Scott Walker and Catherine Deneuve

In 1964 a film was released that catapulted Catherine Deneuve to international stardom. If you haven't seen "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" I urge you to make it a priority. But don't watch it on a tiny laptop with interruptions. If you must watch it at home make sure it is on a big screen and commit to the whole kit and kaboodle.

It is a musical unlike any other. Every line of the film is sung. Small talk, conversations between incidental characters, shopkeepers and customers, how-do-you-do's and pardon-me-ma'am's are scored as lushly as the songs that erupt from the existing musical landscape.

On top of this layer of unreality, director Jacques Demy manages to create a palette consisting entirely of primary colors, every blue the same blue, every red the same red, green to green, until this impossible scheme forces you into a world as idealized and imaginary as any Disney cartoon. The double whammy of these two unreal elements (music and color) juxtaposed with the melodrama of a young shop girl pregnant by her young lover sent off to fulfill his duty to his country - well, you wind up with just about the saddest most romantic movie ever made.

I won't give much more away than that. I only explain that much to put this next link into the proper context. The Walker Brothers were on fire. They'd had two number one hits in England, both of which had also done quite well in the United States, and they had come to be seen as their own unique brand of brooding doomed romantics. The pairing of their Gothic sensuality with the European lilt of the signature "song" from "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" is, in a word, transcendent.

Now, Scott Walker was already chafing at this kind of cover song. More and more he was writing compositions that rival this one in scope and beauty and melodic power. Regardless of how he views the songs that he was "forced" to interpret during this period, I (heavy stress on that I) feel that his vocal work on these covers places him in very rare company, company you can count on both hands. Frank, Judy, Dean, Tony, Ray, Nina, Ella...I'm sure you could argue any number of folks in that pantheon but if Scott Walker had never written a song he would still be one of the greatest singers of all time.

Listen to The Walker Brothers soar to impossibly sad romantic heights in their cover of the theme song to "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" in the song "I Will Wait For You". I picture thousands of English high school girls (and boys) closed up in their rooms, tears streaming down their cheeks, wishing and dreaming of the eternal devotion promised in this gorgeous song.

Next up, Scott Walker solo sings more Michel LeGrand...

Scott Walker "Miniatures"

In audio taken from one of his BBC TV show broadcasts, Scott Walker introduces the song "Winter Night" from Scott 3 as a "miniature". The late '60's rock scene was all about excess. Everyone was trying to out-epic everyone else. The two minute thirty second hit single was seen as teeny-bopper fodder and artists were looking to move rock into uncharted territory, both in subject matter and length.

Scott Walker, as usual, was operating in another sphere altogether. Some of the song lengths on Scott 3 (of his own composition, not the Brel songs that close the album out) are as follows:

We Came Through 1:59
Butterfly 1:42
30 Century Man 1:29
Winter Night 1:45

Then on Scott 4 there is On Your Own Again which clocks in at 1:48 and 'Til The Band Comes in has Jean The Machine at 2:10 and Cowbell Shakin' at 1:06, barely a snippet.

This seems to be a trend in his work of the period. When compared with the work he's been doing over the past two decades they seem like thoughts that flicker across his mind. Song lengths from his past three albums routinely start at seven minutes at least and stretch to over twenty on Bish Bosch.

But these miniatures as he calls them are not underdone. They are fully realized. They are exactly as long as they need to be. Nothing superfluous, nothing redundant, no need to reiterate.

In fact, if I didn't point out how short We Came Through is you would undoubtedly classify it as an epic. I am linking to a video that pairs the song with a car driving up a parking garage ramp. Ground floor to roof and the song is over. The lyrics posted on the video are incorrect in one crucial spot so I'm going to post them here.

Watch Scott Walker's miniature epic "We Came Through" from Scott 3.

We Came Through

We came through
We came riding through like warriors from afar
Our black horses danced upon the graves
Of yesterday's desires
Haunted by our visions framed in fire

I greet you
For you still believe in what's behind the door
You see children freeze upon their knees
And praying to the wind
To send their grey Madonnas back again

Fire the guns
And salute the men who died for freedom's sake
And we'll weep tonight but we won't lie awake
Gazing up at statues dressed in stars

We won't dream
For they don't come true for us, not anymore
They've run far away to hide in caves
With haggard burning eyes
Their icy voices tear our hearts like knives

We came through
Like the Gothic monsters perched on Notre Dame
We observed the naked souls of gutters
Pouring forth mankind
Smothered in an avalanche of time

And we're giants
As we watch our kings and countries raise their shields
And Guevera dies encased in his ideals
And as Luther King's predictions fade from view

We came through
We came through
We came riding through

All that in under two minutes.

Miniature? Hardly.

Scott Walker Scares An Empty Studio: Rosary

After 1984's "Climate Of Hunter", Scott Walker seemingly disappeared again. "Climate Of Hunter" was a challenging work laced with a strange funkiness. The advent of English New Wave seemed to put Walker's style in a position to possibly connect with a wider audience again. But again, this didn't happen. He did a few awkward TV and radio interviews in support of "Climate" but the slick shallow newly formed MTV aesthetic was a terrible fit for him.

Eleven years pass. 1995's "Tilt" makes "Climate Of Hunter" sound like Lionel Richie in comparison. Walker clearly had decided that any kind of clinging to traditional song structure or attempt at pop melody was no longer part of his palette. He'd been there, done that.

"Tilt" is, in a word, intense. Dense jarring drum noises, gorgeous string orchestral sections laid over horribly violent imagery, a vocal approach that dispenses with verse/chorus/verse/bridge predictability and a headlong rush into a new kind of song where comforting structure simply no longer exists. I don't make distinctions between the "Old Scott Walker" and the "New Scott Walker". It all seems consistent to me. The staggering thing about it is the wide disparity between works of art that come from the same mind. It is as if Samuel Beckett spent years writing popular television, backslid to empty formulaic made for TV movies and spent the last third of his life writing his avant-garde plays.

The commercial landscape had changed so drastically between 1984 and 1995 that "Tilt" actually performed quite well, reaching #27 on the UK Album Chart. Noisy music was finally in the mainstream. Somehow Scott Walker had finally arrived at what he probably should have been all along. An idiosyncratic avant-garde boundary dissolver with a cult following. The massive success of "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" had finally settled to an appropriate level.

This "arrival" wasn't heralded by any kind of shift in how Walker did things, however. He didn't embark on a world tour performing all his old hits in a tux and an orchestra while performing his new material with a crack punk band. He merely began the process of waiting for his next album to come to him. Which wouldn't happen until 2006.

He did, however, agree to one momentous occasion. He agreed to perform live on a television program called "Later...with Jools Holland". Jools Holland was a founding member of Squeeze, has a very successful post-Squeeze solo career, and has been hosting a music show for almost twenty years featuring interviews, live performances and impromptu collaboration.

Walker agreed but only if they allowed him to tape his performance without an audience. The clip shows how "Later" handled this, making it appear as if Walker was in a packed studio.

"Tilt" is filled with noise as I said before. The one exception is the song that closes the album, "Rosary". It is also the only track on the album where Walker plays an instrument as well as sings. It is this stark confrontational difficult song that Walker chose to perform. He COULD have chosen anything from the album, brought an impressive bizarre orchestra to showcase the ambitious sonic scope of the album.

Instead Walker chose a song that is so bare, so stripped of recognizable traditional song structure that the result is almost embarrassing, like watching someone in a private moment that they would never want you to see.

I almost never read comment threads but I perused these just to see what people thought. Old fans were dismayed that he was abandoning melody and beauty, those unfamiliar with him wondered how a man who couldn't sing or play guitar got on a TV show and even new fans wondered why he would choose THIS song to sing.

But again, Walker wasn't interested in presenting some IDEA of himself. He'd lost the ability to do that years ago. He was only capable of the performance that was as close to authenticity as he could possibly muster. It is a very disorienting performance. The music seems to be barely written, as if some kind of savant had discovered an electric guitar sitting next to him at a moment of great crisis.

I am not sure of the origin of the following quote but I recently became aware of it through Ricky Gervais' twitter account, which I highly recommend. The quote I refer to is, "If you want to lead the orchestra, you must turn your back on the audience."

Scott Walker took it a step further. He made them leave the room.

Watch Scott Walker perform "Rosary" live from 1995.

One Minute Forty One Seconds Of Infinity

The documentary that kicked my Scott Walker obsession into being is called Scott Walker: 30 Century Man which is the title of a song off of 1969's "Scott 3".

The song is an anomaly in the Walker catalog. The first side on the vinyl Scott 3 LP consists of seven lush orchestral impossibilities. Each seems to be more beautiful and sad than the last. Each is dense to an almost pathological level. They are hothouse rainforests of melody. They envelop you in such a complete sonic landscape that you almost feel as if you are suspended within them.

Now flip the LP over.

30 Century Man cuts everything away. A simple acoustic guitar strum. A song that is as basic as they come. When I learned it on acoustic guitar I was shocked at how basic it was. The chords in it could be learned in 20 minutes by someone who had never played guitar. Compared with the strings and horns and complexity of the first side, this song is like a flat rock on top of a flat rock.

The lyrics are equally gigantic and immutable. There is a philosophy at work here that cannot be denied. Walker deliberately strips all distraction away from the words. He sings them without inflection, without emotional resonance, another flat rock on top of the slab. Posting lyrics as a way to explain the ideas contained in a song usually seems like a perfectly acceptable way to convey an opinion but in this case there just is no way to approach the MEANING of this song without the whole package working together.

Here's what happened to me while listening to it.

I'd heard the song dozens of times and didn't pause to consider it much. It works on such an obvious level that it is easy to underestimate it. But after a while, it slowly turned in my heart like a key inside of a secret lock. It spun in my orbit like a satellite, catching varied imagery from some distant unimaginable place and filtering them so I could understand.

In short, I got religious about it.

To put this into context and perspective, I am not really religious about anything. Except my own pursuit of art. But this song pierced my atheism and brought me to my knees. Not in despair but in supplication.

Why? Who knows. I could try to describe my conversion to you. But I know how I respond to like descriptions from others. I respect that they experienced something but I cannot begin to climb inside of their response. When I hear this song I feel comforted in a way I imagine a parish to feel while fire and brimstone rains down on them from the pulpit. The content is terrifying to behold but the faith you contain is strengthened through the fear.

My father used to wonder whether Vincent Van Gogh actually saw the world the way his paintings look. A friend of an ex scoffed openly at this notion, claiming that it robbed Van Gogh of the credit he rightly deserved for his genius. I thought she missed the point which was that everyone has a specific vision of the world. But not everyone can articulate it so perfectly.

This song is Starry Starry Night or The Potato Eaters. It synthesizes the human experience into a microcosm. I don't mean to go even further out on a limb but 30 Century Man, to me, makes the most sense when you imagine that God is singing it to you. The trick that Walker somehow manages to pull off is to leave the song so open-ended that it can hold whatever that brings to mind. God will sound differently when speaking to different people.

AND I DON'T BELIEVE IN GOD.

But somehow, through this song, I achieve a kind of faith, I travel forward to the time Walker evokes so effortlessly with the simplest three chords in any writer's arsenal. If this song were an invention it would be the wheel. Just think what we could do with a wheel.

Listen to 30 Century Man and inch us towards infinity.

Scott Walker Sings A Show Tune

Scott Walker's parents divorced when he was quite young. His father worked in the oil industry as some sort of geological engineer which led to a vagabond youth. One of the stops was New York. Here Walker made his first foray into professional entertainment. Between the ages of 11 and 13, Walker (then named Noel Scott Engel) acted in two Broadway musicals, neither of which lasted very long or are remembered at all.

Pipe Dream ran from November 30, 1955 to June 30, 1956. Plain and Fancy ran from January 27, 1955 to March 3, 1956.

This is a footnote at best in his career, something that is barely remarked upon. But as a professional actor I know how hard it is to book even ONE part, let alone several in succession, especially in the almost hermetically sealed world of Broadway theater.

Within a year of these appearances, Walker had recorded almost an entire album worth of teeny-bopper rock and roll, clearly influenced by the swagger and croon of Elvis Presley.

But what was that year of professional acting like? A typical Broadway show rehearses for a couple of months, then goes through an out of town run to gauge audience reaction, followed by a short preview period and finally opening night. Then the play runs as long as it is financially viable.

Pipe Dream ran from November 30, 1955 to June 30, 1956. Plain and Fancy ran from January 27, 1955 to March 3, 1956.

Obviously Walker couldn't have originated whatever role he played in both shows as the runs parallel each other. But IBDB (the Broadway version of IMDB) lists him as acting in both.

To double back to my earlier point, the fact that Walker managed to audition for and execute actual performances of these plays is a testament to his musical gifts. This is no talent show where any sort of effort is rewarded. Marks must be hit, blocking executed, musical scores to fulfill and whatever story element he was involved in done properly. This was Broadway, after all, and you simply do not roll out of bed and wind up there. You pursue it wholeheartedly and once you get there you must deliver. The fact that Walker did that for two different productions within the same year is actually quite an accomplishment. I've been an Equity actor for almost twenty years now and it still hasn't happened for me!!!

I can't help wonder what that must have been like for a young boy on the verge of puberty. The backstage world, for the uninitiated, is unrelentingly ribald, filled with open emotional display and intensity. I recently did a play with a ten year old and no matter how hard the cast tried to censor themselves the boy was still witness to many adult interactions that he never would have been without being in a play.

The psychological effect notwithstanding, he certainly grew up to record many songs that could be considered "show tunes". Where most of his contemporary pop competitors were discovering scratchy old blues LP's, Scott Walker was going back to that other great American song book...the show tune.

Here are a few great examples from the album he released containing songs he'd sung on the BBC on his own show:

You're Gonna Hear From Me
The Impossible Dream
Lost In The Stars

In just a few numbers, he established himself as one of the finest interpreters of this sort of highbrow material. But rock and roll was storming the world, leaving all other forms in the dust. Thankfully Scott Walker left a few breadcrumbs on the trail back to Broadway.

Bowie, Fatima Mansions & Walker Brothers: 3 Versions of Nite Flights: Original/2 Copies

Only one way to fall.

The title track of The Walker Brothers swan song is the incredible "Nite Flights". While it doesn't open the album, the fact that Walker doubled it as the name of the album speaks volumes about the importance of this particular song.

The song on its own merits is stunning. A sleek propulsive bass line propels the rhythm, descending against a rising layer of keyboard shimmer. Cymbals hiss, the snare pops, and the overall effect is somehow like something out of a science fiction film.

Put in the context of the musical landscape of 1978 and the song takes on even greater significance. England was exploding into punk rock and new wave, both of which are left in the dust by the genre-less edifice this song effortlessly erects.

In the hands of a media juggernaut, this album could have been some kind of international blockbuster. It was obviously blazing new sonic ground and combining this with the unlikely history of The Walker Brothers seems like an alley-oop. But the company was folding and the album made a brief appearance, affected a few of the cognoscenti, and that was that for The Walker Brothers.

I can only make analogies to somehow explain what this might look like were it to happen today. Imagine that Hall & Oates released an album tomorrow that alienated all of their fans from back in the day but that in 30 years would be looked upon as the pinnacle of musical achievement of the era.

After all, in the film 30 Century Man, Brian Eno holds up a copy of "Nite Flights" and says, "We've come no further than this. It's shameful!"

Listen to the original "Nite Flights" off of 1978's "Nite Flights" by The Walker Brothers.

The album did not have the kind of commercial success to match the critical lasting effect it had on musicians.

Elsewhere on this blog you will find my 50 Greatest Albums series. One of these is "Viva Dead Ponies" by a little-known Irish band called The Fatima Mansions. They had a moment in the sun in the early '90's and "Viva Dead Ponies" is one of the great political manifestos ever put to sound. On the follow up "Lost In The Former West" is a cover of "Nite Flights". I've had the song for almost twenty years but never knew it was a cover, let alone that it was written by Scott Walker. It was my favorite song on the album.

Listen to "Nite Flights" by The Fatima Mansions off of "Lost In The Former West".

The second copy of the original comes from David Bowie who has honored Walker as one of his heroes. He executive produced the movie about Walker and it is obvious that much of his singing style was influenced by him as well.

Listen to "Nite Flights" off of David Bowie's "Black Tie, White Noise".

Again I must return to the element of fear that is somehow present in Walker's work. The imagery is so startling, so perfectly realized, and so unlike anything you are used to witnessing in pop song form that there is a kind of vertigo that ensues. This sensation when juxtaposed with the aural oddity is unsettling in a way that is impossible to quantify. Walker has said that he starts with the words and that they inform his melodic choices. Read "Nite Flights". I don't know what it means but it terrifies me.

Nite Flights

There's no hold
The moving has come through
The danger brushing you
Turns its face into the heat
And runs the tunnels

It's so cold
The dark dug up by dogs
The stitches torn and broke
The raw meat fist you choke
Has hit the bloodlite

Glass traps open and close on nite flights
Broken necks
Feather weights press the walls
Be my love
We will be gods on nite flights
Only one promise
Only one way to fall

Glass traps open and close on nite flights
Broken necks
Feather weights press the walls
Be my love
We will be gods on nite flights
Only one promise
Only one way to fall

On the nite flights
On the nite flights
On the nite flights
Only one way to fall

On the nite flights
On the nite flights
On the nite flights
Only one way to fall

SDSS14+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)

I don't need my music to be intellectual. I'm as much a sucker for melody as the next guy and I have no problem with a catchy tune even if it is about the silliest of topics.

But I also am fascinated by the boundary pushers, by the fringe dwellers, by the writers who will risk alienating the listener with atonal progression or with lyrical subjects that go beyond what is traditionally covered in mainstream pop music.

No one goes further in this direction than Scott Walker. Until 1995's "Tilt" his catalog is bizarre from time to time but there is always a melody to hang your hat on. Lyrically he might be challenging or difficult but his singing and the orchestration could always be counted on to settle into something pleasing at the very least and achingly beautiful at the best moments.

From "Tilt" onwards, Walker has been steadily exploring areas of music that are farther and farther away from traditional song structure and melody.

Atonal music can seem the refuge of the melodically challenged. So when someone with the melodic gifts of Scott Walker goes down that road, it carries more weight for me. It's like Charlize Theron in "Monster". When you consider how she COULD have looked to play the part, how she COULD have portrayed herself, the invisible absence adds power. Scott Walker is simply no longer interested in traditional melody.

Many of his original fan base find this trend to be deliberately off-putting. They long for the killer combo of challenging lyrical content with impossible orchestral beauty.

But Scott Walker has other things in mind.

Take "SDSS14+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)" from last year's "Bish Bosch". I would post a link but it is almost twenty two minutes long. It opens with Walker's voice alone and then goes places that are so out there that they seem alien, past humanity. The difference between this and a normal song is like the difference between an episode of "Seinfeld" and Matthew Barney's "Cremaster" cycle.

I won't even attempt to describe the sounds. To really grasp what Walker is after, you must know the intellectual underpinnings that keep the song from collapsing in on itself. The SDSS14+13B in the title is actually the name/location of a brown dwarf, the "SDSS" standing for Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Zercon is the name of an actual human dwarf, a jester in the court of Attila the Hun. He is not a fictional character. His name is contained in records kept by Chinese emissaries sent to engage in diplomatic negotiations with Attila.

And "flagpole sitting" was a fad in the early 20th century where someone would make a platform on top of a flagpole and sit up there for as long as they could stand.

How are these three disparate things connected? Walker doesn't leave this to your imagination. In the liner notes to "Bish Bosch", he explains his thinking. Zercon is performing for Attila. The conditions are heinous. In spite of his exalted position, he is still exposing himself to derision and scorn with each performance, his master is one of the more brutal figures in history and any kind of escape to comfort is impossible.

Zercon, while enduring taunts and jeers,through his imagination attempts to raise himself out of the Hell on earth he is trapped in. He projects himself forward in time, searching for a higher position. He manages to locate the early 20th century, becoming a flagpole sitter. But here too he must endure the taunts of onlookers so he projects himself higher and higher. Eventually his despair propels him so high that he is transformed from a human dwarf into a brown dwarf.

But the irony is that brown dwarves are stars that have cooled to the point that they no longer emit light. Or, in other words, they are dead. His attempt at escape, while spectacularly successful in a variety of ways, is ultimately his undoing.

So now that you've been properly warned, here is a link to a youtube video of the whole song in all of its twisted glory.

Scott Walker's "SDSS14+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)".