Interview

Melody Maker - 5th July 1969
By Sammy Glick

I HAD been warned that Scott Walker was to execute one of his World Famous disappearing tricks and so an excursion to Wembley studios, where the ghosts of Cathy McGowan and Vicki Wickham clank moaning through ancient Ready Steady Go! sets, was organised.

There he sat with furrowed brow, an island unto himself in one corner of the studio, picking at his guitar while Joe Brown hovered nervously on the periphery of the studio crowd. It has been said by no less a person than the man himself that he would not recognise a hit single if he bumped into it and so it was that, once interred in the dressing room, I asked how he came to choose “The Lights of Cincinatti”?

“If my memory serves me well and it never does, it was shortly before I going away to Greece,” said Scott. “It the night before I left and Johnny Franz and my manager had been up all night with it and all the people from Philips were going, ‘Oh yeah’ and ‘Crazy.’ Everyone was so gung-ho and anxious to get a record out at last I said ‘Fine put it out... Don’t bother me. Get out of my face. Rebop and I split! It was such an obvious prefabricated piece of work and everyone had been saying to me for so long ‘Do something really obvious Scott So I thought I would.

“I have always always maintained that if I did do something like this it would not happen because it was me doing it. If it is a big hit then I was wrong and they were ‘right.

“I had to have a single out because it puts you in demand as a performer and puts your price up. To tell you the truth, I wanted to write my own single but everything I came up with they said was no good and not commercial enough.”

Manager Maurice King who had been sitting sulking in one corner of the room for some minutes could be heard rumbling like distant thunder, “I’m writing his next single!”

To all intents and purposes it would appear that for the first time in Scott Walker’s uncompromising career, he is giving a little more consideration to what be believes his audience want to hear and little less to what he wants to sing.

For consideration and compromise some people are unfortunately reading “hypocrisy” but he maintains that there is little or no compromise of his own musical standards on his new Scott album, Scott Sings Songs From His TV Series.

“The songs on album are by the new really worthwhile writers who have written some very good music. Because there are a few critics on the pop scene who are determined to make an art form out of pop music there is no reason why this music should be ignored. For me the entire album is an exercise, if anything. People have been saying for ages that Scott Walker is a singer of standards so let’s see if he can sing them. So I did it. Whether I did them well or not is a subject for the critics. I don’t exclude critics, so I’ll have to await their verdict.”

Without doubt, Scott Walker’s severest critic is himself and by his own standards he falls far short of his ideals. Has his progress during the few years he has been a solo singer been entirely satisfactory?

“No, in my own opinion I have failed dismally! said Scott. “At first I thought everyone was going to catch on very quickly but it didn’t happen that way. “The plan that I originally had failed dismally so I just plodded on in my own lazy manner. I just have to keep trying that’s all.

“I have no real yardstick for success because I am doing something which is entirely my own thing and I have nothing to compare it with.

“I am not the only one singing standards nor the only one making singles, but I am the only one making albums like Scott III and writing like I write. I’m the only one into my particular kind of writing-singing thing.”

Comparatively, I suppose Scott III was unsuccessful compared to Scott II, which was a number one album. A friend of mine who is an authority on my music says that it was because the melody lines were too long and everything was in 3/4 time and it took a lot of listening to.

“A lot of people seem to believe that you should not have to sit down and make a conscious effort to enjoy something. I believe it is the wrong attitude - there is some music which just demands this kind of attention and if you are not prepared to make that effort then you will never appreciate it. My music is not instantaneous, but in years to come the small number of people who have bothered to listen to my music should feel that I have made some kind of effort which was worthwhile in retrospect.”

It has been suggested that Scott’s tremendous application to musical detail may in fact be the very thing which is holding him back as a composer and that he is too involved with the technique to see the product objectively:

“There are a number of ways to compose but that degree of concentration is my way. I can’t be objective about my music but I can’t just scribble something out and dish it out to my public. I suppose as long as the end product is there it doesn’t matter if we have to get drunk, stoned or go to bed with someone, as long as the end product is there it’s valid.

The beautiful thing about composing popular music at present is that there seems no set way of going about it - except in the Top Twenty single charts - so I figure if their way can work so can my way!”

Meanwhile rumbling like thunder…