See you on the other side of midnight
Scott Walker died on my birthday. Not the day I was born - it was some 48 years later. It was today, in fact. Its a tenuous link and I'm clutching after nothing. But that's appropriate as Scott Walker was barely there. He was a mythological hero dreamed up by a collective sleep of reason, a vast and vaporous phantom. He flickers in black and white, a bent stick man with impossible teeth, his eyes a black mask, his voice a distant rumble from the mansions of Hades. That vibrato's probably still going. Later he was the most ill-at-ease chat show presenter since Harold Wilson, he was a barely conscious country singer, a notable absence and then the peculiar architect of abstract, industrial funk. There was another couple of decades of quiet, a Britvic advert, and finally a late career reinvention as a classical composer of mutated opera. No press, no public appearances, fleeting sightings of him on a bike or playing darts in the pub. A few gnomic interviews. Nothing concrete and nothing of the man himself. He was a baseless rumour and that's how myths happen.
What a strange man he was and how unlikely his story is. On his early records as Scott Engel, like "Too Young", his voice is girlishly high and the career long vibrato threatens choke him. He's a Fabian/Paul Anka kind of guy: a greased up quiff and a letterman sweater. By the time of his greatest commercial success he'd grown a mop top, his voice had dropped an octave, he'd changed his name and adopted two brothers. By the late seventies he was as far out there as it got, a voyager plunging into the infinite reaches of space, never knowing what he might meet.
Its the opposite of a career. Most people in the world of pop have said everything they have to say by the first three albums. They lose traction, they get desperate, they feel it slipping away, they revert to formula and they become their own tribute act. Scott, with his scarves and needle-cord jackets, was interested in Brel and existentialism at the height of his fame, retreating to a monastery to get away from his screaming fans and immersing himself in European cinema. That's not the kind of pop star that Bobby Gillespie could understand but it is still a pop star. White male pseudo-intellectual gloom pop started here. That might sound like a terrible idea but it describes almost all the music I listened to growing up and, while my tastes have broadened, I haven't thrown away all my childish things.
Scott is the all-father, the daddy of them all. He is the distant rumble from the top of the mountain, unknowable and ineffable. In many ways Bowie was his emissary on earth: funny, vital, and human where Scott was distant, frowning, shrugging. Did he have a sense of humour? It's hard to say - people trot out the "dragons of disgust" line from "The Old Man's Back Again" as evidence of his po-faced silliness, but I don't know. He may have been in on the joke. The song is subtitled "Dedicated to the neo-Stalinist regime" which is definitely funny, whether or not its meant to be. Does it matter if he didn't have a sense of humour? I quite like the idea of an non-ironic pop star. The world has enough cheeky chappies. I like that Scott has no time for nonsense - there are worlds to conquer.
I felt sad when Bowie died because Bowie was about life. He was vital, and his was an exemplary existence, stage managed to the end. He was dizzying and protean, dazzlingly agile, relentless and hungry. He was a vital spark.
Scott seems immortal. He was always far too big for this planet. His place is in the sky, rumbling and glowering. His work is timeless, inhumanly huge. The drum break on "Montague Terrace in Blue" is seismic, it the sound of tectonic plates shifting, of mountains tumbling into the sea.
Orpheus is home.
What a strange man he was and how unlikely his story is. On his early records as Scott Engel, like "Too Young", his voice is girlishly high and the career long vibrato threatens choke him. He's a Fabian/Paul Anka kind of guy: a greased up quiff and a letterman sweater. By the time of his greatest commercial success he'd grown a mop top, his voice had dropped an octave, he'd changed his name and adopted two brothers. By the late seventies he was as far out there as it got, a voyager plunging into the infinite reaches of space, never knowing what he might meet.
Its the opposite of a career. Most people in the world of pop have said everything they have to say by the first three albums. They lose traction, they get desperate, they feel it slipping away, they revert to formula and they become their own tribute act. Scott, with his scarves and needle-cord jackets, was interested in Brel and existentialism at the height of his fame, retreating to a monastery to get away from his screaming fans and immersing himself in European cinema. That's not the kind of pop star that Bobby Gillespie could understand but it is still a pop star. White male pseudo-intellectual gloom pop started here. That might sound like a terrible idea but it describes almost all the music I listened to growing up and, while my tastes have broadened, I haven't thrown away all my childish things.
Scott is the all-father, the daddy of them all. He is the distant rumble from the top of the mountain, unknowable and ineffable. In many ways Bowie was his emissary on earth: funny, vital, and human where Scott was distant, frowning, shrugging. Did he have a sense of humour? It's hard to say - people trot out the "dragons of disgust" line from "The Old Man's Back Again" as evidence of his po-faced silliness, but I don't know. He may have been in on the joke. The song is subtitled "Dedicated to the neo-Stalinist regime" which is definitely funny, whether or not its meant to be. Does it matter if he didn't have a sense of humour? I quite like the idea of an non-ironic pop star. The world has enough cheeky chappies. I like that Scott has no time for nonsense - there are worlds to conquer.
I felt sad when Bowie died because Bowie was about life. He was vital, and his was an exemplary existence, stage managed to the end. He was dizzying and protean, dazzlingly agile, relentless and hungry. He was a vital spark.
Scott seems immortal. He was always far too big for this planet. His place is in the sky, rumbling and glowering. His work is timeless, inhumanly huge. The drum break on "Montague Terrace in Blue" is seismic, it the sound of tectonic plates shifting, of mountains tumbling into the sea.
Orpheus is home.
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Lovely stuff, John. He talked quite a bit about his sense of humour in later interviews: there's one for The Wire where the interviewer is at pains to stress SW's joviality. It's all "Scott guffawed", and "giggling behind his baseball cap". OK, I'm exaggerating, but not much.
ReplyDeleteAt first I misheard the end of Orpheus as 'Drive a song round the bend', which is kind of what he did. Tremendous late work.