A If You Go Away
B Two Ragged Soldiers

by Scott Walker
Released: May, 1969. Label: Philips

If You Go Away was released as a single in Japan two months after the release of Walker’s third album, Scott 3, with Two Ragged Soldiers as its B-side. Walker’s version is an adaptation of Jacques Brel’s 1959 chanson, Ne Me Quitte Pas, by American poet Rod McKuen. Before Walker’s version, it had already been recorded in English by Shirley Bassey, Dusty Springfield and Frank Sinatra.

The melody in its middle section, in which Walker sings “if you stay, I’ll make you a day/like no day has been or will be again” is based on a melody from composer Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6. Two Ragged Soldiers is a Scott Walker original, about a friendship between its titular characters, who “laughed through a war that they couldn’t see/laughed for a world filled with fantasy”.

Credits

A. If You Go Away

Written By Jacques Brel, Rod McKeun
Arranger Peter Knight

B. My Death

Written By Scott Engel
Arranger Wally Stott