KARL WALLINGER
19 OCTOBER 1957 – 10 MARCH 2024
“KARL WAS OVERFLOWING WITH WONDERFUL MUSICAL IDEAS THAT BLEW US ALL AWAY” PETER GABRIEL
Karl Wallinger, the multi-talented singer-songwriter famed for his work with World Party and The Waterboys, died on 10 March at the age of 66. Leading the tributes on social media was
The Waterboys frontman, Mike Scott, who wrote: “Travel on well my old friend. You are one of the finest musicians I’ve ever known.”
Born in Prestatyn in North Wales, Wallinger showed musical promise from an early age and was an avid listener of The Beatles,
The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan and The Kinks. Classically trained to play the piano and oboe as a youngster, he developed his musical skills at Charterhouse public school in Surrey after gaining a scholarship from Eton College.
After heading to London to pursue a career in music, he was briefly the musical director of the The Rocky Horror Picture Show, before joining The Waterboys in 1983.
Hired to play keyboards, he debuted on the band’s second album A Pagan Place in
1984. Impressed by his multi-instrumental and production skills in the studio, Mike Scott utilised Wallinger’s talents to great effect on the band’s landmark third LP, This Is The Sea, featuring the hit single The Whole Of The Moon.
Aware that his own creative ambitions would inevitably conflict with that of Scott’s, Wallinger decided to leave the band in 1985 and concentrate on his own music career.
Working as World Party, he scored Top 40 hits with Put The Message In The Box, Is It Like Today? All I Gave and Beautiful Dream, and released five studio LPs including Bang!, which reached No.2 on the UK Albums Chart in 1993.
In 1997, She’s The One, from World Party’s fourth release Egyptology, won an Ivor Novello Award and, two years later, Robbie Williams’ cover version would top the UK Singles Chart.
Wallinger suffered a brain aneurysm that nearly claimed his life in 2001. Forced to stop performing for five years after undergoing surgery, he later returned to touring when he’d relearned how to speak and play instruments.
Talking with theartsdesk.com in 2012, he revealed how he wanted to make good use of his time and that he’d become more “philosophical about the nature of existence”. He added:
“What makes you happy can be really simplified, because just being around is pretty good after that kind of thing. It makes you more down to earth in a way, which is good, although I never felt like I wanted to rule the world.”
While World Party would never make another album after 2000’s Dumbing Up, Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records did release Big Blue Ball in 2008. The result of a collaboration between Gabriel and Wallinger during the summers of 1991, 1992 and 1995, the project also featured guest artists including Sinéad O’Connor, with whom Wallinger was familiar having worked on her 1987 debut The Lion And The Cobra as well as the first two World Party LPs Private Revolution in 1987 and 1990’s Goodbye Jumbo.
Responding to the news of Wallinger’s passing, Gabriel posted on social media: “Shocked and saddened to learn we no longer have Karl Wallinger with us. I had admired his work from afar, but it was when we did a Real World Recording Week together that I had the most creative and fun week I have ever had in the studio. Karl was overflowing with wonderful musical ideas that blew us all away, all delivered with terrible jokes that had us laughing uncontrollably all day and night.” “He was such a gifted, natural writer and player, it was a tap that he could turn on at will, effortlessly,” the statement continued. “Like many a great comic and many great musicians, melancholy was strong in the mix, but his charm, humility, intelligence, and razor-sharp wit made him great company. Karl was an abundant talent and we have been given extraordinary music and memories from this extraordinary man.”
Wallinger is survived by his wife, Suzie
Zamit, their son, Louis, daughter, Nancy, and two grandchildren.