Scott Walker (singer)

Noel Scott Engel (January 9, 1943 – March 22, 2019), better known by his stage name Scott Walker, was an American-British singer-songwriter, composer and record producer who resided in England. Walker was known for his emotive voice and his unorthodox stylistic path which took him from being a teen pop icon in the 1960s to an avant-garde musician in the 21st century. Walker's success was largely in the United Kingdom, where his first four solo albums reached the top ten. He lived in the UK from 1965 onward and became a UK citizen in 1970.

Rising to fame in the mid-1960s as frontman of the pop music trio the Walker Brothers, he began a solo career with 1967's '' Scott'', moving toward an increasingly challenging style on late-1960s baroque pop albums such as ''Scott 3'' and ''Scott 4'' (both 1969). After sales of his solo work started to decrease, he reunited with the Walker Brothers in the mid-1970s. From the mid-1980s onward, Walker revived his solo career while moving in an increasingly avant-garde direction; of this period in his career, ''The Guardian'' said "imagine Andy Williams reinventing himself as Stockhausen". Walker's 1960s recordings were highly regarded by the 1980s UK underground music scene, and gained a cult following.

Walker continued to record until 2018. He was described by the BBC upon his death as "one of the most enigmatic and influential figures in rock history".

Life and career

Early life

Noel Scott Engel was born on January 9, 1943, in Hamilton, Ohio, US, the son of Elizabeth Marie (Fortier), who was from Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and Noel Walter Engel. His father was an oil industry manager whose work led the family to successive homes in Ohio, Texas, Colorado and New York. Engel and his mother settled in California in 1959. Engel was interested in both music and performance and spent time as a child actor and singer in the mid to late 1950s, including roles in two Broadway musicals, ''Pipe Dream'' and ''Plain and Fancy''. Championed by singer and TV host Eddie Fisher, he appeared several times on Fisher's TV program. Engel cut some records including one named "Misery", which saw him briefly promoted as a teen idol.

Upon his arrival in Los Angeles, Engel had already changed both his taste and his direction. Interested in the progressive jazz of Stan Kenton and Bill Evans, he was also a self-confessed "Continental suit-wearing natural enemy of the Californian surfer" and a fan of European cinema (in particular Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini and Robert Bresson) and the Beat poets. In between attending art school and furthering his interests in cinema and literature, Scott played bass guitar proficiently enough to get session work in Los Angeles as a teenager.

In 1961, after playing with the Routers, he met guitarist and singer John Maus, who was using the stage name John Walker on a fake ID to enable him to perform in clubs while under age. The two formed a band, Judy and the Gents, to back John Walker's sister Judy Maus, before joining other musicians to tour as the Surfaris (although they did not play on the Surfaris' records). In early 1964, Engel and John Walker began working together as the Walker Brothers, later in the year linking up with drummer Gary Leeds whose father financed the trio's first trip to the UK.

1964–1967: The Walker Brothers

As a trio, the Walker Brothers cultivated a glossy-haired and handsome familial image. Prompted by Maus, each of the members took "Walker" as their stage surname. Scott continued to use the name Walker thereafter, with the brief exception of returning to his birth name for the original release of his fifth solo album ''Scott 4'', and in songwriting credits. Initially, John served as guitarist and main lead singer of the trio, with Gary on drums and Scott playing bass guitar and mostly singing harmony vocals. By early 1965, the group had made appearances on TV shows ''Hollywood A Go-Go'' and ''Shindig'' and had made initial recordings, but the start of their real success lay in the future and overseas.

While working as a session drummer, Leeds had recently toured the United Kingdom with P.J. Proby, and persuaded both John and Scott to try their luck with him on the British pop scene. The Walker Brothers arrived in London in early 1965. Their first single, "Pretty Girls Everywhere" (with John still installed as lead singer) crept into the charts but did not place highly. Their next single, "Love Her" – with Scott's deeper baritone in the lead – was a more substantial chart hit and he became the group's frontman.

The Walker Brothers' next release, "Make It Easy on Yourself", a Bacharach/David ballad, went to No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart (number 16 on the U.S. charts) on release in August 1965. After hitting again with " My Ship Is Coming In" (number 3 UK), their second No. 1 (number 13 U.S.), " The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Any More", shot to the top in early 1966; shortly thereafter their fan club grew to contain more members than the official fan club of the Beatles. Although this is no indication that their actual fan base was larger than that of the Beatles, the Walker Brothers, especially lead singer Scott, attained pop star status.

Finding suitable material was always a problem. The Walkers' 1960s sound mixes Phil Spector's "wall of sound" techniques with symphonic orchestrations featuring Britain's top musicians and arrangers, notably Ivor Raymonde. Scott served as effective co-producer of the band's records throughout this period (alongside their named producer, Johnny Franz and engineer Peter Oliff), later described as a "parallel, if invisible Walker Brothers." Many of their earlier numbers had a driving beat, but with the release of their third album, ''Images,'' in 1967 ballads predominated.

By 1967, John Walker's musical influence on the Walker Brothers had waned (although he sang lead on a cover of "Blueberry Hill" and contributed two original compositions), which led to tensions between him and Scott. At the same time, Scott was finding the group a chafing experience: "There was a lot of pressure. I was coming up with all the material for the boys, and I was having to find songs and getting the sessions together. Everyone relied on me, and it just got on top of me. I think I just got irritated with it all." Artistic differences and the stresses stemming from overwhelming pop stardom led to the break-up of the Walker Brothers the same year, although they reunited briefly for a tour of Japan in 1968.

1967–1974: Solo work

For his solo career, Walker shed the Walker Brothers' mantle and worked in a style clearly glimpsed on ''Images''. Initially, this led to a continuation of his previous band's success. Walker's first four albums, titled '' Scott'' (1967), '' Scott 2'' (1968), ''Scott 3'' (1969), and '' Scott: Scott Walker Sings Songs from his TV Series'' (1969), all sold in large numbers, with ''Scott 2'' topping the British charts.

During this period, Walker combined his earlier teen appeal with a darker, more idiosyncratic approach (which had been hinted at in songs like "Orpheus" on the ''Images'' album). While his vocal style remained consistent with the Walker Brothers, he now drove a fine line between classic ballads, Broadway hits and his own compositions, and also included risqué recordings of Jacques Brel songs (translated by Mort Shuman, who was also responsible for the hit musical ''Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris''). Walker's own original songs of this period were influenced by Brel and Léo Ferré as he explored European musical roots while expressing his own American experience and reaching a new maturity as a recording artist.

Walker continued to grow as a producer. In 1968 (during the brief Walker Brothers reunion and tour of Japan), he produced a single with the Japanese rock group the Carnabeats, featuring Gary Walker on vocals. Upon his return to the UK, he produced a solo album for the Walker Brothers' musical director and guitarist Terry Smith. In 1968, Walker also produced ''Ray Warleigh's First Album''. According to Anthony Reynolds, " arleigh'salbum, recorded on December 13 and released in the following year, had little in common with the more esoteric progressive jazz that Scott was digging at the time, and the result veered more toward pleasantly middle-of-the-road muzak than the jazz fusion just around the corner." In 1968, Scott Walker also produced John Maus's solo single "Woman".

Walker's own relationship with fame, and the concentrated attention which it brought to him, remained a problem for his emotional well-being. He became reclusive and increasingly distanced from his audience. In 1968 he threw himself into an intense study of contemporary and classical music, which included a sojourn in Quarr Abbey, a Catholic Benedictine monastery in Ryde on the Isle of Wight, to study Gregorian chant, building on an interest in lieder and classical musical modes.

At the peak of his fame in 1969, Walker was given his own BBC TV series, ''Scott'', featuring solo Walker performances of ballads, big band standards, Brel songs and his own compositions. Archival footage of the show is extremely rare as recordings were not conserved. However, audio selections from the show were released in 2019 as the box set ''Live on Air 1968-1969''. In later interviews Walker has suggested that by the time of his third solo LP, a self-indulgent complacency had crept into his choice of material. His fourth solo album, '' Scott: Scott Walker Sings Songs from his TV Series,'' exemplified the problems he was having in failing to balance his own creative work with the demands of the entertainment industry and of his manager Maurice King, who seemed determined to mould his protégé into a new Andy Williams or Frank Sinatra. Despite the failure of the ''Scott'' TV show, the aforementioned companion LP ''Scott: Scott Walker Sings Songs from his TV Series'' was a commercial success, reaching the top 10 of the UK Albums Chart - Walker's last album to do so.

Having parted company with King, Walker released his fifth solo LP – ''Scott 4'' – in 1969. Compensating for his recent dip into passivity, this was his first record to be made up entirely of self-penned material. The album with songs from the TV series was deleted soon after. It has been speculated that Walker's decision to release ''Scott 4'' under his birth name of Scott Engel contributed to its chart failure. All subsequent re-issues of the album have been released under his stage name. As Sean O'Hagan wrote in ''The Guardian'', "Now recognised as one of his greatest recordings, it sold poorly. The world was not ready for the existentialist musings of a pop singer whose touchstones were the films of Kurosawa and Bergman and the novels of Kafka and Camus."

Walker then entered a period of self-confessed artistic decline, during which he spent five years making records "by rote, just to get out of contract" and consoling himself with drink. His next album, '' 'Til the Band Comes In'' (1970), showed a pronounced split between its two sides. Side A featured original material (mostly co-written with new manager Ady Semel) while side B consisted almost entirely of cover versions. Subsequent releases saw Walker revert to cover versions of popular film tunes and a serious flirtation with country music. ''The Moviegoer