Scott Walker: The Lost Years

If you are new to the work and story of Scott Walker, I have a unique opportunity to introduce you to the debunking before you hear the myth.

Paul Mark Phillips was a music journalist, A&R man and composer/producer in the British music industry from the late 60s on. One of his artists was Scott Walker in what the artist terms his "wilderness years."

At the time, I thought of him as blessed with an exceptional voice. Beyond that, I found him embarrassing, a precocious child who felt he was not getting the attention he warranted.

Phillips hints at an angle that is less available to us who are discovering Walker, rather than living through his career. Maybe it was very important to Walker that he be considered a genius. Phillips says, "The whole Jacques Brel thing lacked authenticity for me."

Phillips issue with Walker is personal. The story at the link is about how Walker hardly cared about which songs he sang and, when the albums failed, he blamed the record companies. Since Phillips was the company rep responsible for bringing Walker material, he feels personally slighted.

Phillips may believe that he's undermining Walker's legend but my opinion is that he's simply shading it with more detail. The myth is that Walker, finding that the public wasn't interested in his genius, gave up and gave the public and the record companies what they wanted. His heart wasn't in it, though, and the material is weak.

The legend's image is of depression, despair and heavy drinking. Phillips' story sounds like that condition as it plays out day by day, not a refutation of the myth. Walker, judging by the fact that he put out several albums during that time, seems to have been a functional depressive. Chances are, he spun between trying to make the best of things and making bad decisions, thinking, "Who cares?"

And these were bad decisions. Take a listen to this track from Any Day Now, "We Could Be Flying:"

It's clear this is a 70s-era Frank Sinatra reject and it points to the fundamental problem with this period of Walker's work. A hopeful Scott Walker is uninteresting and, more importantly, sounds false.

A comparison with Sinatra is helpful. While both have distinctive, powerful and note-perfect voices, Sinatra has a talent for phrasing that Walker doesn't. This points to why Walker is a successful songwriter (successful through the lens of history, that is) and less so as a song interpreter; he's less able to make something of a song unless it's written to already fit his style. Brel's work, for example, is both dark and theatrical--where Brel applied a hurried, panicked tone, Walker could make the notes soar with his powerful voice. Walker is limited as an interpreter but an able writer for himself.

That limitation means that, since Walker was no longer writing songs, he had to be very particular about which songs he picked to record. As important as the musical style was the topical style. Sinatra established a musical persona that ranged from celebratory (though less so than Dean Martin) to heartbroken (though not desperate). By the end of the 60s he had added a strain of wistful humility, the tone of an older man looking back at life and the world. 

Walker's musical persona had contempt for the world and felt that love was only a temporary salve against the horrors of life and made it worse once it inevitably ended. To sing what he does on "We Could Be Flying" is so out of character as to be jarring. 

A disregard for his own limitations and his persona is the strongest quality of the "wilderness years" albums. Listen to the mind-boggling choice of covering Bill Wither's "Ain't No Sunshine" on the same album:

I mentioned, when comparing the Walker Brothers with the Righteous Brothers, that Walker has absolutely no soul in his voice. Why then, does he cover a song that is arguably all soul? Wither's original is stripped down to its expressive basics, putting the spotlight on Wither's vocal styling and emotion. Walker's sounds like Tom Jones' Las Vegas opening act. He compounded the mistake by covering Wither's "Use Me," as well.

Thankfully, Walker's primary output was denatured countrypolitan, taking an already plastic production style and mainstreaming it even further. I say "thankfully" because it doesn't inspire the listener to reach through the speakers to clamp a hand over his mouth. Jerry Reed's "You're Young and You'll Forget," from We Had It All:

Even more than improper song choices, Scott's lost years output is marked by his disconnection from his work. What we are hearing is pure singing skill with zero passion. "Sundown," made popular by Gordon Lightfoot, from the same album:

Walker's first album without originals from this period, The Moviegoer, has a few tracks in which he sounds engaged but it's cold comfort to fans of "Such a Small Love," which shows his vocals at their most dramatic. 

Walker is also a bit more lively (but nowhere near his peak) on the first two albums he recorded with for the Walker Brothers reunion in 1975. Here's the title track from the first album, No Regrets:

What an odd song. It sounds as though the band, even when the guitar solo starts, is in a room next door, while Scott is crooning right in one's ear. It sounds like he's barely opening his mouth.

But at least it's a proper Scott Walker song. He's singing about waking up in an empty home alone and waiting for the dawn, which is about as Scott Walker-y as it gets.

The next Walker Brothers' album was Lines, a weaker collection than No Regrets. He sounds more engaged than in his previous three solo albums. Here's the title track:

Alienation, regret and some actual belting--it's not much, but we'll take it.

The Walker Brothers reunion got a good deal of attention but the releases were not interesting enough to keep it, especially consider what kind of years those were for British pop, with David Bowie and Elton John at their full power. By the time they started their third reunion album, no one cared.

Which is the reason Scott was able to do something so remarkable with it.