Interview

Melody Maker, 14 February 1976
by Colin Irwin

Scott Walker: No Regrets

Looking back, there are some things Scott Walker wanted to be different.

It’s only mid-after- noon, but the curtains are drawn and the lights are out. The room is in darkness and at first it looks empty. “Hi, man,” mumbles a shadow in the corner. Oh… er… hi… man.

Peering through the darkness, it gradually becomes evident that the shadow is wearing shades, is slumped low in his chair, and speaks in a soft, slow drawl that’s one hundred per cent American.

Scott Engel’s been back to the States just twice, briefly, during the last 11 years. He loathes the place, says he’s firmly Europeanised, yet still carries many characteristics of the popular image of the hip young American. Blue eyes, blond hair, six foot plus tall boyish looks… the pop idol lives!

Of the reunions that habitually occur in pop, the comeback of the Walker Brothers, was, perhaps, one of the most unexpected. Their reign, though dramatic enough, lasted barely 18 months back in 1965 and ’66 and a lot of peculiar things have happened in the ensuing years. 

They had never seemed the closest of units and none were too surprised when the split came; long had people been saying Gary Leeds and John Maus were passengers, hauled to fame courtesy of Scott’s talent, Scott denied it then and denies it now, but nevertheless little, was heard of the other two during the ten years they were apart, while Scott, courted by controversy, was erratically successful.

Scott and John had the idea of reforming the Walkers after meeting in Hampstead. Gary was also in London at the time, Dick Leahy signed them to GTO and they came up with the “No Regrets” album. The song, written by Tom Rush, was pushed as the single, and after a lazy start has hauled itself up to the higher echelons of the MM chart to give full credibility to a comeback that had understandably filled the music-business with cynicism.

Nothing surprises Scott any more, it seems. Yes, he’s delighted the record has become a hit, he tells me through the murk, but his voice betrays no excitement. “Man, I’m wiped out,” he explains, adding he has not slept much lately because a guy in the flat keeps falling out of bed and waking everybody else. And he doesn’t want the light on. because it makes the room look like a hospital ward and he’ll think I’m Ben Casey.

“Yeah, sure it’s important to us the record’s a hit. It matters to us all because it buys you freedom, it doesn’t limit anybody. I suppose I am a bit surprised about it being a hit but then I don’t know what a single is any more.”

Scott is unfamiliar with Tom Rush’s work, and the song was selected, like all the material on the album, in the haphazard fashion of buying the latest American releases, and going through them all, earmarking the ones that caught their fancy. That’s how they similarly came to the odd choice of “Boulder To Birmingham” Emmylou Harris’ highly personal tribute to Gram Parsons. “I just picked up tons of albums, it was the only way of doing it. I suspected that publishers wouldn’t be - hot-footing it to be getting Walker Brothers material because I knew all the cynicism that was going around. I thought f– it. I’ll get it myself. The album had to be done quickly and it had to be done in a certain way, I didn’t want to take the group into such an old sound because that would have been embarassing.. “There are a few nice things on it, but the next album will have all original material and we’ll concentrate more on it. We’re all pleased about it, man, I mean, I don’t think anybody in the group’s going around celebrating - we still drink every night, but not for that reason.”

In June, Scott will be recording a solo album, and the impression is that this is the thing at which he’s really aiming. He has been frustrated SO many times because he feels his own material has never had a fair deal, but it seems he will now be encouraged in this respect. He’ll never admit the Walkers’ reunion done for financial reasons, but it should provide a welcome bit of money to allow him to continue his solo projects without it mattering if they are financially successful.

“It’s been a long time, man, and you get complexes. You walk into company and they say ‘Well, yes Scott, we can do a few pieces of your material, but I’ve got this great dynamic song from the States and when you hear it blah blah’ and it sounds just like ‘Joanna’. But you wanna do the whole album, man and that’s when you say f– it, if it’s not the whole thing I’m not gonna do it. They always want to support your songs with some schlep in the States.”

I think. I’ve got a lot harder now. There was an interview in Playboy magazine with James Caar and he said that, with the best will in the world, anybody would hang his ass, and it’s true man. 

Now David Bowie, he’s a very smart guy. He comes up with the goods and he makes sure of delivery right down the line. I thought ’S–, if he can do it, so can I.”

Another important reason for him linking up again with John and Gary is his fear of singing live on his own, which is just as prevalent now as it has always been. He’s happy to do it with the other Walkers there, and while that aspect of the work is successful he has no need to sing live on his own. During his exile, economics forced him to do the Occasional cabaret gig which he hated, and vows he will never do again even if he has to dig ditches to survive.

He can’t account for this phobia beyond the feeling that he thinks he’s giving something of himself away.

“I just think some people are terribly shy basically. It could come from being an only child from a split family. You become egocentric, but not in the vulgar form of the word; you become. very aware of your own deficiences you try to make up for them constantly. It gets worse and worse until you’ve got so many complexes you don’t do anything. It’s all self-inflicted. Ridiculous.”

At one time after he’d left the Walkers he became obsessed by the work of people like Jacques Brel and Randy Newman. He still expresses a strong admiration for them, but says that no longer do they influence him, and most of the stuff he listens to for enjoyment tends to be classical or Miles Davis. He’s finished with over-orchestration and big promotion. His music will now be stark and direct, he vows.

At one time they called him pretentious and self-indulgent, so that at one point his work disintegrated through his attempts at avoiding that. Now he feels he can do as much personal stuff as he likes without fear of ridicule. That, at least, is one aspect in which the music business has improved since his absence.

He finds it impossible to look back with any objectivity on his past career. He owns only one of his past albums (his country album “We Had It All”) and of the previous Walker Brothers stuff, says:

“Oh no, I really can’t listen to THEM. I mean, I just sing so badly God, it was so bad.”