OK : begin.
Tell us what you know.
Some coffee first: a little coffee?
NO coffee. BEGIN!
There are a lot of things people forget about Scott Walker, such as –
Stumble.
There are a lot of records you pretty much just keep for the sake of keeping; then there are –
Blank.
(Sigh)
There are a lot of ‘classic’ (i.e. ageing) rock groups where all is ego and restriction. The bass player only plays what he plays and hasn’t listened to anything new in two decades; the drummer is really only interested in salmon farming and collecting china pigs; the singer thinks he’s Stooges era Iggy reborn but he’s nearer Danny La Rue. Such bands continue to tour the world, but the worlds they encompass narrow to the size of a major chord or two, and the most pedestrian of lyrics ... (rock-and-roll-must-never-die).
There are a lot of ways Scott Walker might have gone and this is one of them: into showbiz purgatory, yet another bogus man trolling the world like a pale Xerox ghost of himself, before an ensemble of the best session musicians money can buy, maybe even a ‘triumphant return’ at Glastonbury, the midday sun spearing his eyes and his soul up for grabs as he drags up from absent depths the debris of a long ago hit, a song he must carry around like an overweight angel, a devil on one shoulder whispering in his ear DO IT, DO IT, cash in on the public interest, the re-issued you, all the nostalgia of a trumpet of Alpert, a ridiculously ersatz & anachronistic man child for the cameras, all the cameras …
(Begin - again! No more looking backwards…)
There are a lot of things people forget about Scott Walker; journalists use words like mysterious and reclusive but is this really so? Draw up an honest profile of Scott Walker (based on the several things we know for sure about what he likes, how he lives, what he doesn’t like: that he prefers home to limelight, say, European poetry and philosophy to tabloid blether and TV, experimental or classical music to craven pop) and you might find yourself looking at somebody very much like … yourself. How strange is that?