Scott Walker dead at 76 – Pop idol who shunned fame to make music from dead pigs and farts has passed away
IN the mid Sixties, Scott Walker had the world at his feet as one third of The Walker Brothers. Adored for their teen idol looks and hits The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore and Make It Easy On Yourself, they were, for a while, bigger than The Beatles. Yet, for the influential Scott, whose death […]
IN the mid Sixties, Scott Walker had the world at his feet as one third of The Walker Brothers.
Adored for their teen idol looks and hits The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore and Make It Easy On Yourself, they were, for a while, bigger than The Beatles.
Yet, for the influential Scott, whose death aged 76 was announced yesterday, darkness was not far away — in his music and his private life.
He hated the fame, the fans and the pressure of superstardom so much that he called time on the band at their peak, having tried to escape it all by using drugs, holing himself up in a monastery and attempting suicide.
But with the four solo albums that followed the break-up of The Walker Brothers — they were not siblings or called Walker — the reluctant pop star became one of the most influential figures in music.
On Scott, Scott 2, Scott 3 and Scott 4, released between 1979 and 1969, he left the sunshine pop of his band to embrace gloomier musical experimentation in a way that inspired the likes of David Bowie, Jarvis Cocker, Brian Eno, Nick Cave and Radiohead.
Radiohead’s Thom Yorke yesterday said the “kind, gentle outsider” would be much missed.
The poet Ian McMillan described his “unforgettable” voice as being like “a cathedral lit by a sunset”.
Noel Scott Engel, as he was born in Ohio, US, grew up an only child, whose dad, Noel Sr, an army lieutenant, split from his mum Betty when their son was just six.
A sporty child, Scott adored Bing Crosby and began singing in charity shows when he was four.
He performed on Broadway and built a small fan club when he started releasing records as a teenager with a slicked-back, James Dean haircut.
‘EVERYONE WAS OUT TO DESTROY MY LIFE’
He joined forces with musicians John Maus and Gary Leeds, now 77, to form The Walker Brothers, who were dubbed America’s Beatles and took the UK by storm when they moved here in 1965. He lived in Chiswick, West London, until his death.
Their official UK fan club even grew to contain more members than that of the Fab Four. But coming just as quick as the hysteria was the toll it would take on the then 22-year-old.
Scott said: “It was a very bad period. I thought everyone was trying to destroy my life.
“I had this idea that the press were people who misquoted me, fans were the ones who would not stop ringing my phone, smashing my door and making me move flats.”
Scott relied on Valium and sleeping pills to cope with his paranoia. He dabbled with cocaine and tried marijuana but abandoned it because it hurt his throat.
In August 1966 he tried to kill himself, but was saved when the obsessive fans outside his apartment that he had been so desperate to escape alerted the authorities. He later reflected: “Pressure wasn’t the only reason.
“Nobody has the right reasons. I don’t remember a thing.”
Later that year he escaped to Quarr Abbey, on the Isle of Wight. He intended to spend ten days taking part in Gregorian chanting. But even a monastery provided no escape.
BECOMING A SOLO ACT
He said: “We had obsessive fans and they discovered the monastery and they were ringing the bell the whole time.
“We were plagued, and eventually I had to leave.”
The Walker Brothers split in 1967 but Scott went on to sell millions of records as a solo act, even though the BBC banned his first single, Jackie, for its references to drugs and “phoney virgins”.
Scott topped Best Male Singer polls and his self-titled BBC late-night show trounced Tom Jones’s rival ITV series.
I had this idea that the press were people who misquoted me, fans were the ones who would not stop ringing my phone, smashing my door and making me move flats.
Scott Walker
It was even rumoured that iconic entertainer Andy Williams offered him £1.5million to turn him into the “new Frank Sinatra” in the US, but Scott was not interested.
While there was no doubting the influence of his four solo back-to-back albums, the final one, Scott 4, did not live up to the commercial hype of the previous records and failed to chart.
The response sent Scott spiralling into booze and depression. On the orders of his record company he returned to making more commercial records but became more disillusioned with the music industry.
He said: “I was acting in bad faith for many years during that time. I was trying to hang on. I should have stopped. I should have said, ‘OK, forget it’ and walked away.
“I started going downhill, imbibing a little too much of everything.
“I think I did temporarily go crazy, because I don’t remember the period at all very well.”
Intensely private, even his former bandmates knew little of Scott’s love life prior to his long-term relationship with Dane Mette Teglbjaerg.
John Maus, who died in 2011, had said: “Scott never got into discussing his personal life, relationships or girlfriends. Aside from commenting about some attractive woman we’d all seen, he kept his thoughts about the ladies to himself.”
In 1972 he and Mette welcomed daughter Lee. The couple married the following year in Las Vegas, but the relationship did not last.
‘THERE’S DARKNESS IN EVERYTHING I DO’
A loner, Scott insisted he was not a recluse, but a solitary type, saying: “I like people but sometimes I can’t wait to get away and be on my own again.”
In the late Seventies The Walker Brothers reformed and put out three more albums.
But it was not long before Scott disappeared into obscurity again after apparently becoming enraged by an out-of-tune trumpet while performing with his band on a cabaret tour in Birmingham. He never sang live again.
He released several albums, written by others, which failed to chart and which he described as “middle-of-the-road dross”. Much of the next few years was “sat in pubs watching guys play darts”.
I like people but sometimes I can’t wait to get away and be on my own again.
Scott Walker
He said: “I thought, this is going to turn round if I just hang in long enough, and it didn’t. It went from bad to worse.”
His revival came in 1984, with his album Climate Of Hunter, but then there was not another one for 11 years, and, afterwards, another gap of more than a decade.
His music went in strange directions and he used ever more bizarre methods in the studio.
One song, Clara, from 2006’s The Drift, involved a percussionist repeatedly punching a slab of pork as a drum. Scott, who never listened to his own records, explained that he “needed an undercurrent of violence and that came into my head” and added: “There’s darkness in everything I do.”
Other compositions used dog barks, swords, a ram’s horn and even machetes — “the most dangerous things I’ve ever used to make music with,” he said
Even Scott believed his penultimate album, 2012’s Bish Bosch, was not one to listen to for hours on end.
“No! No! You’ll end up dead if you do that,” he told one reviewer.
There is a 21-minute-long song called SDSS1416+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter), while others include lyrics about sexual disease, brown dwarf stars, court jesters and dictators. The song Corps De Blah has a chorus of farting noises.
Tributes to the gentle outsider
THE music world united in grief for Scott Walker yesterday. Here are some of the tributes:
“So very sad. . . he was a huge influence on Radiohead and myself, showing me how I could use my voice and words. Met him once at Meltdown, such a kind, gentle outsider.”
Thom Yorke, Radiohead
“Last time I saw him, me, him and Richard Hawley had a pint and a glass of red after his Prom. He was in great spirits. This is a bleak morning but that’s nice to remember.”
Stuart Maconie, DJ and author
“He’s just not conventional; Scott was unorthodox. There’s a sort of richness to his voice that I don’t really think anyone else ever had, and when you met him, he was a much smaller frame than his voice, so there was that otherworldliness about him, too.
“His records are some of the most important ever, for me.”
Damon Albarn
“As a vocalist, at the height of his popularity, he was unsurpassable and influenced multiple generations as a result.”
David Sylvian, singer with Japan
“Absolutely saddened and shocked. He gave me so much inspiration, so much I owe to him and modelled on him, even down to my early Soft Cell haircut and dark glasses.”
Marc Almond, Soft Cell
“Another one of the greats gone.”
Stone Roses’ Mani
“The man with the mahogany voice”.
Midge Ure, Ultravox
“He influenced me greatly, not least in the style of my singing. Once I’d spent two or three years of my early 20s listening to virtually nothing else, I was never going to be able to sing with my own voice again.”
Neil Hannon, The Divine Comedy
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In his final years he produced Pulp’s final album, We Love Life, in 2001, was celebrated with a Proms concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall in 2017 and, last year, composed the score for Vox Lux, a musical drama starring Natalie Portman.
Much of his time, though, was spent out of the public gaze with long-term partner Beverly or doting on his granddaughter Emmi-Lee.
He said: “I’m an outsider, for sure. That suits me fine. Solitude is like a drug for me. I crave it.”
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