30 Century Man, Or How Scott Walker Stole My 2012

I have always been drawn to the fringe, to the almosts, to the trailblazers who never got their commercial due. In most of these cases, the artist toiled in near obscurity, plying their trade for a small but rabid fan base who felt that their champion was unjustly overlooked by the masses. The best example of this is The Replacements, who, if critical praise were album sales, would be in the same league as The Beatles or The Rolling Stones. But somehow the public never caught on, leaving a strange question mark hovering over their output. Early in 2012 I stumbled across a documentary on Netflix titled "Scott Walker: 30 Century Man". I had never heard of Scott Walker, or The Walker Brothers, the band he led in the 1960's. The Netflix notes used words like "mystery", "enigma", and "reclusive" to describe Walker. I had literally NEVER heard his name before, let alone a song. My curiosity was engaged and I decided to watch. To give you an idea of the impact this film had on me, I now own everything Scott Walker has ever made, except for a film score he composed in 1999 and a 1972 album that has gone out of print which can only be bought on vinyl for hundreds of dollars. Walker has prevented the album from being reissued because it came at the beginning of a period he calls his "lost years". Very quickly, however, it became clear to me that Scott Walker was hardly an almost, hardly unappreciated commercially, hardly obscure. In fact, the opposite was true. He was at the center of a kind of fame that very few have ever experienced. We Americans simply never heard about it. His fame was contained, held on the island, eternally British. Scott Walker, however, was not British. Scott Walker was born in Hamilton, Ohio in 1943. And his name wasn't Scott Walker. His name was Noel Scott Engel. I should say his name IS Scott Walker because he is alive and well and living in London. In fact, Scott Walker just released his fourteenth full-length album, Bish Bosch, in December of last year. How did Noel Engel American teenager become Scott Walker British legend? "Scott Walker: 30 Century Man" tells the tale.