In 2008 I went to see a Scott Walker song cycle at the Barbican. Rather than perform himself, Walker had curated his own show with material from his previous two “difficult” albums, enlisting admirers such as Jarvis Cocker and Damon Albarn to perform. As I and fellow traveller, the Guardian’s Tony Paley, approached the entrance, we were confronted by a badly printed sign on A4 paper attached to the window with sticky tape. The message read, “Tonight’s performance contains scenes that some people may find disturbing.” Tony and I took this as a good thing. What it referred to in particular was a point at which a man wearing boxing gloves fitted with percussive pads performed the rhythm of the song “Clara” by striking a hanging pig carcass. All this from the man who – more than 40 years earlier – had been in a band that was voted more popular than The Beatles.
During that event Scott Walker could be glimpsed, just, hiding behind the mixing desk under his baseball cap. It was a thrill to see him, even from a distance. Walker's music is pop’s truffle oil, a unique, powerfully flavoured concoction and one of life’s pure pleasures. Of course, too much too often could leave you feeling a bit woozy.
The Walker Brothers made many epic singles. What links these intense pop classics with everything that followed during Scott's solo career was a sense of theatre. The Walker Brothers were the kind of act that could hold the weight of teenage adoration and critical respect with ease, but there is something about having girls scream at you every night on stage that makes artistic freedom seem impossible, however unfair that presumption may be. That’s been true from John Lennon to, er, Brian McFadden.
So much of Walker’s “serious” reputation rests on Scott 1 to Scott 4 from the late Sixties. As a run of great records it has few equals. Although they sit together neatly and share quite brilliant orchestration by Wally Stott, Peter Knight and John Franz, they also show a huge variety of touch and mood. They are impressionist paintings in song. There is the obvious influence of Jacques Brel on Walker's own writing and songs by the Belgian feature on the first three albums (most Anglophones come to Brel through Walker, so we owe him a debt for that alone). Scott 1 and Scott 2 are a mishmash of tryouts and borrowings and his early lyrics carry some over-heavy metaphors that almost tip the whole project off a cliff. But that’s part of the deal with Walker: you have to accept the melodrama to get the drama behind it. By Scott 3, written in a decidedly up-poppy 3/4 time, his commercial presence was fading and despite reaching No1 on the album charts like its predecessors, it disappeared within weeks of release. But now you feel you are with him at his most tender and it’s his inner voice you are listening to, not just an amalgam of influences.
Scott 4 is probably the most neatly sequenced set of all four – it’s all Walker compositions – and demonstrates the full range of his sensibility, from sarcasm and cool observation to empathy and romanticism. It’s on the last two records that you’ll find his best lyrics, such as “Didn’t time sound sweet yesterday / In a world full of friends you lose your way” from “Big Louise” and “Once there was summer and you / And dark little rooms / And sleep in late afternoons” from “It’s Raining Today”. His baritone never sounded richer or as liberated.
The first side of ‘Til The Band Comes In (a kind of 1970 street-view concept album about the inhabitants of a block of flats) is as good as anything on Scott 4, but the gaping hole between the first half and the saccharine second part of that record were even referenced by Jarvis Cocker in the song “Bad Cover Version” on the album We Love Life – produced by Walker himself. Typically uncanny. The early Seventies surrender also prefaced almost a decade of rent-paying cover albums and the occasional Walker Brothers reunion.
I’ve been told 1984’s Climate Of Hunter, Walker’s first original solo album for 14 years, is a masterpiece. I’m not so sure. I find it hard to get past the fretless bass, an instrument that sends me into anaphylactic shock. But his new direction had been prefaced by the ominous, eerie “The Electrician” on the last Walker Brothers album in 1979. There would be no more compromise from now on.
When Tilt came out in 1995 I was shocked, appalled, then amazed by it. The opening song, “Farmer In The City”, is full of the long tail of Walker’s melancholy, but it’s mixed with terror, as is the work that follows it. Walker’s experimental music most often feels like the soundtrack to a nightmare. And I mean that in a good way. And he sounds as frightened of singing it as we do of hearing it. The Drift and Bish Bosch were even more challenging. If Scott himself is truffle oil, then these last solo albums are fermented Baltic herring.
There are no half-measures with Scott Walker. The man and the music get under your skin – and it’s the whole package, even the schmaltz. The fact that he abandoned a hugely successful chart career. The fact that his solo albums get progressively more experimental and uncompromising. The fact that he made an album in waltz time. That he wrote a song about Elvis’ unborn twin. That he made a man play the drums with boxing gloves and a pig carcass. All that, yes. But more than this, he made time sound sweet.
We spoke to Niclas Castello, the man behind the cube paintings redefining both the subject and placement of art, to find out who he'd love to have dinner with and what he puts in his sandwich.