The Old Man's Back Again: Scott Walker

Ain't nothin' like a bonafide legend to inflate a forgotten musician's historical worth. It's too often in these cases that it's an artist's story, and not their musical legacy, that compels their discography. and there's hardly a stranger legend than that of Scott Walker.

After several years recording forgotten teen pop songs under his Christian name, Ohio-born Scotty Engel moved out to Hollywood where in 1964 he met aspiring singers John Maus and Gary Leeds. The threesome christened themselves the Walker Brothers for some reason or another, and made the somewhat unprecedented decision to move to the U.K. to try to hit it big. Within a year, they had a number one hit in the England, we're nearly as big as the Beatles, and became, strangely enough, a part of the British Invasion. A sort of boy band in the traditional sense, the Walkers weren't really a creative force--rarely playing on their own records, rarely writing their own songs--but with Scott's comically crooned baritone, the group had half a dozen U.K. hits, though largely ignored in the U.S. They weren't really much of a rock band, inspired more by passe American crooners than the reckless Brits, but somehow they managed a respectable cult through the mid-sixties.

In 1967, as the Walker Brothers' stock began to wane, Scott released Scott, his first solo album, to wide critical acclaim and even greater record sales. Weird thing is, Scott is a super dark, morbid, bizarre pop record, filled with covers of his idol, Jaque Brel, like "My Death" and "Amsterdam," not to mention its ridiculous arrangements, with obscenely over-dramatic strings, horns, and other orchestrations composed merely to support Scott's deathly croon. Scott, though a little too much to get used all at once, revels itself to be the work of a true eccentricity: that somehow managed to hit #3 on the U.K. charts at the height of the psychedelic era.

For the next three years, Walker continued his solo streak with three more amazing records, Scott 2-4, each release affording him more control than the last. By the time he recorded Scott 4, his first album comprised entirely of originals, Walker had produced three top ten albums (with Scott 2 hitting number one), and gotten more and more obtuse with every release. Scott 4, though widely acknowledged as his greatest work, sold considerably less than his previous solo records. Still, Walker was popular enough for the BBC to give him a short-lived television show, and to remain a very public celebrity, in spite of most of his material reflecting morose subject matter like suicide, prostitution, and, um, Stalin.

Then came the '70s.

between 1970 and 1974, Walker recorded five unsuccessful (both musically and financially) records in a row, scared off by the misfortune of his own songwriting on 4, the records were largely covers, and without the adventuresome morose of his previous output.

in 1975, the Walker Brothers reunited to little fanfare, recording a six minute emo brood called "No Regrets"which, somehow, became yet another inexplicable hit for Walker. Three reunion records followed with little success, despite being celebrated by folks like Eno, Ferry, and Bowie (who famously covered "My Death" in a very Walker-like fashion).

and then Walker simply vanished.

A famed recluse, Walker wasn't seen in public for nearly twenty years. Releasing a single record in the 80s, 1984's surprisingly modern Climate of Hunter (an exploration of ambient minimalism), Walker was absent for another 11 years with nary a public appearance.

then it got really weird. In 1995, Walker re-emerged at the age of 52 with a release on Drag City, of all places, called Tilt, which may very well be one of the most alienating pop records ever recorded. Gone is Walker's rich, full baritone. Gone are the boisterous orchestrations. Gone is any sense of hope whatsoever. In there place are a strained, angry tenor, bloodcurdling sparsity, and the sound of a broken soul. The record, one of the late century's greatest anomalies, is simply amazing, like a modern day Marble Index. four years later, he recorded the soundtrack to Pola X in much the same vein, and at the beginning of the century, persuaded by Walker-phile Jarvis Cocker to produce Pulp's most recent record, We Love Life (whose single, "Bad Cover Version," actually takes a jab at one of Walker's early records).

The legend of Scott Walker is matched only by his amazingly polarizing discography, so impenetrable, so bizarre, and some how, however briefly, so commercially successful. Scott Walker's transformation from teen idol to British pop star to bizarro-world Tom Jones to experimental pop senior is a little far fetched, even in the spectrum of the British 60s, but it's all as true as his title. The Greatest Band of All Time.