scott walker in the 1970s

After his run of brilliant 1960s records Scott Walker seemed to give up songwriting for most of the 1970s. His voice was still strong, always impressive, but there's an over-riding feeling that Scott was simply going through the motions.

 

Having said that there are some gems to be found. These early 1970s albums are mostly unloved and overlooked for a fairly good reason – on the whole they are very much the poor relations of Scotts 1 – 4 and are generally MOR slush and/or oddly anaemic soft country.

1972’s The Moviegoer is arguably the best. As the title suggests the tracks are all Scott’s interpretations of songs from film soundtracks, and on the whole they’re pretty good. We still have the wonderful Johnny Franz in charge of the strings and orchestral arrangements, and the overall sound isn’t too far removed from the lushness of Scott 3. We don’t have any Scott originals of course, which is a terrible shame, but his vocals are superb, he sounds involved and committed and in general the standard is at least as high as ‘Til The Band Comes In. The opening "This Way Mary" is simply gorgeous and "The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti" is a terrific Western infused number. All in all, it’s a far better album than its reputation suggests.

By contrast 1973’s Any Day Now is probably the weakest. It’s not terrible, but there’s little that really stands out. The title track is all forced jollity which simply doesn’t work, and "Maria Bethania" is perhaps the worst track with Scott’s name on it - he sings in a weirdly cod-Jamaican accent which is hugely misguided. Things improve with the moody "Cowboy", a Randy Newman song that Scott interprets well, and towards the end of the record we have two tracks (Jimmy Webb’s "If Ships Were Made To Sail" and a lovely song called "We Could Be Flying") that hint at past glories with intriguing string arrangements and a more committed vocal. But the rest of the album is dominated by bored sounding covers of songs like "Ain’t No Sunshine" and "David Gates’ "If" – and in fact Telly (Kojak) Savalas actually did a better version a year or so later, which kind of demonstrates how poor Scott’s version is…

Scott put out another album later in 1973 – the country influenced Stretch. It’s a better album, and Scott seems keener on these country songs, but the song arrangements are sadly dull and ultimately rather forgettable, with only Scott’s peerless vocals to recommend them. Best track – a lovely version of another Randy Newman song, "Just One Smile", which reminds the listener just what a tremendous singer Scott is, while at the same time reminding the listener of how wasted this tremendous voice is, on such blandly presented material.

In 1974 we had another country styled album – We Had It All at least tried something new. Scott had discovered an up and coming country singer called Billy Joe Shaver, and four of the new album’s songs were by him. But Scott, being lazy, didn’t record the new songs until summer 1974, by which time Waylon Jennings, a man with infinitely bigger Country credentials, had issued an album of Shaver’s songs (including all the ones that Scott had chosen) called Honky Tonk Heroes. By the time of its release We Had It All simply came across as a poor man’s version of the very successful Waylon Jennings album, saddled with syrupy arrangements and uninteresting instrumentation. However, Scott still manages to rise above the blandness with a lovely version of Gordon Lightfoot’s standard "Sundown" and on all the songs his vocals are just perfect.

 

After this of course he rejoined John and Gary Walker in 1975 for the No Regrets album – an album with basically one staggeringly good song and a bunch of really weak filler. The sheer power of the superb title track bludgeons the rest of the album into the dirt. They followed this a year later with Lines which was generally a better overall record, though with no real standout tracks.

 

And then, just as it looked like the Walker Brothers would fade out into ignominious obscurity they issued the bizarre Nite Flights in 1978. For the first time in ages the album was newly composed: four supremely dull John Walker songs, two bland Gary Walker songs and four new Scott Walker tracks of astounding originality.

 

The new Scott tracks were like nothing he'd ever written before. Taking the sound of Bowie's "Heroes" as a starting point, Scott's songs for Nite Flights are startlingly futuristic. Gone is the cloying sentimentality of the past, gone are the romantic strings, gone is that swoonsome baritone voice. Instead we have harsh guitars, pounding drums, a foghorn of a vocal style and lyrics that are, frankly scary. The title track is a nightmarish melange of visceral imagery - "the dark dug up by dogs / the stitches torn and broke / the raw meat fist - you choke" - what it all means is anyone's guess, but it creates terrifying mood. This was a whole new Scott Walker, uncompromising, doing things entirely his own way. It sets the template for much of the rest of Scott’s career.

 

The crowning glory of Scott's four songs is "The Electrician" - musically it switches from high shimmering strings which create an extremely uneasy air, to an incongruous mariachi sound in the middle of the song. The vocal is assured, confident and commanding. The lyrics, when they can be deciphered at all, seem to concern torture in South America. It's both utterly beautiful and absolutely terrifying - a description that can be used for virtually every track in Scott's later career.  

 

An EP of just the brilliant Scott tracks was issued alongside the album, and - sorry John and Gary - this is really all you need. 

magic & loss - lou reed / avenue b - iggy pop

Further to my list of Lou Reed favourites I forgot to mention that one of my Reed Rediscoveries has been his 1992 album Magic And Loss. It's a series of songs about ageing and death, in places reflecting directly on the deaths of a couple of his close friends. 

It's an album that really didn't grab me when it was first released. I was only 25, and, I suppose, too young to fully comprehend what Lou was singing about. Back then, to me the album was something of a downer, sung by a man who was only 50 but was clearly looking ahead and seeing darker times, facing up to his mortality. It's not something you want to consider at 25. And so it's an album that has been very rarely played since. But now, perhaps alarmingly, it all makes a lot more sense to me. The moods, the emotions, the whole approach - now I can see where he's coming from, and where he's going, too. The title track concludes the album in a wonderfully moving manner, and ends with the utterly brilliant line:

"There's a little magic in everything, and then some loss, to even things out."

And frankly I never heard a truer statement.  

Magic And Loss prompted me to dig out another album that reflects heavily on ageing and loss, Iggy Pop's Avenue B. In 1998 Iggy found himself alone for the first time in years. His wife had left the previous year, and Iggy, then hitting 50, had embarked on some ill-judged affairs with much younger women. None of which brought him happiness, just more grief. So he retired to his apartment on Avenue B in New York, called in a couple of musician friends and recorded Avenue B, a predominantly acoustic album (because much of it was recorded in either his apartment or his guitarist's apartment and they couldn't turn things up or the neighbours would've complained!) Many of the songs were autobiographical, and were interspersed with instrumental passages over which Iggy would intone a few short narratives. The extremely moody opening one goes:

It was in the winter of my fiftieth year when it hit me.
I was really alone.
And there wasn't a hell a lot of time left.
Every laugh and touch that I could get became more important.
Strangely, I became more bookish, and my home and study meant more to me as I considered the circumstances of my death. 
I wanted to find a balance between joy and dignity on my way out.
Above all, I didn't want to take any more shit.
Not from anybody.

Interestingly, I 'got' this album immediately. I was 32 when it was issued, but the ageing process and the loss of youth, looks and energy that Iggy touched on seemed somewhat more relevant to me than Lou's requiems to dead friends had seemed, just seven years earlier. I, too, have become more bookish as I've got older, and I'm also becoming more determined not to take any more shit - not from anybody.

goodbye lou

So it's a few months on from the death of Lou Reed and find myself returning to his music more than I'd usually do. Everyone has their favourites and here's some of mine.

 

I was hugely irritated by many of the reports of Lou's passing. Whilst I was actually quite surprised at how widely his death was reported, I was equally not that surprised by the huge inaccuracies in many of the reports. Just a day after Lou had slipped away the Daily Mail ran a feature that basically said Lou Reed ("a heroin addict for most of his life") was directly responsible for a great many people's drug habits, the evil old git. Never mind that he'd been sober, teetotal and drug free since 1982, which surely constitutes 'most of his life' , but, my god, the man was barely cold. Nice one Daily Mail.

And all the obituaries and stories of Lou Reed's life went on about "Satellite Of Love", or "Perfect Day", or "Walk on the Wild Side" as if these were the only songs he'd ever recorded. Well, yes these are terrific songs, rightly called classics, but they were recorded more than 40 years ago and he's done hundreds of other songs before and since, many of which were, surprisingly, as good or sometimes better than songs on the Transformer album. In fact, Lou Reed made many other albums after Transformer, but you wouldn't know it from the news reports…

So here's a brief list of absolutely brilliant Lou Reed songs that no-one else would bother to mention, but which I think sum up the great man rather better than endless mentions of "Satellite Of Love".

"I'm Set Free" from the third Velvets album. Gorgeous ballad, and the most emotional guitar solo I've ever heard. It actually sounds like the guitar is crying.

"I'm Sticking With You" - Mo Tucker's innocent vocals and Lou and Doug's tender harmonies at the end all add up to what is surely the sweetest and most delightful song he ever wrote. Shame it never got a proper release.

"Caroline Says II" from Berlin - frankly ALL of Berlin should be on this list, but this second "Caroline Says" is equal parts heartbreak and faint hope. The numbed out pain that Caroline is going through, in an abusive relationship that she's trying to freeze out, is astonishingly starkly realised. But she turns a small corner with the realisation that "you can hit me all you want, but I don't love you any more". As the second side of Berlin progresses the terrible fate of Caroline is laid bare in all it's stark horror. But it's still an amazing album.

"Ennui" from Sally Can't Dance, no-one's favourite Reed album. This weary track sounds almost like a Berlin leftover, and contains one of my absolute favourite lines ever - the marvellously bitter "one day you'll have a wife... and then alimony...."

"A Gift" - surely one of Lou's funniest songs ever. Coney Island Baby was a concerted effort to make a marketable album, full of songs that could be played on US radio. (OK, maybe not the frankly disturbing "Kicks", but most of them...) Here Lou pokes sly fun at his image, with his tongue so far into his cheek that I don't how he could sing at all! "I'm just a gift to the women of this world... after you've had me then you know you've had the best"

"You Wear It So Well" from Rock And Roll Heart. Moody, piano led ballad, which contains a faint air of desperation and a cracking vocal from Lou which rests uneasily between control and disintegration. The wobbly backing vocals are terrific too.

"Coney Island Baby" - the live version on Take No Prisoners. Probably my favourite Lou Reed track ever. The power of the 1978 band takes your breath away, and there's a weird beauty in this track. The way he really belts out the end of the song - "the glory of love" - is so very emotional. He sings himself hoarse, but it's so very heartfelt.

"Stupid Man" - no idea why I like this track much. No-one much likes The Bells, but it contains some of Lou's most unusual and quirky songs. This is catchy, almost commercial, and Lou even sings it, rather than his usual speaking drawl of a voice. I also love the bizarre soundscapes, out of tune trumpets and the incomprehensible lyrics of the title track.

"How Do You Speak To An Angel?" I have a soft spot for 1980's Growing Up In Public. Anyone else? Thought not... Lots of amusing story songs, that are mostly, but not exclusively about his life. This one is wonderful, the portrait of a tongue-tied young man unable to speak to girl of his dreams is very deftly drawn. And the jazzy backing makes a nice change.

"NYC Man" from Set The Twilight Reeling. Much of Lou's output since Songs For 'Drella hasn't really spoken to me in the same way that albums like Street Hassle, or Berlin did. But 1996's Set The Twilight Reeling has a number of high points, and this one stands head and shoulders above the others. Pretty much a manifesto for his life, there's some neat horns, and a lovely melancholy mood on this shuffling celebration of his home town. The next year Bowie introduced Lou on stage as the King Of New York, and that's as good a description of Lou Reed as you'll ever hear.

Bye Lou. And thanks for all the music.
 

white light / white heat - velvet undergound

Well, the new White Light / White Heat remaster. What a noise!

 

As expected, it's a mixed bag. With very little previously unheard material to work with the surprises are few and far between. 

 

I'll start off with the live set from the Gymnasium in April 1967. Most dedicated VU fans will already have this, as it's been bootlegged for years. The sound quality, to these ears, isn't noticeably any different from my existing bootleg, so it's ok sound for 1967, but is still rather harsh. Sadly there are still a number of minor volume fluctuations - these must've been on the original tapes, but it’s odd that these haven't been smoothed out. It's not much, I'll probably do it myself in CoolEdit, so it's a little annoying that they've not been dealt with properly. And the new version also misses out some of the between song tuning and silences, which makes the Velvets sound a little more polished on stage due to the lack of protracted gaps. The only real difference between the boots and the new version is the inclusion of "The Gift", which to my knowledge has never appeared on any of the boots. Sadly, it's just the instrumental, and isn't actually all that interesting on it's own… 

 

The Stereo version of WL/WH sounds, to me, to be the same as the master prepared in the mid 1990s for the Peel Slowly And See set, which is the one used on subsequent issues. To be honest, there's so little to work with in terms of polishing the sound that it must be virtually impossible to make any sonic improvements to the murk and distortion that was laid down in 1967. And to do so, kind of misses the point. But the stereo disc offers some nice surprises towards the end. 

 

The bonus tracks, those remaining Cale-era tracks familiar from Another View and VU in the 1980s are much better than on previous releases. These are all labelled 'original mix' and this confirms what many had long suspected - that the VU and Another View tracks had been quite extensively remixed to prepare them for release back then. You can immediately hear the difference on "Guess I'm Falling In Love". Still only an instrumental, but the version here is now obviously part of the WL/WH sessions, rather than the much cleaner, bouncier mix that we have on Another View. The 80s mix gave it that drum heavy 80s plastic sheen. Not here - it's all scuzzy and sweaty and far more exciting. And how good is that fuzzed up guitar! The differences on the two versions of "Hey Mr Rain" are less obvious, the viola is a bit higher in the mix, and "Temptation Inside Your Heart" sounds pretty much the same as before to me, but "Stephanie Says" is remarkably different. Some of the viola work sounds different and some of the backing vocals are very different, not as sweet, with different lines and harmonies, to the extent that I wonder if the VU version had received some fresh overdubs in 1985? There's an alternative mix of "I Heard Her Call My Name" which has differences in the instrumentation levels, but nothing too significant. It's labelled as a different take, but it's clearly just the same version that we're all used to, albeit with the rhythm track boosted and the skull splitting guitar a little less lethal. Finally we get a 1968 Cale version of "Beginning To See The Light" which is interesting, though it's a bit lacklustre and nowhere near as good as the finished version recorded at the end of the year with Doug Yule. 

 

The Mono disc contains the mono single mixes of the title track and it's b-side "Here She Comes Now", and you'd have to have better ears than mine to identify what makes them different from the mono albums mixes. We have the vocal version and the instrumental version of "The Gift" which are simply the discrete tracks mixed to mono. The story on it's own sounds very strange, and it really misses the music track. But it's good to hear the grinding backing track on it's own (though I had the story running in my head the whole time!). But the album itself in mono is terrific. I really didn't think this would be so good. I like the weird stereo effects on the original album, the way that voices fly in and out, the split on "The Gift" etc etc. But there are vagaries in the mix, and some elements get a bit lost over there or over here. In mono there's none of that. It hits you between the eyes and like Marsha's sheet metal cutter, it goes right through the centre of your head. There's not much in the way of different instrumentation like you sometimes get between stereo / mono mixes. But the sheer power of the band comes through loud and clear - well not that clear, it's a horrible mess of noise, but you know what I mean. The initial rush of the title track has never sounded better. "The Gift" works better than I thought it would too. The vocals on "Lady Godiva" aren't quite as distracting in mono - I seemed to focus more on the music, and what a mesmerizingly dreamlike track it is. "Here She Comes Now" - here's an odd thing. The percussion is much clearer in mono - to be honest I'd never noticed the percussion before - it's there on the stereo mix of course, but I'd never paid it any attention. Here, it's much clearer, and it's very good. Mo was a much better drummer than people ever gave her credit for. Side two though is the absolute bizniz. "I Heard Her Call My Name" is an amazing track anyway, but in mono it seems so much more relentless than ever with That Guitar firing out of the speakers to decimate your ears. In stereo you can hear where it's coming from, in mono there's nowhere to hide, it just attacks you from everywhere, all at the same time. If you look up the word relentless in the dictionary then you ought to be pointed towards "Sister Ray". My goodness, what a song. Again, as with "I Heard Her Call My Name", it's absolutely vicious. The song almost collapses under the strain of  Cale's organ slugging it out with Lou's guitar in sort of Godzilla v King Kong battle to the death. But, astoundingly, "Sister Ray" staggers on to survive 17 solid minutes of distortion and utter hell. The fearsome crackling that underpins much of the music on the this album points to the sheer amount of volume that the band were using, and it genuinely gives the impression that the equipment was actually on fire and burning up! 

 

So, the box set is good, but it's very expensive for just 3 cds, and I wouldn't say it was really worth the money. There is a two disc version, the stereo disc plus the live set - not the mono disc, which in my opinion, is probably the best part. 

 

Finally, some random thoughts about the creation of "The Gift". Stick with me on this and see what you think. Since the very beginning it's been acknowledged that "The Gift" came about when Lou's story was married to an instrumental called "Booker T". All Velvets fans know this. In 1990 John Cale issued the album Paris S'Eveille which contained a track recorded at the Gymnasium in April 1967. This was the first time this tape was known about, and came from Cale's personal archive. All very exciting, except that the track, called "Booker T" by Cale, is clearly not the same tune as on "The Gift". With this new issue of the whole Gymnasium gig we can see for the first time that the show begins and ends with two longish instrumentals. The end track IS clearly the same tune as on "The Gift" and the opening one is the one called "Booker T". But, perhaps, when Cale was preparing Paris S'Eveille he dug out his old tape and used the wrong instrumental - ie: perhaps the track now labelled "The Gift" on the live show was in fact referred to as "Booker T" by the Velvets at the time, and the opening jam was actually called something else. Certainly the closing instrumental would not have been called "The Gift" at this early stage as we are months ahead of Lou's story being attached to this music. So could the confusion actually all be down to Cale mislabelling or misremembering the title of an instrumental jam? 

 

This was the last release that Lou Reed had a hand in creating. Seems somehow fitting that it's such a stunning mess of noise, distortion and leakage. And that's stunning in its most literal definition ie, it actually stuns you. There's very little else you can do while WL/WH is playing. Although having said that - the instrumental track for "The Gift" is great for walking to - perfect tempo for a decent stroll. 

 

But on the whole it's an overwhelming album, hard and harsh and nasty and unpleasant and violent - it has a similar effect to the Stooges' Raw Power as it basically grabs you by the throat and pins you to the wall. It's also very very loud. WL/WH is an assault on the senses. This is rock music, or whatever you want to call it, at it's most violent and most extreme. By quite some distance.

 

 I hope that we get a 45th anniversary issue of the third VU album. There is already the regular mix and the 'closet' mix, plus I'm sure there's a mono version out there. It would be great if all the VU / Another View tracks could be included too, especially if they are as sympathetically restored as the ones here. I would guess that the 45th anniversary releases would end there as Loaded was on another label, and anyway, is there anything else that wasn't already on the Fully Loaded reissue from a few years ago? 

 

What I would love would be a decent reworking of the VU 1969 Live double album. I wonder if the masters could be found? Even back in 1974, when this set was first compiled, a large number of the tracks were taken from acetate discs, which had been created some years earlier as back ups, rather than from the actual tapes. So maybe the original tapes had been lost 40 years ago? Who knows, but it would be superb if a decent reissue could be created from this stuff. If only, if only, if only... 

discreet music - brian eno

Eno's Discreet Music was recorded one afternoon in May 1975. It's a series of tape loops of the same few notes played a varying speeds and pitches, overlaid on each other for just over half an hour. This was the maximum that Eno could fit onto one side of an LP. 

The original intention was that the music would used as a mood at the upcoming series of gigs that Eno had lined up with Robert Fripp. The guitarist would solo rhapsodically over the discreet music. 

Later that year Eno decided that, as he'd been using the music as a background to reading, perhaps others might like it too. So it became side one of his new album, on his newly created label - Obscure Records. This piece usually gets played very quietly, as the background ambience it was intended to be. But play it loud and it takes on a whole new air. It's utterly absorbing and you find yourself listening intently for the subtle differences as the loops of notes keep repeating in ever changing combinations. Really rather marvellous. 

Then we have the spellbindingly lovely side 2 - the three variations on Pachelbel's Canon. Again, played quite loudly into my earphones these are stunning pieces of music. I love the way each piece seems to drift further from the original score. It's mesmerising and almost dreamlike as the sounds swirls around your head. The gradual disintegration of the music was achieved by giving the musicians only some excerpts from the full score. They were told to repeat their sections and then to gradually slow the tempo whenever they felt ready. Eno had a version of the original piece on an album recorded by a French orchestra. The sleeve notes had been badly translated into English and the titles of Eno's three movements were directly lifted from these inaccurate translations. 

Interestingly the Pachelbel pieces were recorded at the same time, September 1975, and using the same musicians, as Gavin Bryars' astonishing "Sinking Of The Titanic". Play "Titanic" followed by side 2 of Discreet Music - they flow together extremely well, both have the same hazy dreamlike quality, like hearing music through gauze, or, indeed, underwater... The strings on "Titanic" swim around your head, lapping at your ears as you slip beneath the cold icy waves of the North Atlantic. It's a stunning work. There've been a couple of re-recordings of "Titanic" over the years, but as with most remakes, they're simply not as good as the 1975 original. In particular they lack, to my ears at least, the incredibly haunting qualities of the original. 

"Titanic" and Bryars' gorgeous "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet" were the reason that Eno set up Obscure Records in the first place. He couldn't believe that no-one else wanted to issue these two pieces and so he set up his own label specifically to do that. "Titanic" was the first Obscure release, issued at the same time as Bryars' and John Adams' Ensemble Pieces and Eno's Discreet Music.  

There are only 10 Obscure releases, the last being Harold Budd's Pavilion Of Dreams. Obscure 11 was prepared, but at the last minute Eno changed his mind and decided that he'd start a new label. So Music For Airports' subtitle was hastily changed from Obscure 11 to Ambient 1. Early pressings apparently still have OBS11 scratched into the run-out grooves… Other Obscure related trivia - the original version of Music From The Penguin Café was credited to Simon Jeffes. It was only on later reissues, after Jeffes realised that he was actually onto something, that the Penguin Café Orchestra properly came into being. 

But that's a story for another day...