I went to Naropa [Institute, famed Buddhist/Beat epicentre] in Colorado. I was like 19 at that time. I was staying with Allen Ginsberg and also studying with him, [as well as the work of] William Carlos Williams, and with William Burroughs. I took a class with William and when I got back to New York, I was hanging out with him. I used to go over to his place and get stoned with him. And the thing about William is, everyone thought he was this dark, moody monster, an alien. He was just a nice old English gentleman who wore a suit, and he was totally polite and respectful. And he did have a very dark side—his boyfriend, there was a very, very heavy S&M thing they had going, but socially, he was just this nice English gentleman. So it was funny to see him in private, because he was very sweet.
In New York, it was all about going out to gay clubs with Arthur and actually studying what was making people dance. There was a place on the West Side Highway—I think it was called the Cock Ring, I’d have to check on the name—but it was mostly Puerto Rican and Black guys, and we would go there because they had the newest and freshest dance music, and that’s where we discovered “Set It Off” by Strafe, and that started Arthur’s obsession with Walter Gibbons as a [DJ]. Walter Gibbons is the best, best disco mixer ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, and [he and Arthur] had this really deep connection when they were working together, before Walter Gibbons got sick and kind of went all religious.
I went to Hong Kong, first to work with a theater company that was 80% gay, and then ended up working with this big [gay] pop star, Anthony Wong Yiu-ming. He’s out now, but at that time, he couldn’t be out. He was like the David Bowie of Hong Kong. We did a song together, and he was part of that theater company. This would be in the late ’80s, probably. I’m a bit fuzzy about these dates.
The guy who did the sound for this theater company, which is called Zuni Icosahedron, he was doing sound for movies and TV commercials and doing very well at that time—the movie business was booming in Hong Kong, this is like, the Wong Kar-Wai period. And then the movie scene in Taiwan took off. The Japanese were investing a lot of money in the Taiwanese movie business. So he moved to Taiwan, and he said, “Why don’t you come to Taiwan? I’ve got a couple of jobs you could work on.” And Taiwanese guys are so hot. So I started going to Taiwan to work with him on TV commercials and movies, and we were doing so well.
I had just moved to Taiwan, and then I met Benny—“Boss Trix” is about Benny—and Benny and I had a very dramatic time together that resulted in that song. So, I was working on TV commercials. We were working on a TV commercial for Mitsubishi, and I was doing the sound. It was a really big-budget thing, and the director just kept on looking at me while they were setting up. And then he came over to me and said, “You look like Lawrence of Arabia. Would you like to be in this TV commercial?” So they fired the actor they had hired to be the lead in the commercial. He was really pissed. He had traveled like four hours to get there. They sent him back. They paid him, but they sent him back. So I did this TV commercial for Mitsubishi, and I did things like that. I was in a couple of movies. I played like, an FBI agent in a Taiwanese movie, and then I did a soundtrack for a [1993] Taiwanese movie called 18, by this great director called Ho Ping.
Next, we got jobs in Bangkok. Arriving in Bangkok—I mean, just to be in the hottest city in the world, surrounded by the hottest and friendliest and most mesmerizing guys in the world, it was just totally overwhelming. I met a guy in Thailand and ended up being really serious with [him]. He was going to Chulalongkorn University studying photography. So we dated, and we did music together—we had a band together called Crazy-a-Go-Go Boy, and he would scream on the stage, and I would be offstage singing. I would sing, sometimes, Thai pop songs.
So, I had an apartment in Bangkok, and that was my John-Lennon-in-L.A. time, because when I was younger, I did have a period where I got into Quaaludes and then coke, I had a wonderful time with coke. But living in Bangkok, I went just completely wild. I was hanging out with all the ladyboys. I was dating a guy who was a butch boy during the day and kind of like a gangster, and at night he turned into a girl, completely 100%, and that to me was so exciting. I had another guy I was dating who was a boy during the day, and at night he was in beauty contests as a girl, and then he would come to me after the beauty contest, all fabulous.
So living in Thailand taught me several things—it taught me how to be a Buddhist. In Thailand, in Buddhism, being real comes first. Your daily practice, your approach to people and animals, your playfulness. I incorporated [that] sense of playfulness because I was writing songs at that time. I was going out at night. I would go to the big nightclub there where everyone would go; I’d go earlier in the night to buy my E from the bouncer, who I was also in love with.
So yeah, going back and forth to Bangkok two or three times a year, staying as long as I could on my visa, two or three months, and then coming back to New York or working with Arthur’s Landing. And then I ended up back in New York again, mostly. Then I met my husband, who’s still on the sofa here listening. He was in art school—his MFA thesis was like a queer history thing about the piers, people having sex on the piers in the West Side in the ’80s. It’s funny that people are so nostalgic now about the ’80s. That has a lot to do with why people are liking me. There’s all these young guys who seem to be curious and nostalgic about the ’80s and the music and the things that were happening. Because a lot of them are asking me, like, “Tell me a story about the 80s.” That’s where they’re coming from.
Not just the ’80s, but that downtown New York scene, I think people really fetishize. There’s this desperation—the idea that nothing can be like that anymore. I know a lot of my friends have that attitude.
But I think also, I mean, I’m one of the survivors of that scene, because a lot of people didn’t survive. The drug use was so pervasive, and it was also linked a lot to being inspired and being excited. I’m not going to deny that. But in terms of romanticizing it and making it glamorous, it’s not quite accurate because there were a lot of casualties of that time. Not only from AIDS, but supremely from AIDS. We lost a whole generation of creative geniuses. Not only people that were in the arts and in music, but also all the closeted people that were in business, in government, who could have had input, you know, directly or indirectly.
I’ve been thinking about that. I used to think that most of the people who were dying and who eventually died were creative people who had very wild nightlife going on, and had no disposable income and had the freedom in the major cities. But there must be a whole legion of people who were not part of that scene, in the Midwest or in the South, who were still having an effect on society, even if it was indirect. The idea of a whole generation of gay guys who were just wiped out, and many of them were the most successful and creative because that was what gave them access to the sex that eventually killed them.
Yeah, I mean, [my life was] just decades of going back and forth between New York and mostly Hong Kong, but then Bangkok as well. Half of my life was over there. The other thing about visiting and living in different places was, I got an apartment in Hong Kong, then I got an apartment in Taipei, then I got an apartment in Bangkok. I didn’t want to be a tourist, and I didn’t want to be an expat because I saw in Hong Kong, it was really ugly, the behavior of the expats, the colonial sort of hangover, where the white people still acted like they owned the place. They effectively did, through monopolies on banking and telecommunications, which the Chinese gave back to Britain.
So, then, then New York, and then seven years ago, this guy who’s being quiet as a mouse on the sofa, we started dating. I did some music for his MFA project. Then we got really serious, and it just happened. Having a partner, I don’t think I could get this far if I didn’t have good supporting partners. I’ve been really lucky.
The following was taken from a phone conversation on July 23, 2026
Whatever you do next, do you want it to be from across your career, like My Skyscraper? Or do you want it to be all contemporary? Or a mixture?
Absolutely both. Because one idea that was floated even before My Skyscraper came out was that some of these songs could be redone in a more realized way, maybe a more ambitious way. Of course, my dream is to have a pop hit or a dance hit, and that seems like it’s almost happened with some of these tracks. And also the idea that I’ve [worked on] some of these songs for so many years that people are interested in the process… Like, “Oh, today I feel like doing it with a beat, or today I don’t.” I think people find that kind of interesting. I want to show the process as much as the product. I think my interest in the process is contagious in that way
It seems like a lot of people have been hitting you up asking to collaborate since My Skyscraper blew up, and from the sounds of it you’re saying yes to a lot of them. How do you kind of parse all this attention?
Well, I’m getting guidance because before this all happened, I hadn’t really been listening to much music other than my own, or maybe classical music. I don’t listen to music very much. I heard that Bob Dylan only listens to himself, so that made me feel better because most of the time I’m just… you only have so much listening time before your ears get tired, especially if you’re working. That time is sort of magical to me, so I have to preserve how much of it I do.
Lately, they’ve been throwing things at me for opening acts, and also, would you like to work with this guy? This guy’s really cool! It’s like a crash course in what’s happening with music. And what’s fun is that some of these young guys I’ve been listening to are doing really great things with production. I think that probably, in some way, Arthur is an influence on that, because the ones that relate to me probably already know Arthur’s work as well. There’s a certain playfulness in the production and a boldness, which I like.
I’m trying to keep a sense of humor about it, but I thought this [success] was going to happen when I was 20, when I was working with Arthur and people around us were turning into big stars overnight. Sire was in the background. Arthur wouldn’t introduce me to Seymour Stein because he was so afraid Seymour Stein would get a crush on me and take me away from him and sign me and then forget about Arthur. So Arthur orchestrated [it] so I would never be in the same room with Seymour Stein. Arthur had this—I mean, everyone had this very competitive edge at that time, really cutthroat because there was money to be had, and fame, and it was right there. [Labels were] going to these clubs and looking for people actively, especially at places like CBGB. Several of the people that were playing at CBGB—like Talking Heads, the Ramones—they really made it because someone saw them there. That was an interesting time.
It’s interesting that Arthur was scared you would get taken away from him. Obviously he’s become this very legendary figure, especially for a lot of young people, through books, documentaries, the music itself, and a lot has been written about him. I’m interested in whether there’s a side of him you knew that you feel maybe isn’t as widely understood now, in terms of what his legacy has become.
Well, first of all, he was one of the funniest guys I’d ever met. There’s only a few guys I’ve met that have been actually naturally really funny. That was kind of a weapon for him, because he was shy. With humor, he could get through to people. And also, we were basically horny all the time, and that was the focus of even our songwriting, because we were also trying to find ways of putting dirty jokes into the songs. I mean, we thought [Arthur’s song] “Is It All Over My Face?” was completely hilarious. You know, to have cum on your face and to make that into a hit song. We thought that was just a blast. So, keeping things light. What was maybe in the back of our minds was more, in Arthur’s case, it was more religious. In my case, it was more spiritual, but not necessarily religious. So we shared that in the back of our minds. But in the front of our minds, it was very playful and very childish.
Did you mention the other day that you and Arthur dated?
No. The first time I met him, when we were introduced by Allen Ginsberg, I went up to [Arthur’s] room, and he asked me to have sex with him. I said ’No, thank you.’ He wasn’t my type. And my boyfriend was literally two blocks down 12th Street. And after that, we knew each other socially. But even though things were pretty easygoing in those days, it just didn’t happen. And then immediately, he was graceful about it. He just accepted and [said] “OK, well, let’s do some music,” because he knew I was doing music with Allen at that point.
That’s when he played me “Don’t Forget About Me.” From that moment on, we were working together. I played guitar a little bit for him, and he said. “That’s what I’m looking for,” because the way I played guitar was very straightforward. He wanted someone who could play country music, and I was coming from playing folk music. The way we played those songs was really country at that point, because it was very plain and straightforward. His way of playing the guitar and his way of singing was very plain and straightforward. So my role was to sort of augment that with funky elements because I was listening to funk music constantly at that time, and trying to find a way of looking for the groove and maintaining the energy of the groove as a really serious endeavor.
Are sex and sexuality very intertwined with creativity for you?
Like, maybe 5,000%? I mean, there’s nothing else—obviously that’s part of my subject matter. I don’t want it to be nostalgia. I just want it to be more like history: The idea of like… What did it feel like to be in a situation with basically no responsibility, before things got really heavy, before the AIDS thing destroyed everything? At a point where everything was OK, [when] you could sleep with a straight guy, and it wasn’t a big deal?
On top of that, the music that was being written was often fueled by cocaine, either in the listener or in the people producing it. There was this tremendous sparkling production in the music that was being done, especially in things like ABBA. To hear ABBA at the Ice Palace when everybody was on Quaaludes and coke, it was beyond ecstasy. It was almost like an out-of-body experience where the excitement is palpable, almost like a visceral thing, and then to have this music providing this accompaniment for this kind of activity… I can understand why people see that as a sublime thing.
But then you go home, you know? That’s the point that’s really interesting—what happens at dawn, what’s happening in your bed, and what music you play when you’re really high but you don’t want to dance anymore, but you still want to move. I think like, “Boss Trix” and “Go For The Night” really make it to that intersection,
Being someone who sees sex as so intertwined with creativity, how did the AIDS crisis change that?
Well, when the AIDS thing broke, I was dating a medical student, and I lived in the Caribbean in a medical school on Montserrat Island. So he taught me from the very beginning how to be safe, so I was practicing being safe even before [AIDS], just on the basis of avoiding any kind of disease. I feel extremely lucky to be alive. Once you survive a crisis like that—and also I went through some surgery where I almost died when I was around 60—you kind of can’t take things too seriously anymore. You have to be more in the moment.
The AIDS crisis was simply terrifying. People don’t realize that. At the beginning, we had no idea what was happening, and also how [you got] it. At one point, people thought it was from mosquitoes. How do you avoid that? You know, it was really terrifying. Even when I went to visit Arthur when he was sick, I was terrified, but Allen Ginsberg was living downstairs, and he would go up and see Arthur every day and just sit with him. When I asked Allen what to do, he said, “Just be there.”
That fear never really completely went away. It clouded everything after that, especially for the gay men who were as active as I was—there was no reason not to be at that point, nothing stopping us, nothing in our way, especially in places like New York. Major cultural centers where everything was OK, everything was allowed, and nightlife was basically endless. To have that taken away is like, the rug is ripped out from under you, socially as well as culturally, because a lot of the brightest people in the queer world who were doing amazing things were just gone. There was a palpable sense of everything crumbling around you in terms of the culture, and even social interaction became problematic. But Arthur, even when he was sick, he would go out to a nightclub. He loved this [LaTour] song “People Are Still Having Sex,” so we would listen to that and kind of chuckle, because you can’t really stop.
There have been so many films made about downtown NYC, the beats, Ginsberg, that kind of thing. I’m interested in how you feel when you see that stuff—whether it reminds you of the time, or just feels like a total fantasy of what you experienced.
I haven’t seen any of them. I don’t really have any interest in them. It’s kind of a fantasy that’s projected on top of what was actually happening. This idea of nostalgia for a period that you never lived through, to me, is very amusing, because you think, “Oh, it would be really cool to be in that time.” No, it wasn’t. It was really terrifying, and before it was terrifying, it was really dangerous. You can have this fantasy about what it was like, and you can feel that, and think you’re reliving that through the music. But the music that happened through those times is despite what was going on, really, and in some ways is the best part of [it.]
I mean, the art that came out of that time—Warhol’s work is just sublime, you know. But it was surrounded by casualties, because Warhol, like me, was totally ruthless about what he wanted, and he didn’t care who the casualties were, particularly the people around him who were on speed. The people around Warhol who were on speed, he was encouraging it, and he certainly wasn’t stopping it. He was just observing it and taking advantage of it by photographing them and filming them. If they ended up overdosing, to him that was just part of the glamour of the whole thing. It’s like with Michael Jackson—how do you compare his life to his music? Warhol was a total monster, and he destroyed people that were around him who were fabulous geniuses but didn’t really have any direction. He knew how to package things. He was the first real superstar genius of media, in a way that Trump is as well.
But you also look at, from those times, which music holds up, which art holds up. A lot of the pop art holds up because it really had a lot of passion behind it, for recognizing what was exciting in the ordinary, like in a Coke can. Andy went on and on about how beautiful the Coke can was, and how special it was because it was democratic, because everyone could have the same Coke can. In terms of philosophy, that’s really deep, and also the idea of recognizing that industrial design and graphic design were not only just as interesting and valuable as so-called formal art, but in some ways they were more exciting because they were connecting with people in a visceral way… Andy was a genius to realize that and to flip it around and say, “OK, let’s put that commercial world into the art world, and to give it a value that it never had.”
At that time, what Arthur and me were doing the same thing with very ordinary ways of speaking and very ordinary observations that we saw just walking around the East Village and trying to capture those inflections in what you were singing. Trying to make singing as close to talking.
Last time we spoke, you said you’d met five geniuses in your life. Who are they?
Chögyam Trungpa, my Buddhist teacher. Really, really interesting guy and a real character, but he represents the other side of Buddhism, which is the idea of going to talk about total freedom as a teacher. You have to give total permission because you cannot develop total freedom without that permission, and so the idea of a teacher is not one that just teaches. You can teach yourself. You can study if you know. Even if you want to go as far as to study the scriptures in Tibetan, you can go that far. But if you don’t have the permission to transcend that, then you’re not getting anywhere. That brings in my criticism of the Dalai Lama—the Dalai Lama was asked about homosexuality. He’s the leader of my so-called church, and his answer was, “It’s perfectly OK for men to be in love, but not to have sex.” So where do we go from there? You know, my teacher Chögyam Trungpa, his tradition is what’s called “crazy wisdom.” The idea is that there’s wisdom in craziness, and it’s not this subtle, sophisticated approach to Buddhism, where it’s a rarefied thing, and it’s mystical, and it’s ancient. It’s this idea of: What are you doing today? And how do you deal with it today? Let’s be practical.
Allen Ginsberg—as much [for] his own talent as a writer, [as] his ability to see talent in other people and to nurture it and to develop it and to collaborate. He was getting inspiration from other guys like Kerouac, but that was part of it—really learning from the people around him and also being able to help them out.
Arthur definitely. Robert Wilson, absolutely. I mean, Einstein on the Beach was a revelation. The music of Philip Glass and Steve Reich—they’re both geniuses. My poetry teacher at Columbia, Kenneth Koch, he was a great poet. He really helped me in terms of my writing, my direction and approach, and again a sense of playfulness. I think that’s his influence. I mean, Joni Mitchell. There’s things that Joni Mitchell does which are just mind-bending in terms of her approach to composition and her harmonies. A huge influence on me. Her guitar playing, huge influence on me. I’m trying to think of people I’m jealous of, and producers I think are geniuses.
Do you ever consider yourself a genius, or have you ever?
One quality of geniuses is that they can’t help themselves. Arthur couldn’t stop writing music, and he couldn’t stop thinking about ideas. He couldn’t stop making jokes. He couldn’t stop playing the cello. He just couldn’t help it. That’s why we’re left with so much stuff from such a short period of time. Imagine what would happen if he had kept going. It’d be like, cathedrals full of stuff.
It’s not for me to say. I think I’m pretty smart. I think I do have some [genius qualities] because of my unique history and because of the training I’ve had in a wide variety of disciplines. It’s not only music. I’ve now studied dance and I studied architecture, I’ve done these other things that inform what I do. It’s not only one focus, it’s kind of bringing things together. But no, I think I have to be demure about that. That would be for other people to say. But I wouldn’t mind it, I wouldn’t object to it. But I don’t know if I’m at that point yet. Maybe a few more years.
The following was taken from email correspondence at the end of July.
Can you tell me about Blood Orange sampling you on “Saint”? What did you think of that sample, and what do you think of him, as someone who basically self-identifies as an Arthur acolyte?
I found out about the sample a couple of years ago by doing a Google search for samples of my work—I hadn’t heard of him, but I liked the way the sample was folded into his track. I understand now he’s an Arthur Russell devotee and has used a sample of Arthur’s previously. Could be fun to work together.
Have you heard the new Madonna album? Maybe not, since you try to save space for your own music in your brain—I’m just interested because two songs ("Danceteria" and "LES Girl") are about that same downtown scene/milieu, and so I wondered what you thought of her musical documentation of that time. Did you ever interact with her?
I watched The Queen’s Grindr Times Square live show, and I loved it—I hadn’t been following her stuff for a while, so I was curious to hear the new tracks. “Danceteria” is simply fabulous—the production is sparkling, and the beat is muy infectious as it should be. Just like another superstar, Mick Jagger, her voice not only has held up, but sounds better than ever. I’m taken back to the Ice Palace after the Quaalude hits: the lights are blinding, and the sweat of a hundred gyrating queens hits you like a shared Rush bottle!
History note: Jim Fourrat (now gay historian/activist who is still around) was the booker for Danceteria at that time—he booked both Madonna and Arthur Russell and was the first midtown booker to support Arthur. I used to go there regularly because it was a hot trendy scene. Jim later became the doorman for the Palladium nightclub; then he went on to do A&R for Atlantic. He interviewed me for Atlantic and asked me what I wanted to do. I said, “I want to be the male Sade!” but he didn’t convince the bosses to sign me.
The following was taken from a phone conversation on September 30, 2026, after Hall’s public statement about following AI accounts on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, also known as Red Note. Hall’s mother had just died; she was 104.
Hi, Steven. I’m really sorry to hear about your mum.
Oh, thank you. It’s kind of bittersweet. I was in Orlando two weeks ago because I knew she wasn’t doing well, and so I went to kind of say goodbye. I played My Skyscraper for her. She listened to it on headphones, and her favourite track was “Boss Trix”—she listened to it and said, “Is that you singing?” because she had only really heard me playing next to her. I used to visit her often in Orlando, so we’d sit on the patio, and I’d be smoking weed—she kind of liked the smell—and then I would play the guitar and sing for her. She hadn’t really heard me on a record. She said, “Your voice is amazing.” The other track that she liked was “My Name Is Night.” She said, “This one has a really good beat.”
She was my biggest fan, so she was really thrilled to find out, you know, all the craziness that has been happening with me, because she was sure that it was going to happen. She thought it was a natural thing, and she used to say, “Can’t I call up the radio stations and tell them to play your songs?” And also she literally supported me. She used to give me money to just keep doing my music so I wouldn’t have to work, basically, and she did that for years, because her idea was, rather than leaving money in inheritance, to actually take care of her kids and help them while she was around. I was really lucky in that way.
I’m going to Orlando tomorrow. My booking agents were told that their priority was to get me a gig in Orlando so that my mother could go, because she wasn’t doing well, so they did that very quickly. I’m playing there on the fifth, and I’ll be singing her favourite songs. It’s going to be very kind of bittersweet, kind of a celebration. And the promoters said there’s no pressure if I wanted to cancel, but I really want to do it now, in her honor.
There was some controversy around accounts you followed on a Chinese social media platform the other week. You’ve kind of met your public now—you talked about the adoration you felt when the album came out, and this was a different kind of public scrutiny. I’m interested in what you’re learning about yourself as a public figure, about navigating that world.
It was startling because all the things that were happening on the internet, it’s like another world. It was startling because seeing it physically, not only hearing the reaction but literally feeling it… The last [Nirosta Steel show] at [Night Club] 101, the guitars and the bass suddenly went out of tune, and I was like, "What is going on?” Because we didn’t have that problem in the earlier concerts. It was because of the sweat in the room, because there were so many people and it was so crowded—the heat in the room was causing the guitars and the bass to go out of tune. I’ve never had that happen before.
Another thing was, when I would walk through the crowd to get to the stage at the beginning of the show, people were touching me, and that was kind of strange, in a sweet way—it was encouraging, patting me on the shoulder or saying, “Have a good show,” whatever. And then the other thing was that my friends who were in the audience told me that people in the audience were making out, not only dancing, but actually making out.
The first song that I did was “Jovi Song,” to sort of quiet people down and get their attention. A couple of women came up and told that they were crying during that song. These physical reactions were kind of startling to me, because I had received a lot of goodwill through Instagram or whatever, but actually to feel it physically was really different, and that took a bit of adjustment.
The other thing was really cute guys wanting to take their picture with me—that’s a nice thing, too, and also I found I have a lot of trans fans, which is really beautiful. Maybe that’s the most exciting part, because they feel some connection to, maybe the openness in my music, and also maybe my personality that’s coming through in interviews. That was the most exciting part, to have the trans fans who were coming up to me afterwards and wanted me to sign things. And then I really realized I was a bona fide pop star when a girl asked me to sign her iPhone. That was a “wow” moment for me. I’m just trying to take it all in stride.
And then, obviously, the more negative reactions to your following AI accounts on this Chinese social media network—How did you deal with that more negative scrutiny?
Well, I had to take it seriously on the one hand, because it seemed like at one point that things might evaporate in terms of this amazing career that I was about to have, but I was also OK with that, and I think my husband was OK with that, because he was very, very upset about all of it. He wanted to engage—he’s a lawyer.
One side is serious, but another side is not really real. I thought eventually it would just disappear, which is kind of what happened. As I said, my husband was really upset, more upset than I was, because I knew there was really nothing to it in terms of what I did or what I didn’t do. I wasn’t guilty of anything, and I don’t think I’d really done anything wrong. And one of my drummer friends said, “What are you worried about? The music is unstoppable.” That was his statement about it.
My attitude was to put my head down and just concentrate on the music, and just to be myself, because that’s what people like. And they would see that that’s not really part of me. That’s not really something that I would encourage or something that I’m into. I don’t want to dismiss it because it’s a serious thing, but it was kind of mysterious to me, and it remains kind of mysterious. The internet can be a very toxic place, [but] I received so much support from friends and fans and people in the business. But it was very interesting, because as much as I became instantly famous overnight, I could become instantly [not famous] overnight as well. It’s interesting to see how things can change in that way.
One thing I understand, which I didn’t understand before, is how some pop stars want to step away from social media, or even step away from performing, because it’s so exhausting. Because the emotions that are being directed towards you are real, whether good or bad. So you have to take responsibility for those reactions.
You told me a couple of weeks ago that you try to be anti-nostalgia. But I’m interested in what it felt like returning to the East Village, playing for these crowds of young people at this underground experimental hotspot that also used to be an underground experimental hotspot [as the Pyramid Club] as well. I’m sure there were a lot of different layers of memory and nostalgia and everything swirling together.
The most interesting part is that I’ve had several boyfriends appear from the past, totally out of the blue. Four of my old boyfriends appeared because of what has happened to me. They rediscovered me, and an old friend from Columbia College, who I used to have a crush on, who’s now married with two kids. One friend came to the concert, and I hadn’t seen him for like 40 years—I used to date him when I was in university. And then my ex, Johnny, I was with him for 15 years. He was my first serious boyfriend, and I was living with him on 12th Street when Arthur was two blocks down. He didn’t know, but the first concert on the last night was dedicated to him. I sang songs that were written about him, and also the songs I wrote with Arthur were during the time I was with him. So I sprung it on him, but he was very touched. He’s still good friends with me.
And then another Afghani boyfriend appeared out of the blue as well, and another boyfriend who’s now in San Francisco appeared, who I dated even before I was in university. So that aspect of it, in terms of nostalgia, has been very sweet, because these people would never have appeared to me otherwise, you know.
In terms of nostalgia about the period, New York Magazine, they had me walk around the different places I used to visit when I lived there [for a profile,] so that was very strange. The East Village is just full of young, rich people who are all very stylish and very sexy, and even Arthur’s building has two very chi-chi stores in it, so that was kind of surreal. But I still don’t really have nostalgia for it at all.
Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified the name of the West Side Highway bar Nirosta Steel went with Arthur Russell.