Spotlight on Scott Walker

1976  © Philips  6642 008

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(a) Orchestra directed by Peter Knight
(b) Orchestra directed by Robert Cornford
(c) Orchestra directed by Reg Guest
(d) Orchestra directed by Wally Stott
(e) Orchestra directed by Keith Roberts

All selections produced by John Franz
Engineer Peter Olliff except track 7 record 2 side 1, Keith Grant
Compilation and co-ordination by Leon Campadelli

Liner Notes

When the Walker Brothers finally decided to call it a day, in 1967, Scott remarked that Gary and John would be likeliest to find the going easier as solo acts.  Which seemed a strange thing to say, for Scott had always been regarded as the Walker most likely to succeed without really trying.  It was he who had generally appeared as the group's front man, the one who had both the voice and the charisma.   It was he who had received the
majority of the fan letters.

But what Scott meant  was that John and Gary could pursue their careers in the world of pure pop - for them there would be little change in direction, no need to break fresh boundaries.  Whereas in his own new freedom Scott saw the opportunity to fill the musical void that lay somewhere between the more interpretive pop singers of the old school - people like Sinatra, Bennett and Torme - and the new found poets of the rock generation.  Always fascinated by various aspects of European culture - he once claimed that he originally came to Britain just so that he could be nearer to Ingmar Bergman - Scott read Satre and played the records of Jacques Brel till the music almost flowed out of his ears.  So when the time came for the Scott Walker single, it came as no surprise to those who really knew the dramatically inclined Ohioan when he opted to release a tempestuous version of Brel's 'Jackie', a song that made reference to so many taboo subjects that it seemed destined to receive short shrift from those who decree just what we should hear or not hear on British radio.   Nevertheless, 'Jackie' crept into the lower reaches of the top twenty and Scott scored his first touchdown for integrity.

A few months later, in April '68, came the second single - 'Joanna', a pretty song penned by Tony Hatch and Jackie Trent.  From a promotion point of view it was romantic and right - just what was needed to provide sexual fantasies to the legion of female admirers who had once screamed their way through every onstage performance of 'Make it Easy On Yourself'.  Naturally enough the record climbed quickly into the top ten and, almost as naturally, Scott declared he wasn't at all fond of the song and would make no further singles, a decision he later rescinded, thus providing himself with an opportunity to record 'Lights of Cincinatti', his third and last hit single.

However, successful singles meant little or nothing to Scott.   Time and time again he repeated that he only wanted to be judged on the quality of his albums.  'To me, LP's are so much more important than singles,' he once claimed, 'The latter are merely interest boosters.'  And renewed interest was to be abhorred, continued the reluctant star, because it brought new rounds of photo sessions, interviews and promotional chores.  'In short, a whole lot of things I don't want to do.'

With many other singers, such a statement could be viewed with a fair degree of cynicism - but Scott really meant what he said and, after an initial round of concerts (including a disastrous one at Blackpool, where he sang the songs he thought the audience ought to hear, rather than the medley of hits they were expecting - with the result that many of the theatre's patrons asked for their money back) the singer retired to a haven somewhere in Denmark, visiting Britain just once a year for a hardly publicised gig at a club in the Manchester area.  'I never had the guts for the big concert stuff,' he recently told NME's Pete Erskine, 'I'd rather rationalise the frequency of my solo appearances to this one club every year.'  For which, he added, he got paid more than many of his concert appearances provided.

And so Scott attempted to avoid the limelight in a manner that often made Garbo seem like an inveterate party-giver, reserving all his energies for his beloved albums.

That he thought them all-important was made apparent right at the start of his solo career when 'Scott Walker', his first album, was released prior to his 'Jackie' single - thus reversing normal music biz procedure.  'Scott Walker' and it's follow-up 'Scott 2' were immaculate albums in every way.  The material came from many sources - there were songs such as 'When Joanna Loved Me', taken straight from out of the Tony Bennett songbook; a heavy proportion of Brel, including 'Next', the notorious number that's now part of Alex Harvey's stock-in-trade; oddments by Bacharach and Mancini; and even a few of the enigmatic Mr Walker's own compositions.  And while on the surface there appeared to be something for everyone, each song had an obvious pedigree and any commercial concessions made were small ones.  But even the smallest concession was too large for Scott Walker.

With 'Scott 3' he narrowed the gap by contributing over half the material on the album and, after an album of Sinatra-ish songs culled from his T.V. series of March-April '69, Scott administered the coup-de-grace on any spectre of commerciality with 'Scott 4', a brilliant collection of self-penned songs dealing with such unlikely subjects as the return of the neo-Stalinist regime in the USSR and one of Ingmar Bergman's critically-acclaimed screen epics.  At the same time the unconventional one rejected the Walker nomenclature and reverted instead to being Noel Scott Engel, his original name.   It seemed to be total wipe-out time for all other influences - even that of Brel.   'Brel was a phase,' claimed N.S. Engel, 'A brilliant phase and one that remains a fascination - but I have shaken off those dark images with which I was associated.   Brel could never make up his mind which way to go in life - I have.'

But 'Scott 4' never appealed to the record-buying public in the way that some of the earlier albums had done and someone decided that a re-think was necessary for 'Til the Band Comes In', a 1970 LP that still contained several songs written by Scott (yes, hew was back to being Scott Walker once more!) and his manager Ady Semel, but also featured such well-known titles as 'Stormy', the Classic IV hit, and Michel Legrand's 'What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?' to attract those who thought of him as Jack Jones' only rival in the bid for Sinatra's crown.  It was, in any case, the parting shot of Scott Walker the songwriter as far as Philips was concerned, for his remaining albums for the label - 'The Moviegoer', a warmly produced set of upper-class film themes, and 'Any Day Now', an attractive selection of songs by such as Jim Webb, David Gates, Randy Newman, Bill Withers and others - he reverted to the safer role of being lyric interpreter, an occupation at which he had few peers.  In recent times he's recorded a couple of Country and Western tinged LP's for another label and, at the end of 1975, surprised everyone by becoming involved in a Walker Brothers project with John Maus and Gary Leeds once more.  but there's no doubt in my mind that the material Scott recorded for Philips still represents his best work.

Certainly I believe that Scott, even with his ultra-critical way of looking back on his past work, would appreciate the final selection made here, for it includes most of the Brel songs - which Scott has always wanted to see re-issued - 'Big Louise', the singer's favourite track from 'Scott 3'; 'Get Behind Me', one sample from the groundbreaking 'Scott 4'; and four numbers by Michel Legrand, of whom Scott recently said: 'I'd like to make a whole album of his songs.'

And there I rest my case.

Fred Dellar
New Musical Express

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