Best Scott Walker solo album

I voted for 4 kind of automatically

ILM style. 3 is much better.

the rosary performance is on youtube.

Bollocks, i forgot this was on last night. Maybe it'll be be telewest replay although i fear not. I voted for Scott 3.

"20-year hiatus" caused by the commercial failure of Scott 4

i saw the doc in the theater and agree it was great, mainly because of scott's own ability to talk about his music and his process, and the director's loving attention to the details of the art of making music. that's truly rare in a documentary. but there were some pretty huge holes, like anything at all about his life outside music. not that we need footage of scott partying and carousing, or gardening or whatever, but who is this guy and in what context does he live and make his music? in that context, i think we would have seen that the various hiatuses were the result of quite a bit more than 'the commercial failure of scott 4." obviously scott isn't comfortable talking about this stuff, which is fine. but to conclude that other factors don't exist just because he won't talk about them is silly.

ILM style? Well, no, I've thought for a long while 4 was the best (15 years ago when all I'd heard of Scott solo was the Boychild comp, the title track + Old Man's Back Again were my faves). 3 starts well, sags in the middle and ends with some strong Brel stuff. Just hearing it again in a new context the other day started to change my mind.

but there were some pretty huge holes, like anything at all about his life outside music.

I'm guessing Scott was only willing to participate on the grounds that there was nothing about his private life. From what I've heard, he lives in Chiswick, recently remarried, and has a daughter in her mid-thirties who also lives in London and hangs around the music/club scene.

I don't really see that it matters. In the film there was the usual talk of him sitting in the pub watching or playing darts, or scooting around London on his bike. I can vouch for the latter since when I lived in Chiswick in the mid-nineties I used to see him on his bike all the time.

He lives a normal life and presumably has made enough "fuck you" money from royalties etc. not to have to worry - so what's the big deal?

I don't know what was in the shortened BBC version and what wasn't. But in the full film, one moment that was personally very moving for me was when (the former) Wally Stott described coming in for the first time to do orchestrations for Scott. Scott, trying to describe what he wanted, said "I hear Sibelius here..." Just a little trivial thing, but one of those moments when a link between two of your very few heroes is made explicit, y'know?

Here's where I confess that I am such a douche I cried multiple times during the film (again, BBC-version viewers YMMV!) It was something about for the first time seeing him talk about his work, and him being so free of smugness or self-aggrandizement. He really seems to be in awe of *what he wants to do* rather than his own originality/genius in wanting to do it. Errrr... it's as if he's hunting a great monster, and his awe and admiration is for the monster itself, no thought for his own prowess or the excellence of his equipment. In fact he seems to quaver at whether he can even pull off the next thing.

The footage of him doing a vocal take in the studio... Jeezus. But was anyone else surprised at how small the meat slab was? I was always envisioning a whole side of beef hanging off a butcher's hook!

Did the BBC cut feature Julian Cope's arrogant letter to the director?

The Stott/Sibelius quote was in but Cope's letter was out, which presumably explains the latter's gaping absence from the programme.

Cope basically said "no thanks" to appearing in the film, and basically "I am glad that my LP compilation with its simple sleeve design allowed people to hear Scott's original songs free of the dodgy MOR dreck with which he slathered his LPs." Someone asked the director about the letter in the post-screening Q & A, and he said Cope "had the attitude that he (Cope) got there first, planted the flag, and has moved on. Basically what it is is that he's gone off Scott."

In the Q & A, the director said he sensed there were some very definite no-fly zone in his interview session with Scott. One such was the story behind Scott and John's failure to revisit the USA after their move to London (they were dodging the draft). I'm sure his recent private life was another no-fly zone.

Where were Gary and John, btw?

Theres a bit in Cope's book "Head On" / "Reposessed" about talking about Scott to a band member (Donn-eye?). Sid band member went "meh" and Julian got sort of embarassed, and suddenly realised he'd outgrown this stuff.

Which is fair enough.

Bit like how everyone always talks about Prince Charles liking the 3 degrees, whereas he's probably gone off them years ago in favour of, what, Van Morrison? Or was it Tom Waits?

Didn't Cope say somewhere that he played some Scott to some scallies, who ridiculed it, and from then on he couldn't listen to him?

Oh x-post Mark!

Said band member went "meh"... Sid Vicious was not in Copey's band.

xpost

xpost again.

Cope grows out of Scott and goes on to laud Sir Lord Baltimore lolz

"Erm Three Degrees" is a vintage punchline and should never be changed.

so what's the big deal?

no big deal - i LIKED the film! -- except that artists' work tends to be completely affected by other things going on in their lives, so that context will generally make for a better, more rounded, portrait.

No, it's fair enough JC going off SW's music. It's the "planted the flag" attitude that I found distasteful from JC.

He's probably gone off Krautrock by this point too...

Anyway, from what I heard, Bill Drummond had more to do with that compilation than Cope did.

it seems odd to suggest one would "grow out" of scott walker. he's hardly rick astley.

Ah, but once upon a time he was.

it seems odd to suggest one would "grow out" of scott walker. he's hardly rick astley.

It was my phraseology there, not Julian Cope's. But, yeah (xpost marc), Julian was once Rick astley.

I wish Rick Astley had had a megalithic phase and done songs about the phenomenology of Cock.

"Hold me in your arms" wasn't so far away from that!

Coincidentally, last night's scintillating episode of Gordon Ramsay's The F Word featured a cooking contest with James May Out Of Top Gear, who inscribed the word "COCK" on the top of whatever inedible meal he was preparing. Ramsey's rich vein of humour was exemplified by his instantaneous response: "You should have fucking written S, H, I, T on there, yes?"

You can't script that, really, can you?

"rich vein" heh heh

results

In a weighted Top 5 type poll, Climate Of Hunter would do way, way better.

That Cope thing reads more to me like he was a cock who abandoned music he liked because of peer pressure rather than "growing out of it" - which to me is a more natural progression than "oh noes they're laughing at me for liking Scott!"

I dunno, you'll have to read it (from his book, not my version of it)

xpost

Climate Of Hunter may well be his strangest album. Tilt and The Drift can be slotted more easily into the experimental/avant-garde category, but Climate is an uneasy mix of genres, a bit of orch-pop, a bit of 80s fret-wankery, a bit rock a bit jazz... it's interesting and there are some great tracks on it - Rawhide, Sleepwalkers Woman, Dealer... but in the end I don't think it's a total success, it doesn't quite gel. What came before (the 4 Nite Flights tracks) and after (Tilt) are better.

I dunno, you'll have to read it (from his book, not my version of it)

I can't remember that bit from the books. Can't see me ever rereading theme either, entertaining though they were.

I agree, if you put a gun to my head, about CoH not being a total success. But I'd really only demerit maybe 2 or 3 tracks on it. The rest are mongrel creations but great, great, great. Especially the untitled one with Evan Parker on it, good god.

No other dystopian Scott album has the same feeling of UNEASE. Never flowing over into horror, despair or nausea. Just a deep dread.

and Mark Knopler.

Thinking about it now, I guess I find all his later stuff a bit unsatisfactory - Tilt drags a bit in the middle to my ears, The Drift is a bit too long as well. They're still brilliant of course, maybe their imperfections somehow add to the brilliance.

For me imperfect rarely equates to unsatisfactory. I do like a mess, the feeling that things have been released in the work that the artist could not fully retain authority over.

Can't agree on Tilt though. It may be too long to listen to in one sitting very often, but I wouldn't remove a thing.

I guess it's Bolivia '95 that drags a bit for me. Haven't listened to the album for a while though.

Yay, i was pleasantly surprised to find that last night's Imangine doc was available on demand - it seemed to go on for ages, in the best possible way. I've also got my ticket for the first showing of 30th Century Man at the Filmhouse.

Oops, that should be Imagine.

i'm listening to 3 right now and................

</3 </3 </3

saw the cinema fillum tonight. really worth it but GOD DAMN if that LATER... footage isn't included *in full* on the dvd there'll be hell. there was only a clip and that's his only live performance in front of an audience for what? decades? and it's *there* sitting unloved in the bbc's cans!

There's a great DVD-R doing the rounds of Walker rothers performances that has the whole thing on (and other oddities like the Britvic commercial). Not the best quality, but...

"Brothers"

Disappointed neither 'Til The Band Comes in' or 'Climate Of Hunter' got any votes, I thought I was doing my contrarian part by voting for Scott 2 (my actual favourite anyway).

the later footage is on Youtube last I checked.

yeah but rotten quality. man that clip... man alive. i wonder what had got into him beforehand.

Cope grows out of Scott and goes on to laud Sir Lord Baltimore lolz

Such are the perils of a professional record collector

In actual 1970 no doubt the Copemeister was grooving to the acid tones of White Plains and Cuff-Links.

Hey don't be dissin' White Plains, dude

Yeah, funny how you never see J.Cope and B.Gillespie in the same photo circa 1970.

THEY MUST HAVE BEEN IN DIFFERENT PLACES!!!