No one has had a recording career quite like that Scott Walker had. So who was he?
The lead singer with the Walker Brothers, the group who, for a significant part of the 1960s, held the pop world in their hands, scoring a string of hits, including the number ones ‘Make It Easy on Yourself’ and ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore’, breaking a million hearts in the process.
The reluctant pop idol. The man behind a series of fashion-defying solo records released in the late-Sixties which, behind their numeric titles, hid a world of popular music so strange and beautiful that it still stands up today as some of the greatest ever recorded.
The existentialist who took the Jacques Brel song ‘Jackie’ – with its lyric of ‘bordellos’ and ‘authentic queers and phoney virgins’ – into the singles chart, in the days when censorship ruled the broadcasting world.
New Edition, Revised and Updated OUT NOW
RhymesofGoodbye.com
Published June 2019 by Plexus
Publishing Ltd, London
About Scott Walker
The would-be crooner of standards with his own BBC TV show. The popular artist who seemed unstoppable in 1968, but who, by the end of the following year, was unable to even make the charts.
The possessor of one of the greatest singing voices of all time, who saw himself as having prostituted his art for most of the 1970s.
The avant-garde artist he became in more recent decades, whose contrarily brilliant records defy categorisation, and who used ‘that voice’ so sparingly that he released full albums at the rate of one per decade.
The answer is all of these. If you are new to Scott Walker, quite some journey awaits you.
© Lewis Williams 2006, 2019-2024