Cities Made of Song, 1968

Cities Made of Song, 1968 - Plastic Palace People by Scott Walker

Here, the matter of timing influenced my choice, because next week marks two years since the passing of the legendary Scott Walker.

I'm in a curious position here, because prior to Mr. Walker's passing, I'd never actually heard of him. Born in my own home state of Ohio in 1943, he nevertheless spent most of his life an expatriate in the UK, never quite enjoying the same level of success or renown in our native country. Seeing the outpouring of grief from music fans online, I realized I had clearly missed something special. And sure enough, diving into his music for the first time, I felt as if I'd discovered an entirely different world.

Just at the surface, one could be forgiven for thinking that Scott Walker's voice was his most unique quality. His broad, expressive baritone is certainly unmistakable, capable of delivering any emotion you can imagine. But this is just the vehicle for his music; I'd instead highlight his masterful lyrics, and his skill with illustrating his own inner world over the course of his decades long career.

Plastic Palace People is an example of an earlier original composition of his. Starting the B-side of his second solo album, it emerges at the point in time where Walker was slowly eschewing the cover-heavy track lists of the start of his career and beginning to find his own artistic voice. For all that his covers are still quite attractive (see Jacky at the start of the same album), there's something far more enchanting about this track. It's a simple story about a boy being carried away by a balloon and looking at his little town from above for the first time. Cleverly, his verses play in a sort of magical 3/4, while the titular chorus comes around in a more earthly 4/4. These chorus verses aren't quite as fantastical, instead highlighting the day to day humdrum of a life lived by people whose dreams never become reality.

It's easy to see how letting one's dreams slip away might have been something of a preoccupation for Walker. Thrust into showbusiness at the tender age of 14, he experienced his first brush with fame as a part of the Walker Brothers, a trio of musicians who were not brothers, and none of whom were actually named Walker. Still, their wall-of-sound production style and Scott's dreamy vocals (and looks, at the time) won a massive teenage following. Inevitably, it ended, the naturally shy musician disliking the adulating fans and the intensity of a live touring schedule. Cut loose from the tethers of the Walker Brothers, he released four solo albums in the late 1960s. The first three records were massive hits, and at the peak of his popularity, he even had his own BBC show where he would perform and discuss his music. (It's now mostly been wiped. Go figure.)

When "Scott 4" (1969) inexplicably failed to chart, despite being his best yet, the interest his previous albums had garnered simply guttered out. A disappointed Walker agreed to the direction of his label to "play it safe", releasing a string of largely unflattering cover albums through the 1970s. This period ended with a reunion of the Walker Brothers, an affair which Scott doesn't seem to have been entirely at ease with, but their final record "Nite Flights" offered him the chance to show off his chops. The tracks he contributed to that record had not lost any of the edge he had on "Scott 4" nine years before, catching the notice of many, and lending Walker the chance to release more challenging fare again.

This ultimately culminated in the two masterpieces of his late career, 1995's "Tilt" and 2006's "The Drift". The dark, gothic majesty of these records is a world apart from the easy listening schlock that was forced on him in the 1970s, but sounds curiously of a piece with his earlier solo output. The lush strings of the 1960s are replaced with bleak industrial and ambient sounds, and it suits him magnificently. I won't go on too much, but if I were to recommend any one track by this artist, it would probably be Farmer in the City, which has a depth of emotion to it as fathomless as the sea, and a dark story behind it to boot.

The lesson I learn from reading about Walker's career is the value of persistence, and that even the most personally crushing setbacks can be reversed if you don't lose sight of your dreams. Although he was an exacting and ambitious artist, I never find his work pretentious; he was simply too self-effacing for that. I find his shyness and introversion quite relatable.

I was struck by something in the liner notes of "Scott 2", by producer Jonathan King, who writes, "I have no doubt that many years from now, over a space age dinner of vitamins, [...] he will say: 'Well, the last fifty years have been great fun, but now we must get down to doing something worthwhile.' And he'll mean it." These prescient words seem to have held true to the end. It's a pity that he could never see the simple fact that seems so obvious to his fans: that there will simply never be another artist like Scott Walker.

Thanks for indulging me. We will be looking at The Seeds of Death next.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 15 March 2021.)