As the team at Toppermost astutely observed, “They (The Walker Brothers) were Britain's Top Pop Heart-Throbs. In just over a year, they had two number one singles, four other top twenty hits and three hit albums.” Them’s the facts.  However, by the end of ’68, the trio (Scott Engel, John Walker and Gary Leeds) had split to pursue a number of solo projects - all to a varying degree of success.

 

There had been rumours of fall-outs, breakdowns and monastic escapes, but after an initial split in May ’67, the Japanese tour of ’68 was to be the swan song. That was until late 1974, when there would be an unexpected second act to the Walker Brothers’ career. By then Scott Walker had established himself as pop’s greatest enigma, a reclusive cult hero intent on following his own unique creative arc. For the second and final time, the Walker Brothers’ commercial prospects became a casualty of his singular journey into the avant garde.

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Yet, it’s a story worth telling, cause by the time of 1969’s Scott 4 – entirely self-penned, credited to Noel Scott Engel, featuring songs pondering Ingmar Bergman films, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and a quote from Albert Camus on the cover – he finally found his audience’s limit. It was a brilliant piece of work, rich, dark and moving, but it failed to chart.

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Scott seemed crushed. Its follow-up, 1970’s ’Til the Band Comes In, had its moments but he spent the rest of the 70s appearing in cabaret and making albums that cravenly attempted to re-establish him as an easy-listening crooner. His reluctance to perform live partly ameliorated by an increasing dependence on alcohol and tranquillisers. In truth, his heart wasn’t in it, and the material wasn’t up to much. Beautiful vocals aside, Walker hated them, blocking all attempts to re-release them decades later. Rightly so. If 1974’s We Had It All is anything to go by, what was he thinking of ..

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we will be gods ..

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And so it came to pass that in 1975 they released the album, No Regrets. The title track subtly updated their old sound for a new decade and returned the band (and Scott) to the charts. Though he would describe this as an unmitigated disaster .. “making records to pay the bills”.  Okay, I can see his point .. title track aside, it’s not album worth lingering on. Suffice to say, you wouldn’t ask to be buried with it.

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Follow-up album, Lines, released in October 1976 didn’t fare much better .. if anything it fared worse. The album failed to chart and neither of its singles, Lines (the highlight of the entire affair) and We're All Alone (a cover of the Boz Scaggs standard), met with little success. Other tracks of possible note were also covers, Randy Newman’s Have You Seen My Baby and Jimmy Cliff’s Many Rivers To Cross .. the latter, even with a Scott Walker vocal, has to go down as one of the most insipid renditions of the track ever committed to tape.

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Yet, the band persevered .. and come 1978, the third Walker Brothers reunion album, Nite Flights, was upon us.

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This is where it would get interesting.

 

Those paying attention would have heard what you might call Scott Walker 3.0 being unveiled on four self-penned songs which would trump the dystopic abstractions of David Bowie's recent output. Shut Out and the title track sounded not unlike the music David Bowie had made in Berlin and released the previous year on Low and Heroes, Fat Mama Kick wilfully discordant, all free-blowing saxophone and electronic noise, while The Electrician is disturbing and elliptical.

• In retrospect it would appear that starting with Nite Flights and on through Tilt, The Drift and Bish Bosch, Walker eradicated himself from his past lives. A continuity of sound prevails.

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In actuality, Scott was listening to Bowie, sifting through Station to Station, Low and especially the recently-released Heroes, which he brought to the studio, playing it for his partners and the studio musicians. Album engineer Steve Parker: Heroes was “the reference album when we were making Nite Flights…we could have been more adventurous, maybe. If we’d had an Eno character in there, it would have been even more stunning, I think.”

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So oddly, just as Walker was looking to return from the artistic wasteland of the early 70’s, Bowie’s Berlin period could be seen as the works of an exile .. tho’ in Bowie’s case we’re talking exile from his homeland rather than in any musical sense. Nevertheless, it was clearly something Scott Walker could identify with.

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the dark dug up by dogs ..

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As mentioned, Nite Flights was front-loaded with Scott’s songs. Shut Out, an initial shot at Bowie styling, a reconsidering of Blackout with a taste of sharp violence; Fat Mama Kick taking Brian Eno’s measure, writing a song that wouldn’t look out of place on Eno’s Taking Tiger Mountain or Here Come the Warm Jets albums. Dark and extravagant with Scott busting the budget to record the pipe organ at the Royal Albert Hall. We’ll come to the title track in a sec, but as for quartet closer The Electrician*, is a track that leaves Bowie and Eno in its wake. All consonant/dissonant strings and desperate tones. Not bad for a song about American complicity in Central American torture regimes. It stands head and shoulders above anything else issued in ’78.

*Midge Ure has claimed it was the inspiration for Ultravox tour-de-force, Vienna.

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Then there’s the title track .. possibly the closest indication that Scott Walker had been influenced by Bowie: the Heroes like lyrical callback of ‘we could be gods’, the production, the arrangement. In late 1978, Eno brought Nite Flights to Montreux, where he and Bowie had started recording Lodger. Bowie was stunned. Bowie would go on to cover the track on Black Tie, White Noise (1993), though Lodger could claim to have succumbed to its influence - African Night Flight an obvious nod, Look Back in Anger bearing similarity.

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Scott’s opening salvo aside, his fingerprints are everywhere on the album, the phased tubular bells and harmonised snare on Gary Leeds’ Den Haague are very Bowie/Eno/Visconti-inspired, which says something for material often described as middling ~ which is somewhat harsh as Den Haague and Death of Romance do have something going for them. John Walker’s four tracks finish the whole thing off .. throwaways (if any) are to be found here.

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the stitches torn and broke ..

 

​With it’s Hipgnosis designed cover art, quite an investment/statement for a so-called contract filler, That small matter aside, Walker Brothers purists didn’t ‘get it’, as such it came as no surprise that an album comprised of three distinct phases flopped, though it probably came as blow, especially as the opening quartet would herald the slow burning cult hood and renaissance of Scott Walker. Nite Flights is the bridge that connects Walker's faded 60’s pop star to latter-day avant garde Scott. Call it a Scott Walker EP with padding of you wish, but it remains “one of the most important works of its time" (Chris Roberts, UNCUT).

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Skip forward to present day and the album was the silent gem of last month's Record Store Day.

Those who picked up a copy of the ‘ultra clear vinyl pressing’ should cherish it.

The album’s mythical status intact.

 

Enjoy the related playlist content this issue.
 

​​ALSO THIS PLAYLIST .. There’s an obvious nod to Bowie's Berlin period and Brian Eno's solo work. On the new release front, we dig out the lead track from Johnny Blue Skies, Mutiny After Midnight .. released in physical format only, could it set a trend back to releases of yester-year? No pre-purchase streaming available, you gotta take a punt. We delve back into Kim Gordon's Play Me and feature the first new material from Tom Waits in 15 years. The collaboration with Massive Attack (their first in 6 years) is politically charged (apparently), though flouted as contemporay commentary, the track was written a number of years ago.

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ELSEWHERE .. We continue the newbies with side one, track one of Arlo Park's Ambiguous Desire; indulge with the latest single issued from Betrand Belin's Watt album and find a slot for The Prodigy Acid Thunder mix of Sleaford Mod's Elitest G.O.A.T. .. Want more? We continue our celebration of The Fall's 50th anniversary celebrations with a cut from the recently issued expanded version of Fall Heads Roll before we round things off with a little something from Leonard Cohen circa 2016 and tributes to Taylor Kirk (Timber Timbre) and Moya Brennan (Clannad) .. the latter thrusting those of a certain age into serious nostalgia overload for Saturday tea-times on ITV and those early summer months of 1984, 85, 86.

 

And with that, May is underway.

MCQ returns in a couple of weeks.

Until then, I'm off to sleep in my pants.

Ed

For Moya, Andy, Dave, Taylor and Beverley.

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