Many teen idols becomes with the time more adults who are artists, but few took this transformation as far as Noel Scott Engel, better known as Scott Walker. Between the melodramatiske popromantiker which topped the uk Charts in 1965 and the operatiske avant-garde, which in 2014 created the album ”Soused” together with drone metal band Sunn O))) is a chasm – and one of the contemporary premiere was the most fascinating careers.
Few have done more to bring theatrical tone of voice in pop music, or to show how one can turn away from everything what a commercial account is named, and among the most convinced adepts noticeable names like David Bowie, David Sylvian, Antony Hegarty/Anohni, Radiohead, Marc Almond, Jarvis Cocker, Julian Cope, Steven Wilson, and many, many more.
Scott Walker is dead – was 76 years old.
The Walker Brothers, who were not brothers, and where no one really named Walker. They had already started their career in Los Angeles when, in 1965, came to England and went through so strongly that it had to be the homeland in the future.
”Make it easy on yourself” was the first great success, a grandiose ballad of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, where Scott Walker sang placing the melody part with the melodramatic verve (Swedish Weeping Willows far later would come to sight against). Half a year later came ”The sun ain’t gonna shine (anymore)”, that challenged himself, Phil Spectors wall of sound in the class popmusikalisk immensity.
Both were moderate successes in the united states, but in the Uk, The Walker Brothers, the pop stars of the hysteriformat. 1966 to the fanclub have been bigger than The Beatles.
Already in 1967, the members, however, parted ways and Scott Walker launched a solo career that initially was almost as successful as the one with the band, among other things, he introduced the English speaking world, Jacques Brel, and in 1969 received his own tv series on the BBC.
when he in the same year gave out what in the day is usually counted as his great masterpiece – the fifth (!) his solo album ”Scott 4” – so it was a splendid flop. Partially reinforced of that it was released under his real name, Scott Engel.
the Secret and reclusive, increasingly stronger, acclaimed for his past, but still extremely difficult
Thirty years later, the status of the place such that an English indie bands in the 90s and took the name of Scott 4 after the disc.
After the turbulent first phases was the 70’s a more unfocused time, with many half-successful discs, and a several-year-long reunion with The Walker Brothers. Arriving at the group’s final album, ”Nite flights” in 1978, there was very little left that resembled the 60’s hitsuccéer, instead, was characterized by a kind of hard anspänd konstpop that foreshadowed what David Sylvian would celebrate the triumphs with a few years later.
The solo career that followed became sparse and increasingly radical. After his solo album ”Climate of the hunter” in 1984, it took eleven years to the ”Tilt” in 1995 and a further eleven to ”The drift” in 2006. Each one meant another step on the road away from conventional pop and rock music, to a kind of impressionistic tondiktning full of darkness, dissonance and theatrical vocals with a huge vibrato.
By then, Scott Walker is completely established as the uncompromising avant-gardist. Secret and reclusive, increasingly stronger, acclaimed for his past, yet so elaborate and difficult to the large crowd continued to stay away.
Read more texts by Nils Hansson here.