Scott Walker part 1

Today we'll be dealing with a very elusive artist. I mean, there are medieval hermits whose lives are better documented than Scott Walker’s. But once upon a time he led Britain’s biggest boy band, was the sexiest, most charismatic star of his generation, and arguably the greatest white vocalist in Pop history. Not only that, he was so moody and strange a whole mythology grew up around him. He walked away from fame when he could have become the new Sinatra. He was weirder than David Bowie, and too avant garde for Brian Eno. He’s still alive today, and still making (inspired but inscrutable) albums, but that’s as much as anyone knows for sure. It’s rumoured he likes to ride a bicycle to his local pub and play a game of darts. He’s so mysterious that he makes Greta Garbo look like Kim Kardashian.

Scott Walker was born Noel Scott Engel in 1943, in Hamilton, Ohio, 8 years and a day after Elvis Presley. Born as the tide of WWII had yet to definitely turn, meant that his father Noel Walter Engel (a naval lieutenant stationed in the Pacific) was away from home. Little Noel and his mother Elizabeth (Betty) Marie (née Fortier), a lively and ambitious woman from Montreal, Canada, had to stay with his paternal grandparents. His grandfather was a semi-pro musician. His ancestors emigrated from Bavaria, Germany to Cincinatti in the 19th century. They had been schooled to the strict Old Testament teaching of the Zion Lutheran Church, and some of the descendants still followed these austere rules.

On Noel Sr.'s honourable discharge from the US Navy at the end of WWII, adjustment to civilian life was compounded by difficulties in a marriage he'd hardly known. While Noel Jr. (or Scotty, as he increasingly came to be known) would be doted by his mother, she could do little to stop him witnessing the trauma of a marital relationship in breakdown.

"I lived in a nice home - but things were always tense," Scott later said. "It was a very bad time for me. I held it against dad - which I shouldn't have... But it had been a violent situation between mum and dad."

His parent would divorce in 1949, when Scott was 6 years old. After many homes in many different States, Scott and his mother would eventually settle in California, in the late 50s. He was interested in both music and performance and would spend time as a child actor and singer. He was championed by singer and TV host Eddie Fisher (Carrie's father), and he was briefly marketed as a teen idol. Here are some of his songs from that era.

Here's his first record, When Is A Boy A Man?, from 1957. He was 14 at the time.

Here's Too Young (1959):

Here's Anything Will Do (1961):

And here's Devil Surfer (1963):

In 1961, after playing with The Routers, he met guitarist and singer John Maus, who was already using the stage name John Walker as a fake ID to enable him to perform in clubs while under age. At first they formed a new band, Judy and the Gents, backing Walker's sister Judy Maus, before joining with other musicians to tour as The Surfaris (although they did not play on the Surfaris' records). In early 1964, Scott and John Walker began working together as The Walker Brothers, later in the year linking up with drummer Gary Leeds.

They played the beatnik clubs on Sunset Strip, Los Angeles, where they were daringly shaggy when the white boy look was still clean-cut like The Beach Boys. The hottest producer in LA was Phil Spector, and the Walkers got his arranger Jack Nitzsche to record them in the maestro’s resounding style. Drums, guitars, pianos: there were three of everything, overdubbed and echoed, with a 38-piece orchestra on top. Their first single, with John on lead vocals, Pretty Girls Everywhere, flopped.

Officially John was the lead singer, but Nitzsche realized that Scott’s rich baritone was the stronger instrument, and put him at the front. The result was a huge, trembling ballad called Love Her, and Scott sang it in the manner of a man with a very deep voice on his way to the scaffold. It was like this: another man has won your girl’s heart; “Love her,” you tell him, noble and brave in the depths of your desolation. “Love her for me.” And it went out to radio stations and it died a lousy death.

But who cared? The Brothers were already packing their suitcases for another place. Gary might not sing so well, but he was full of talk about England, the home of The Beatles. He’d toured there as the drummer in P.J. Proby’s band and suggested the Walkers should grab a piece of the action. It was a truly inspired idea. Not only was Swinging London the world’s most happening town, it was far away from the Vietnam conscription board. So the boys left golden California for a dingy flat in Kensington in the middle of a British winter. Though miserable at first, they quickly clicked with Harold Wilson’s Britain. Supposedly sporting the longest hair in London, they were the first American group to look right, which in 1965 meant looking British. Love Her, which had flopped in the US, became a spring hit (#20) over here. They met a gifted English producer called Johnny Franz, who had made great, heart-stopping epics with Dusty Springfield. Now he’d do the same for them.

The Walker Brothers' next release, Make It Easy on Yourself, a Bacharach/David ballad, swept to #1 on the UK Singles Chart (#16 on the US charts) on release in August 1965. They were finally on the way to the top.

After that the hits just kept on coming. Minor-key, symphonic melodramas were their thing; Scott’s voice was a marvel of haunted gothic grandeur. Franz had copped the format of Spector’s work for The Righteous Brothers, especially You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling, and he employed a brilliant British arranger Ivor Raymonde.

Their follow-up, My Ship Is Coming In, first a song for the American soul singer Jimmy Radcliffe, also hit it big (#3, UK):

Then came the biggest biggie of them all, The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Any More. This song was the definitive tragic masterpiece of its era: “Loneliness,” it rumbled, “is the cloak you wear…” It was on the jukebox of the Blind Beggar pub when Reggie Kray shot one of his enemies dead. “The sun wasn’t gonna shine for him any more,” joked Reg afterwards. The song was their second #1 in the UK in early 1966, and made #2 in Canada, #4 in Denmark, #5 in Ireland, #6 in Norway, #9 in the Netherlands, #13 in the US, and #15 in Belgium.

Their first album, Take It Easy with the Walker Brothers, which was released in November 1965 was also a big hit, peaking at #3 in the UK and at #7 in Germany. Except for the singles, it also contained some great cover versions. First there was Dylan's Love Minus Zero/No Limit:

I Don't Want to Hear It Anymore was a haunting cover of a beautiful Randy Newman song:

The album also contained a song penned by Scott himself: You're All Around Me was co-written by Scott and Lesley Duncan, who would later write the sublime Love Song, made famous in the 70s by Elton John.

Shortly thereafter their fanclub grew to contain more members than the official fan club of the Beatles. And Scott realised he had escaped the VietCong for something almost as terrifying: an army of young females who wanted him very, very badly. All over Britain there was Walkermania, and scenes of real hysteria. At the provincial Gaumonts they were bombarded with teddy bears, because one Brother was said to like them. Burly men with peaked caps and moustaches joined battle with palpitating, lust-maddened teenagers – and lost. There is the touching story of a 14-year-old girl in Portsmouth who was knocked down by the group’s getaway car. Regaining consciousness she asked the ambulance men, anxiously, if Scott was OK. In northern Odeons schoolgirls fainted. In West Country ballrooms the chicks were possessed.

But as for Scott – well, there were already signs that Scott was going off-message. He just wasn’t acting like a 1965 pop star. For a start his vocal heroes were of the Sinatra generation, and he was suss enough to understand that cabaret had truly heavy origins in European culture. Whatever world Freddie & The Dreamers inhabited, he was strictly elsewhere. Nor was he in sync with his brother Walkers: when John got a Lamborghini, Scott acquired a cheap army surplus jeep. Now there were whispered tales of chronic stage fright, of missed gigs and whole long days of brooding silence. He favoured gloomy films like The Seventh Seal, and weird European authors like Jean Genet. He shunned the groupies for brainier broads with paperbacks of Sartre. He kept his curtains drawn and was rumoured to play Mozart on the stereogram. He liked a Scotch-and-Coke, but loved a dozen of them even more, and he went on lonely pub crawls down the Kings Road. He got locked up one night for drunkenness. Basically Scott was adrift, and often wore disguise. Every few weeks he’d move flats to escape the fans.

Their follow-up, (Baby) You Don't Have to Tell Me, released in July 1966, was a lesser hit (UK, #13):

By the end of 1965 Scott Walker was looking exhausted. He’d done it all. In only six months he’d become a household name. For better or worse, the experience would shape the rest of his life. He seemed weighed down by the sorrows of a hundred lifetimes. And he was just 22 years old.

Then in August 1966 came news of a suicide attempt: dragged from a gas-filled flat near Regents Park, Scott was rushed to hospital. Soon afterwards he was safely recovered and paid a visit to Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in Soho. A member of The Hollies leaned over and – just for a laugh – offered him a shilling for the gas meter.

Their next single, as well as their second album, came out also in August 1966. The single, Another Tear Falls, only made #12 in the UK, although it was another classy Bacharach/David ballad:

The album however was a hit, making #3 in the UK and #8 in Germany. It contained beautiful songs such as In My Room:

Scott's composition Saturday's Child contains the lyrics "The in-crowd gay young faces, have been washed away by too many through the night and day":

There was also the song that would later be popularized by the Carpenters, Hurting Each Other:

... The Leiber/Stoller composition Where's the Girl:

The closing track was a remarkable Tom Springfield (Dusty's brother) composition, No Sad Songs for Me:

Scott Walker recoiled from stardom like a vampire in the sunlight. He felt surrounded by bad men who stole his money and silly young girls who stole his soul. In late ’66 he went to stay in a monastery in the Isle of Wight, but he had to bale out when the teenyboppers turned up outside. Yet a kindly monk gave him a key to the monastery, and in old pin-up shots you can see him wearing it around his neck. The music biz, he announced, “is a big, phoney mess.” It was the point when everyone else was turning psychedelic, but Scott despised that trip as well. Used to peering into the soul’s black abyss, he had no time for blissed-out hippy gigglers. (Even today, it’s reported, he still “sees red” when you mention Glastonbury.)

The Walkers’ time was almost over. When they toured with Jimi Hendrix they watched him from the wings and knew that their style was already obsolete. Scott and John were getting on each other’s nerves as well. The hits got smaller until you could hardly see them and, in May 1967 at the Tooting Granada, the group announced they were splitting up. In Baker Street some girls staged a “protest march”, which was a very 1967 thing to do, but the world was already forgetting The Walker Brothers. And the money? Well, said Scott, “there were the bills for suits that got torn every night we played, hotel bills, big drinks bills and entertainment bills. We came out with no money.”

Before they separated however, they released a few stand alone singles that were medium-sized hits and a satisfying third album. Deadlier Than the Male was co-written by Scott and their producer Johnny Franz and although it was the theme song for a spy movie of the same name starring Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina in 1967, it only made #32 in the UK:

The B-side to Deadlier Than the Male, Archangel, written exclusively by Scott, was one of the best songs The Walker Brothers ever recorded. It heralded the Scott Walker solo style: grandiose in scale, epic in ambition. That pipe organ was recorded by producer Johnny Franz at the Odeon in Leicester Square. My God, it sounds big! It's playing a Bach-like motif, months before Procol Harum had a go on A Whiter Shade of Pale. And here's Scott's voice, alone: "Silence …" Like many of his songs from the 60s, Archangel nods to the British kitchen-sink aesthetic and the chance of escaping the humdrum.

Stay with Me Baby, co-written by Jerry Ragovoy and George David Weiss, and first recorded by Lorraine Ellison, only managed to reach #26 in the UK:

You honestly should hear Lorraine Ellison though. She rips the song up and makes a new suit out of it:

Their final single was a cover of the Ronettes' classic Walking in the Rain. It only managed to reach #26 (again) in the UK:

Unfortunately for them, in the mid-to-late 60s the audience didn't think highly of covers: they should have put out more original compositions. There were five of those in their third album, Images (1967), three by Scott and two by John. The album peaked at #6 in the UK and at #23 in Germany. The best of Scott's compositions on this album was Orpheus:

... Just as good was Genevieve:

John contributed a very good song, I Can't Let It Happen to You:

There were also two Michel Legrand compositions. First, here's Once Upon a Summertime:

Then there was I Will Wait for You, the Oscar-nominated theme from the great movie The Umbrellas of Cherbourg:

Next, we'll present Scott Walker's long and fruitful career after the breakup, which included a brief reunion of the group, as well as a radical change of musical direction for Scott. Till then!