scott

Scott Walker made four almost perfect records between 1967 and 1969 called simply Scott, Scott 2, Scott 3 and, you guessed it, Scott 4.

The Walker Brothers weren't brothers, and none of their surnames were Walker. Nonetheless during 1965 and 1966 they had more members in their fanclub than the Beatles did in theirs. You would imagine that the three young Americans would have loved this state of affairs, and two of them did. But while Gary and John embraced the pop star lifestyle, hanging out at the coolest clubs and bars with the Rolling Stones and the like, Scott hated all this. An early 1967 tour with the Walkers headlining over Jimi Hendrix just proved to Scott how out of step the band had suddenly become. Hendrix managed to blow the Walkers offstage most nights just by the sheer power of his music - so much so that setting fire to his guitar seemed somewhat unnecessary. After that sort of histrionic stage display the Walkers' act now seemed rather staid. So they simply called it a day. 

Scott was now free to pursue a more esoteric style of music. But he was still constrained by the needs of his managers and his record label to produce hits. Scott Walker would have preferred to sing Jacques Brel covers and hide in the dark, but as one of the biggest pop stars of the day, he simply wasn't allowed to fade away like that. Scott was also pretty lazy, and frequently he was quite content to be led into recording songs just because his team said they'd be good. But regardless of the material Scott was simply unable to give a bad performance. Even the flimsiest of songs turned into a dramatic affair once it was sung by Scott's majestic reverb drenched baritone. 

His first solo record, called simply Scott, was an odd mixture. There was the middle of the road crooner direction that his managers wanted to push him into (both the smooth Jack Jones, and the slightly sexier Tom Jones were suggested as role models for Scott, who simply shuddered at the thought), but there was also the edgier side of Scott, the side that relished the seedy drunken tales of Belgian writer Jacques Brel and he managed to get a handful of Brel songs onto each of his first three albums. Perhaps the more syrupy, middle aged, MOR material was the trade off for being allowed to release Brel songs...

Of the Brel tracks "Mathilde" is perhaps the easiest, a brash and stomping whirl of a track. "My Death" however is the opposite, tucked away at the end of side one after perhaps the most MOR track on the album. The cloying sentimentality of "When Joanna Loved Me" does nothing to prepare the listener for the existential angst of "My Death". Both this song and the album closer "Amsterdam" were borrowed by David Bowie who used them in his early 1970s live sets (and in remarkably similar arrangements too). Of the MOR standards that peppered the album, "Angelica" is the most impressive, partly because the lyrics aren't far from those that Scott himself was writing, and partly due to Reg Guest's beautiful arrangement. Tim Hardin's "Lady Came From Baltimore" hints at a folky / country direction that Scott would actually take up a few years later with decidedly mixed results, though this track is lovely.

But there was also a third element, one which, over the next few albums, gradually took over. Scott blossomed into a formidable songwriter in his own right. He'd already contributed a handful of startlingly good songs to the Walker Brothers, though their singles were always carefully picked 'safe' songs, rather than Scott's kitchen sink dramas. But now, on his own, he could bring these mini dramas to the fore. On Scott there are just three self penned tracks, but every one is a masterpiece. "Always Coming Back To You" is perhaps the slightest of the three, continuing the delicate sound of the Walkers' "Genevieve" written by Scott a year earlier. In amongst the delightful arrangement Scott sings his tale of loss with such understated emotion that it's genuinely heartbreaking. And the delivery of the line 'We'd find we'd missed our bus, so we'd laugh, kiss, what the hell...' brings a lump to my throat every time I hear it.

But it's "Montague Terrace (In Blue)" and especially "Such A Small Love" that cement Scott's reputation for writing hugely dramatic, heartbreakingly sad songs. In the former, the poetic lyrics (check out the graphically striking imagery of 'the window sees trees cry from cold, and claw the moon' for instance) illustrate the gulf between the reality and the dream home of a young couple. The orchestra is held in check on the delicately pretty verses but is unleashed in force on the yearning choruses - 'we'll dream won't we?' sings Scott with such passion and emotion. It's brilliantly arranged by Wally Stott and recorded with precise clarity by Johnny Franz, two men who were vital to the shape and sound of Scott's first few records. 

"Such A Small Love" is one of my all time favourite songs. It manages to mix drunken despair, longing and loss with utter euphoria and hope for the future in such a stunning manner that I'm left breathless every time I hear it. It is full of remarkable touches that carry the listener from the very first highly strung note of the violin to the giddy inebriated conclusion less than five minutes later. I think it's about a funeral and the devastating loss of a friend as the narrator has a rush of memories of the good times and looks forward to when the hurt will lessen. But ultimately the kaleidoscope of images are far more important that the precise meaning. The verses are underpinned by slightly eerie sustained strings, but as with "Montague Terrace" the choruses surge forward like a tidal wave of emotion and excitement. The confusion of imagery as the song actually speeds up towards it's conclusion is astonishing - 'midnight mornings drenched in dago red' mixes Scott's love of cheap Spanish wine with everyone's memories of mornings after the night before; 'drunken madmen nights, ending up in jail' hints at incredible adventures and brings us back to Scott's love of seedy romanticism. Musically this song is near perfect, but it's Scott's peerless delivery that makes this song absolutely perfect. The listener is completely swept along with Scott's evocation of euphoric carefree youth, and his sudden switch to regret and a sense of loss with the last lines of 'perfumed pillows of girls that clung so near, such a small love, such a little tear...' is heartbreaking beyond belief.

Scott's utter command of his voice is something all his collaborators have remarked upon over the years, yet it's something that Scott has generally dismissed. Scott seemed to think that making records and singing on stage ought to be much harder than he found it, and he frequently commented that he had little faith in his singing voice. He continued with singing lessons throughout the 1960s and often felt that others had better range and control. But what makes Scott stand high above most other singers is his effortless ability to inhabit every song, to bestow every track with a different emotion, to create a whole new world with every new vocal. 

While Scott is perhaps the most varied of his first four albums, it is also closest in sound to the Walker Brothers' records and betrays a cautiousness on the part of Scott's management to allow him to depart too far from a tried and tested (and clearly very successful) formula. As Scott's independence grew, so did his ability to project more of himself onto his records. Having said that, the self penned material (and by extension, the Brel songs) on Scott display a remarkable and unique talent, and in "Such A Small Love" we already have one of Scott's finest ever songs.

Scott 2 would follow fairly rapidly, but that's another story...