With the iPod on shuffle earlier I was treated to an amazing piece of music called "Clara". It's from Scott Walker's last album The Drift and is as far removed from the dreamy 60's sound of "Make It Easy On Yourself" as it's possible to be. Actually The Drift is about as far removed from ANY other sort of music as it's possible to be...
Anyway, it made me think back to the extraordinary evening I spent at the Barbican Theatre watching, experiencing Scott's songs back in 2008. This is what I wrote about it then. Can't really add anything to it now, apart from saying that I can't imagine ever topping that evening in terms of the sheer theatricality of what was presented and utterly astounding reaction it provoked in the theatre.
Drifting And Tilting –
The Songs Of Scott Walker
Barbican Theatre 14/11/08
Well it was certainly an experience. One that I’ve never had before, and I’m certain will never have again.
The performance was undoubtedly the oddest theatrical presentation I’ve ever witnessed and am ever likely to witness, and for the most part I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was full of jaw dropping moments – of which more later – and some stunning vocal performances. The staging and lighting was extraordinarily good, and the sound in the theatre was superb too.
The audience was comprised of plenty of people like me, some teenagers, and a large proportion of late middle aged women – almost certainly Scott devotees from the 1960s. I sincerely hope they’d been keeping up with Scott’s work over the past 30 years otherwise they’d have had a nasty shock! This was about as far you can get from the symphonic pop of "The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore" or the AOR rock of "No Regrets".
I took my seat, in the centre of the third row, and was confronted with a massive metal wall blocking the stage entirely. There was a projection onto the black metal – the words ‘Drifting And Tilting - The Songs Of Scott Walker’ moved randomly over the huge wall, as if the Mysterons were trying to contact us.
Right on time, the wall divided with part of it folding down into the orchestra pit and the top half moving up into rafters. Down in the pit a full orchestra was assembled and on stage we were confronted with bare boards, a small band (drums, bass, guitar, keyboards, percussion) on a cramped riser in the centre at the back of the stage, hemmed in on both sides by what seemed like tall brick walls. Centre stage at the front was Jarvis Cocker – bearded, wearing a dark suit (and Kraftwerkian red shirt with black tie), standing reading a newspaper. "Cossacks Are" began, a row of spotlights at the back of the stage momentarily blazed out into our eyes (something that happened a few other times through the night) and Jarvis solemnly intoned the lyrics as if reading them from the paper. It was rather a shock to hear someone else singing Scott’s lyrics to be honest, and I’m not sure that Jarvis was entirely the right person for this song. He’s too much his own character. But the band was excellent, recreating the song perfectly, and Jarvis’ vocals were excellent on the ‘chorus’ parts where he sang unaccompanied "Cossacks are charging in…" etc. The opening number ended with the lights suddenly switched off and a lone drum beat continuing through the darkness. No one clapped (no one dared...) as the drum beat ominously continued.
Screens were dropped onto the stage, opaque to allow some light through, and projections to be used. Various screens would be used throughout the evening, to huge effect, and these represented some of the cleverest aspects of the staging.
Gavin Friday began singing "Jesse" – although perhaps a little histrionic, this was a very effective performance. The band and orchestra were phenomenal and a foreboding atmosphere permeated the whole theatre. Friday was in front of a screen which stretched from floor to ceiling. Behind him was a shadow of an Elvis-like figure. For a while the shadow copied Friday’s movements then, freakily, the shadow began to move independently. Then the shadow grew, gradually taller and taller until the figure filled the height of the screen. Obviously this was done with clever lighting but it was really quite eerie. Then the shadow morphed into a huge oblong, a coffin perhaps, or a grave… And at the end, the massive black rectangular shape divided into Twin Towers, as Friday sang without any backing, that he was the only one left alive - over and over, almost sobbing out the lyrics. Stunning performance, but even this was dwarfed by what came next.
Again, with no applause the stage changed in the darkness. The band was now shrouded by opaque curtains, an apparent dead body at the stage right, a woman lay contorted in the centre and ropes, looking like nooses, draped all around. A percussionist stood at the front beating time as "Clara" began. A suited man leaned over the body with an old fashioned movie camera. The ‘body’, opera singer Owen Gilhooly, sang most of the song like this – flat on his back pretending to be a corpse with his image, via the camera, projected onto a huge screen! Clara’s part was sung by Dot Allison from behind the drapes next to the band - she was excellent. And another opera singer, Nigel Richards, took some of the later lines. Throughout the song however, the contorted woman in the centre of the stage (as Clara) danced. Sometimes beautifully, sometimes as if in a trance, sometimes as if having some sort of fit and sometimes, brilliantly, as if she was hanging on the end of a rope. It was all most disconcerting, and at one point it seemed as if she was moving in reverse, as if film had been reversed – really astonishing, her movements were incredible, an amazing piece of choreography.
But most amazing of all was the pig thumping.
Hanging upside down by its feet, a pig carcass hung at stage left and a boxer, stripped to the waist, pummeled it. His boxing gloves must have had contact mics in them as the thumping and thudding was relayed through the PA as possibly the most disturbing percussion effect I’ve ever heard. It was all quite astonishing. When this started to happen there was an audible gasp from the audience. I had no idea this effect (which was of course used on the record) would actually be recreated on stage and I was genuinely stunned. It was fascinatingly horrid, but somehow entirely appropriate for the song.
Finally the song finished and once more the audience sat in silence. In fact no-one applauded at all until the very end of the evening. It was as if no-one wanted to puncture the oppressive atmosphere that had been carefully built up.
The next piece, "Patriot", took place on a bare stage again. A fat man wearing tights covered in butterflies, big y-fronts and a stocking over his head came waddling on stage. The audience was baffled by this weird appearance. He was played by actor Philip Herbert (possibly best known as Julian Clary’s cheery assistant Hugh Jelly) and he proceeded to mime what appeared to be the story of a drunk strangely chasing bit of newspaper which were ‘flown’ across the stage by puppeteers. As an accompaniment to "Patriot" I thought it seemed rather out of place despite being very entertaining and impressive. It was, in fact, the only bit of light relief all night. The flute and drums bit was played by masked musicians who stalked very slowly across the stage. Quite what they represented I have no idea. The music on this beautiful song was, as expected, very lovely indeed and a welcome respite from the previous two scary pieces. The vocals were beautifully handled, offstage, by the two opera singers Gilhooly and Richards.
But after this we moved into darker territory as a massive tree made from old wire coat hangers appeared in the middle of the stage. Dot Allison stood on its flat metal base to sing "Buzzers", which started with the radio snippets about Milosevic and then a man at the side of the stage began hitting some sort of metallic shape, creating the unsettling rhythmic dinging heard throughout the song. As the song progressed two dancers appeared from either side walking very slowly backwards across the width of the stage. They wore just loin cloths and their heads were covered by a sheet which lengthened into a long horizontal line of sheeting stretching across the whole stage. It was, again, very clever but rather disconcerting. Superb singing from Ms Allison.
Another screen dropped at the front of the stage as a grid like pattern was projected, almost like rows of windows. Nigel Richards appeared in a disheveled suit, torn, no shoes, looking like a vagrant, staggering around at the front of the stage whilst "Jolson And Jones" was pounded out, very loudly. He sang the bizarre lyrics like a man possessed, and for no obvious reason put a blindfold on himself halfway through. At times footage of booted feet walking very slowly down cellar steps was projected onto the screens. This, for some reason, was very ominous. And of course he sang of punching donkeys in the streets of Galway. Probably, out of all the songs, this was the hardest one to get through. The noise, the intensity of the singing was almost overwhelming.
"Cue" was next – an operatic / musical theatre singer called Michael Henry took centre stage with opaque screens in front of and behind him. What seemed to be fireflies darted all around him – it was entrancing - and these gradually coalesced into an eerie spectral mist which was very realistic. Very clever indeed. There was little other movement for the lengthy duration of this piece but it absolutely held your attention. What a superb singer he was, really powerful and emotionally affecting as he sang of the eerie flugelman and the awful disease he seems to bring. And then of course there were the ‘bam bam bam bam’ bits. At those points the band riser at the back of the stage was illuminated to show two huge wooden crates, behind which the two percussionists each held an enormous concrete block. They created the ‘bam bam bam bam’ with a massively loud echoing noise as they pounded the blocks onto the wooden boxes. One of the concrete blocks actually began to disintegrate during the last round of bashing and bits of concrete flew off in all directions. Terrific stuff – it was, unexpectedly, absolutely thrilling!
The final piece of this eighty minute performance was "Farmer In The City". Two men, in suits, stood at either side of the stage front, a screen with various Italianesque images (including a team photo of (I believe) the Lazio football team) behind them. They wore worrying masks with what seemed like soil faces and tall grass for hair. Quite disturbing looking, to be honest.
As Gilhooly and Richards sang "Do I hear 21… 21… 21…." from offstage the brain-grass men mimed as if they were auctioneers, pointing weirdly into the audience. All very odd. Damon Albarn, wearing green wellies, took his place behind a lectern and sang the verses. He was surprisingly effective, and didn’t sing in his usual rather weedy voice at all. Still not as good as Scott of course, and I think I’d have preferred "Cue"s superb vocalist Michael Henry to have sung this one too, but on the whole Damon did a pretty fine job. The orchestral backing here was beautiful, powerful, deeply emotional. A really strong performance from everyone and a good choice as an almost triumphant final song.
The stage went dark, the audience was still silent, then all the screens went up to reveal the ‘cast’ in line taking bows, Jarvis and Damon in the middle. They all left and returned in pairs to receive even more applause, with the dancers getting a deservedly huge cheer and that was it. No sign of Scott on stage.
Scott Walker was there however, manning the sound desk at the back of the auditorium, a tall, thin man in jeans, t-shirt and blue baseball cap pulled down low. I knew it was him and after the performance noticed quite a few people getting autographs and shaking his hand. He seemed happy for this to happen, despite his reportedly reclusive nature, so I made my way back intending to meet The Man, but I got just two seats away before security ushered me, and a gaggle of middle aged ladies away, saying that the auditorium had to be cleared. Oh well.
It had been quite a night. A lot of people were impressed judging from the comments I heard. Annie Nightingale said to her companions that she’d never seen anything like it, many people were saying "wow" and variations thereof, but others were making comments of the "what a load of pretentious nonsense" variety. OK so it WAS pretentious – incredibly so – but so what? I wouldn’t have expected anything otherwise. The staging and attention to detail was incredible. The performances were first rate, and the music was astonishing – plus the sound in the theatre was crystal clear. In many respects I finally understood the songs whilst experiencing them live. A track like "Cue" had always dragged a bit on record, and was not one which I liked very much. Hearing / seeing it live has changed my opinion completely. Likewise "Clara" which was always impressive and probably the dark heart of The Drift album, but which seemed still more powerful live; more emotional, more expressive and I will always remember the incredible dancing. The Drift now seems like a much more complete piece of work to me, the themes more apparent after seeing this performance.
The press reviews have been rather ambivalent. Slightly grudging respect is the order of the day it seems. Clearly most of the reviewers were not fans of the recent Walker output, and most write as if they were not personally very impressed, whilst admitting that the show did contain an undeniable power and a sort of horrible beauty. They all, of course, focus on the pig punching and barely mention the more impressive and moving parts of the staging and singing, which ends up giving the impression that the evening was a bit of a freakshow. This is regrettable as the show wasn’t all that bizarre really. Avant garde maybe, pretentious yes, individual, totally original and utterly unique, yes yes yes! But it was way more than just the punching of a pig plus Jarvis and Damon popping up – which is the impression that most of the press reviews give.
The beautiful horror of Scott’s music and lyrics was brilliantly brought to vivid life and created memorable and astounding images which I, frankly, will never forget.
A truly remarkable evening.
Anyway, it made me think back to the extraordinary evening I spent at the Barbican Theatre watching, experiencing Scott's songs back in 2008. This is what I wrote about it then. Can't really add anything to it now, apart from saying that I can't imagine ever topping that evening in terms of the sheer theatricality of what was presented and utterly astounding reaction it provoked in the theatre.
Drifting And Tilting –
The Songs Of Scott Walker
Barbican Theatre 14/11/08
Well it was certainly an experience. One that I’ve never had before, and I’m certain will never have again.
The performance was undoubtedly the oddest theatrical presentation I’ve ever witnessed and am ever likely to witness, and for the most part I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was full of jaw dropping moments – of which more later – and some stunning vocal performances. The staging and lighting was extraordinarily good, and the sound in the theatre was superb too.
The audience was comprised of plenty of people like me, some teenagers, and a large proportion of late middle aged women – almost certainly Scott devotees from the 1960s. I sincerely hope they’d been keeping up with Scott’s work over the past 30 years otherwise they’d have had a nasty shock! This was about as far you can get from the symphonic pop of "The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore" or the AOR rock of "No Regrets".
I took my seat, in the centre of the third row, and was confronted with a massive metal wall blocking the stage entirely. There was a projection onto the black metal – the words ‘Drifting And Tilting - The Songs Of Scott Walker’ moved randomly over the huge wall, as if the Mysterons were trying to contact us.
Right on time, the wall divided with part of it folding down into the orchestra pit and the top half moving up into rafters. Down in the pit a full orchestra was assembled and on stage we were confronted with bare boards, a small band (drums, bass, guitar, keyboards, percussion) on a cramped riser in the centre at the back of the stage, hemmed in on both sides by what seemed like tall brick walls. Centre stage at the front was Jarvis Cocker – bearded, wearing a dark suit (and Kraftwerkian red shirt with black tie), standing reading a newspaper. "Cossacks Are" began, a row of spotlights at the back of the stage momentarily blazed out into our eyes (something that happened a few other times through the night) and Jarvis solemnly intoned the lyrics as if reading them from the paper. It was rather a shock to hear someone else singing Scott’s lyrics to be honest, and I’m not sure that Jarvis was entirely the right person for this song. He’s too much his own character. But the band was excellent, recreating the song perfectly, and Jarvis’ vocals were excellent on the ‘chorus’ parts where he sang unaccompanied "Cossacks are charging in…" etc. The opening number ended with the lights suddenly switched off and a lone drum beat continuing through the darkness. No one clapped (no one dared...) as the drum beat ominously continued.
Screens were dropped onto the stage, opaque to allow some light through, and projections to be used. Various screens would be used throughout the evening, to huge effect, and these represented some of the cleverest aspects of the staging.
Gavin Friday began singing "Jesse" – although perhaps a little histrionic, this was a very effective performance. The band and orchestra were phenomenal and a foreboding atmosphere permeated the whole theatre. Friday was in front of a screen which stretched from floor to ceiling. Behind him was a shadow of an Elvis-like figure. For a while the shadow copied Friday’s movements then, freakily, the shadow began to move independently. Then the shadow grew, gradually taller and taller until the figure filled the height of the screen. Obviously this was done with clever lighting but it was really quite eerie. Then the shadow morphed into a huge oblong, a coffin perhaps, or a grave… And at the end, the massive black rectangular shape divided into Twin Towers, as Friday sang without any backing, that he was the only one left alive - over and over, almost sobbing out the lyrics. Stunning performance, but even this was dwarfed by what came next.
Again, with no applause the stage changed in the darkness. The band was now shrouded by opaque curtains, an apparent dead body at the stage right, a woman lay contorted in the centre and ropes, looking like nooses, draped all around. A percussionist stood at the front beating time as "Clara" began. A suited man leaned over the body with an old fashioned movie camera. The ‘body’, opera singer Owen Gilhooly, sang most of the song like this – flat on his back pretending to be a corpse with his image, via the camera, projected onto a huge screen! Clara’s part was sung by Dot Allison from behind the drapes next to the band - she was excellent. And another opera singer, Nigel Richards, took some of the later lines. Throughout the song however, the contorted woman in the centre of the stage (as Clara) danced. Sometimes beautifully, sometimes as if in a trance, sometimes as if having some sort of fit and sometimes, brilliantly, as if she was hanging on the end of a rope. It was all most disconcerting, and at one point it seemed as if she was moving in reverse, as if film had been reversed – really astonishing, her movements were incredible, an amazing piece of choreography.
But most amazing of all was the pig thumping.
Hanging upside down by its feet, a pig carcass hung at stage left and a boxer, stripped to the waist, pummeled it. His boxing gloves must have had contact mics in them as the thumping and thudding was relayed through the PA as possibly the most disturbing percussion effect I’ve ever heard. It was all quite astonishing. When this started to happen there was an audible gasp from the audience. I had no idea this effect (which was of course used on the record) would actually be recreated on stage and I was genuinely stunned. It was fascinatingly horrid, but somehow entirely appropriate for the song.
Finally the song finished and once more the audience sat in silence. In fact no-one applauded at all until the very end of the evening. It was as if no-one wanted to puncture the oppressive atmosphere that had been carefully built up.
The next piece, "Patriot", took place on a bare stage again. A fat man wearing tights covered in butterflies, big y-fronts and a stocking over his head came waddling on stage. The audience was baffled by this weird appearance. He was played by actor Philip Herbert (possibly best known as Julian Clary’s cheery assistant Hugh Jelly) and he proceeded to mime what appeared to be the story of a drunk strangely chasing bit of newspaper which were ‘flown’ across the stage by puppeteers. As an accompaniment to "Patriot" I thought it seemed rather out of place despite being very entertaining and impressive. It was, in fact, the only bit of light relief all night. The flute and drums bit was played by masked musicians who stalked very slowly across the stage. Quite what they represented I have no idea. The music on this beautiful song was, as expected, very lovely indeed and a welcome respite from the previous two scary pieces. The vocals were beautifully handled, offstage, by the two opera singers Gilhooly and Richards.
But after this we moved into darker territory as a massive tree made from old wire coat hangers appeared in the middle of the stage. Dot Allison stood on its flat metal base to sing "Buzzers", which started with the radio snippets about Milosevic and then a man at the side of the stage began hitting some sort of metallic shape, creating the unsettling rhythmic dinging heard throughout the song. As the song progressed two dancers appeared from either side walking very slowly backwards across the width of the stage. They wore just loin cloths and their heads were covered by a sheet which lengthened into a long horizontal line of sheeting stretching across the whole stage. It was, again, very clever but rather disconcerting. Superb singing from Ms Allison.
Another screen dropped at the front of the stage as a grid like pattern was projected, almost like rows of windows. Nigel Richards appeared in a disheveled suit, torn, no shoes, looking like a vagrant, staggering around at the front of the stage whilst "Jolson And Jones" was pounded out, very loudly. He sang the bizarre lyrics like a man possessed, and for no obvious reason put a blindfold on himself halfway through. At times footage of booted feet walking very slowly down cellar steps was projected onto the screens. This, for some reason, was very ominous. And of course he sang of punching donkeys in the streets of Galway. Probably, out of all the songs, this was the hardest one to get through. The noise, the intensity of the singing was almost overwhelming.
"Cue" was next – an operatic / musical theatre singer called Michael Henry took centre stage with opaque screens in front of and behind him. What seemed to be fireflies darted all around him – it was entrancing - and these gradually coalesced into an eerie spectral mist which was very realistic. Very clever indeed. There was little other movement for the lengthy duration of this piece but it absolutely held your attention. What a superb singer he was, really powerful and emotionally affecting as he sang of the eerie flugelman and the awful disease he seems to bring. And then of course there were the ‘bam bam bam bam’ bits. At those points the band riser at the back of the stage was illuminated to show two huge wooden crates, behind which the two percussionists each held an enormous concrete block. They created the ‘bam bam bam bam’ with a massively loud echoing noise as they pounded the blocks onto the wooden boxes. One of the concrete blocks actually began to disintegrate during the last round of bashing and bits of concrete flew off in all directions. Terrific stuff – it was, unexpectedly, absolutely thrilling!
The final piece of this eighty minute performance was "Farmer In The City". Two men, in suits, stood at either side of the stage front, a screen with various Italianesque images (including a team photo of (I believe) the Lazio football team) behind them. They wore worrying masks with what seemed like soil faces and tall grass for hair. Quite disturbing looking, to be honest.
As Gilhooly and Richards sang "Do I hear 21… 21… 21…." from offstage the brain-grass men mimed as if they were auctioneers, pointing weirdly into the audience. All very odd. Damon Albarn, wearing green wellies, took his place behind a lectern and sang the verses. He was surprisingly effective, and didn’t sing in his usual rather weedy voice at all. Still not as good as Scott of course, and I think I’d have preferred "Cue"s superb vocalist Michael Henry to have sung this one too, but on the whole Damon did a pretty fine job. The orchestral backing here was beautiful, powerful, deeply emotional. A really strong performance from everyone and a good choice as an almost triumphant final song.
The stage went dark, the audience was still silent, then all the screens went up to reveal the ‘cast’ in line taking bows, Jarvis and Damon in the middle. They all left and returned in pairs to receive even more applause, with the dancers getting a deservedly huge cheer and that was it. No sign of Scott on stage.
Scott Walker was there however, manning the sound desk at the back of the auditorium, a tall, thin man in jeans, t-shirt and blue baseball cap pulled down low. I knew it was him and after the performance noticed quite a few people getting autographs and shaking his hand. He seemed happy for this to happen, despite his reportedly reclusive nature, so I made my way back intending to meet The Man, but I got just two seats away before security ushered me, and a gaggle of middle aged ladies away, saying that the auditorium had to be cleared. Oh well.
It had been quite a night. A lot of people were impressed judging from the comments I heard. Annie Nightingale said to her companions that she’d never seen anything like it, many people were saying "wow" and variations thereof, but others were making comments of the "what a load of pretentious nonsense" variety. OK so it WAS pretentious – incredibly so – but so what? I wouldn’t have expected anything otherwise. The staging and attention to detail was incredible. The performances were first rate, and the music was astonishing – plus the sound in the theatre was crystal clear. In many respects I finally understood the songs whilst experiencing them live. A track like "Cue" had always dragged a bit on record, and was not one which I liked very much. Hearing / seeing it live has changed my opinion completely. Likewise "Clara" which was always impressive and probably the dark heart of The Drift album, but which seemed still more powerful live; more emotional, more expressive and I will always remember the incredible dancing. The Drift now seems like a much more complete piece of work to me, the themes more apparent after seeing this performance.
The press reviews have been rather ambivalent. Slightly grudging respect is the order of the day it seems. Clearly most of the reviewers were not fans of the recent Walker output, and most write as if they were not personally very impressed, whilst admitting that the show did contain an undeniable power and a sort of horrible beauty. They all, of course, focus on the pig punching and barely mention the more impressive and moving parts of the staging and singing, which ends up giving the impression that the evening was a bit of a freakshow. This is regrettable as the show wasn’t all that bizarre really. Avant garde maybe, pretentious yes, individual, totally original and utterly unique, yes yes yes! But it was way more than just the punching of a pig plus Jarvis and Damon popping up – which is the impression that most of the press reviews give.
The beautiful horror of Scott’s music and lyrics was brilliantly brought to vivid life and created memorable and astounding images which I, frankly, will never forget.
A truly remarkable evening.
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