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© The Guardian (London) - April 28, 1995
Scott Walker could have been as big as the Beatles. So why has he always chosen obscurity instead of success?
The less music he makes, the more legendary Scott Walker becomes. His new album, Tilt, is his first collection of new material since Climate Of Hunter, which slipped furtively into the shops in March 1984. It reached number 60 on the UK album charts, but its low sales figures have become an industry benchmark for under -achievement.
Ed Bicknell knows this better than most, since he was Scott Walker's manager at the time. "We managed him for about seven years, and we made pounds 350. And I loaned Scott pounds 500, which makes a net loss of pounds 150. And I'd do it again."
Could Tilt be the record to restore Scott Walker's commercial fortunes? Might he follow the Tom Jones path to renewed hipness, or imitate the Tony Bennett career pick-me-up via MTV Unplugged and collaborations with younger artists?
Almost certainly not - even though MTV would probably jump at the idea and there's no shortage of performers who would fight for the chance to work with Walker. David Bowie has volunteered to produce him, Julian Cope assembled a 1981 compilation album called Fire Escape In The Sky in homage to Walker, Marc Almond started singing Jacques Brel songs because he heard Walker doing them first, and Elvis Costello will gladly explain why Walker is a fixture in pop's shimmering firmament.
But even though Fontana Records have stumped up the cash for Tilt, Scott Walker and the record industry have been pursuing divergent tangents for at least 25 years. Tilt is a brooding, complicated piece of work, darkly scored, mysteriously textured and lacking almost everything normally associated with commercial pop - tunes, for instance, or recognisable song-structures with verses and choruses.
Yet although Walker's recording methods seem incomprehensible, he comes to the studio with a clear idea of what he wants. "Scott is very secretive," explains his arranger and musical director Brian Gascoigne. "He also hates anything predictable. He doesn't want musicians to start churning out 'hot licks', he wants them to explore areas where they're all feeling uncomfortable. This surprises them, but if everybody's in the dark and he's the only person holding the torch, he can produce much more closely what he wants than if the musicians are trying to take it in the direction they would like."
During his long sabbaticals away from making music, Walker studies art, reads poetry and philosophy, and absorbs a wide variety of music - or at least that's what's assumed, since nobody knows for certain exactly what he does. Brian Gascoigne has never been to Scott's home, and doesn't have his phone number. At any rate, Walker was able to use a variety of reference points in the making of Tilt. "Usually what he wants is an idea from something," says Gascoigne. "He'd be horrified at the thought that he was just nicking it. There was a place, for example, where he mentioned Scriabin's Poem Of Ecstasy, and he'd refer to Bartok, Messiaen, film music like Morricone, and Glenn Branca."
There are show-stopping moments on Tilt, like the stunning opening track Farmer In The City, or the vivid sound-daubing of Patriot (A Single), but it's evident its author has little interest in chart success. Could fear of mass adulation be forcing Walker to be as obscure as possible. "I think it's either a work of extraordinary courage or total stupidity," says Ed Bicknell of the album.
It wasn't always this way. Between April 1965 and May 1967, the Walker Brothers notched up nine British top 30 hit singles, reaching number one with Make It Easy On Yourself and The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore. The legend of Scott Walker was instantly born in the sound of his great, sobbing baritone soaring across plunging canyons of orchestration. Heartbreak had never been so epic. Not even Phil Spector had managed to shovel so much passion and bombast onto seven inches of crackling vinyl.
Transplanted to England from their native California, the Walkers found themselves in the eye of a teen-scream hurricane. Scott is apparently still traumatised by memories of the group's car being rolled over by rampant teenagers, while he and fellow band member John Maus were left concussed by a fan-stampede in Chester.
After the trio decided they could no longer stand to be in the same room together, Scott (born Noel Scott Engel on January 9, 1944) scored three more solo hits in the subsequent two years. His first three solo albums, Scotts 1, 2 and 3, all exploded into the top three, and for a while his fanclub had more members than The Beatles'.
What keeps his mystique alive today is the music he made during that period. Striding from the ashes of The Walker Brothers, Scott developed into a richly gifted songwriter, creating a unique form of existential schmaltz which still resonates hauntingly in songs like Montague Terrace (In Blue) or the utterly sublime Big Louise. He could out-croon Tony Bennett, and sound even more lovelorn than Roy Orbison.
It was powerful magic. Ed Bicknell is not widely regarded as a sentimentalist in business matters (his Damage Management has overseen the towering international success of Dire Straits, and he has fought to claw back artistic and financial control from the record companies in favour of poor, suffering artists), yet mention Scott Walker, and Bicknell changes from industry scourge to helpless, sentimental fan.
"During the time we represented Scott, he was for me the nicest artist I've ever worked with," Bicknell reminisces. "He's the only artist I've ever met in 22 years of doing this job for whom the word 'compromise' simply doesn't exist."
The casual observer of the pop scene might conclude that Scott Walker is merely a sixties burn-out who struck a rich vein of early success, then blew a gasket. Not so, says Ed. "He's very rational. He's a very straightforward, ordinary bloke who has had this image put onto him. He's very positive, but at the same time he's not going to compromise his art, and in his case he definitely feels it is art."
Today, Walker is managed by Charles Negus-Fancey. Like Ed Bicknell, Negus -Fancey has a long track record of success and can afford to indulge what is, by any yardstick, an irrational faith in Scott Walker.
"I think Scott is one of the most exciting and stimulating artists around," Negus-Fancey argues. "He's somebody who's been continually prepared to take risks. There's an incredible integrity about everything he does. It's just very honest and provocative, and there's nothing wallpaper about it." But what's in it for a manager? Walker can barely produce an album per decade, and even then it doesn't sell. Tilt seems unlikely to reverse Walker's plummet into unprofitability.
"I think it could be quite commercially successful," protests his manager. "I think there are great opportunities for Scott now in the States. With the college circuit, I think there are greater opportunities for this type of music - whatever this type is. I'm not going to categorise it."
Dream on.
Brian Gascoigne remembers that after he'd worked on Climate Of Hunter, "I met some young person who said 'oh, that album's brilliant, me and my friends listen to it all the time', but I must say he's the only person I've ever met in 10 years who's said that. Maybe it's just a very small following of very devoted people. Then again, maybe the record company think the time is right for weirdness to triumph."
But does Scott Walker really want it to?