January 9, 2021 by Tosh Berman

 

January 9, 2021

It seems throughout my life I have heard of Scott Walker but never actually heard his solo albums until the 1990s. I was aware of The Walker Brothers' "The Sun Ain't Going To Shine Anymore" because it was on the AM radio in my youth. Also, decades later, I heard that was the song being played on the juke box at the Blind Beggar when Ronnie Kray shot and killed George Cornell. Legend has it that the record got stuck with the word "Anymore" played repeatedly. Beyond that, I knew nothing of Scott. It wasn't until the musician Julian Cope put out a compilation of solo Scott music, "Fire Escape in the Sky: The Godlike Genius of Scott Walker," which focused on the music he wrote. At the time, Scott was a memory for mostly those who know him for his middle-of-the-road cover songs. The post-punk world was finally introduced to this magnificent artist, thanks to Cope. 

I never owned this compilation, and as far as I know, his original solo albums were out of print at the time. Scott was very much a mysterious figure at the time, and some say in retirement. It wasn't until 1984 that I purchased my first Scott album, "Climate Of Hunter." Strangely poetic, with a beautiful voice, and a strange sensibility. Eight songs on the album, including a piece by Tennessee Williams, "Blanket Roll Blues, "I believe was from the film "The Fugitive Kind, based on Tennessee's play "Orpheus Descending." The song is sung by Marlon Brando in the film, and oddly enough, Walker used the imagery of Brando in future songs. Like Bowie, Scott never loses influences; he just kept them as a collection and went into that closet to take out what he needed for inspiration and doing his art, the songs. It's interesting that as one of the great lyricists in the 20th-century, he named four of the songs on this album as "Track Three," "Track Five," "Track Six," and "Track Seven." An artist who wrote such passionate music to name songs in such a dry manner has always been a head-scratcher for me. 

Eleven years of silence from Scott until he released "Tilt." I bought it as a CD at the Virgin Mega Store on Sunset Bouvard. I came to that store to find that specific album. I had to look in the "w" section of British imports to find the damn album. They only had one copy, and they ordered just one copy for their inventory. When I took it home and played "Tilt," I was emotionally taken away by the words' density, but they were minimal as well. Every silence and space became part of the music. I never heard anything like this before in my entire life. 

Six other Scott Walker albums came after "Tilt," including the all-instrumental "And Who Shall Go to The Ball? And What Shall Go To The Ball?" and his two soundtrack albums "Pola X," and "The Childhood Of A Leader." Scott Walker's birthday was only a day apart from David Bowie's. It's interesting to note that Scott shares birthdays with Karl Čapek, Simone de Beauvoir, Heiner Müller, German filmmaker Harun Farock, and Richard Nixon. All of them could have easily been a subject matter for a Scott Walker song.