Scott Walker
Singer-songwriter, 1960s pop royalty, big Bowie influence
Scott Walker, singersongwriter. Born 9 January 1943, in Hamilton, Ohio. Died 25 March 2019, in London. Aged 76.
There was a time when the Walker Brothers reportedly had a bigger fan club than the Beatles. And as a solo artist Scott Walker had his own BBC TV show. But he did not care for the adulation and hysteria and took himself off to a monastery, even tried to take his own life, before pursuing his own path with avant-garde music that never threatened even the lower reaches of the charts he once topped.
While once he lent his rich, emotive baritone to songs of lost love like the No.1 hits The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore and Make it Easy on Yourself and the solo hit Joanna, now he sang very different songs of lost love like Clara, a disturbing 13-minute piece
about Mussolini’s mistress, with a percussionist pummelling a slab of pork to simulate the abuse of her corpse strung from a lamppost.
There was always something dark about Scott Walker’s work, whether original compositions or songs by other writers.in1967,attheheightof his fame and celebrity, while other hirsute heartthrobs extolled the joys of romantic love, Walker was recording My Death…
“My death waits like a Bible truth/at the funeral of my youth”. And that was from Walker’s mainstream, commercial period.
But while few listen to Herman’s Hermits or Freddie and the Dreamers these days, the Walker Brothers’ songs continued to find new audiences and impress new critics. Walker himself became a cult figure, influencing a generation of performers, from Leonard Cohen and David Bowie, who said he was his idol, to Radiohead and Goldfrapp.
In 1981 Julian Cope from The Teardrop Explodes was instrumental in the release of a compilation of his early solo songs – Fire Escape in the Sky: The Godlike Genius of Scott Walker. In 2006 Bowie coproduced an acclaimed documentary, Scott Walker: 30 Century Man. And two years ago Walker was the subject of a night at the Proms.
Dubbed the Jack Kerouac