The Walker Brothers: No Regrets

By 1975 the Walker Brothers had got over the evening when they had their shirts ripped off in Market Harborough.

You can tell this single is from that era because of the gratuitous guitar solo. 

Scott Walker: Farmer in the City (Remembering Pasolini)

The fiftieth anniversary of Pier Paolo Pasolini's death put me in mind of this wonderful track from Scott Walker's album Tilt.

In a Guardian article last Saturday, Olivia Laing argued that Pasolini's warnings of corruption and rising totalitarianism offer a chilling message for our times.

GUEST POST The night the Walker Brothers played a Market Harborough club

Jo Colley was there when teenage girls ripped off the Walker Brothers' shirts - and she still has a thread to prove it.

Among my CD collection are three late period Scott Walker albums, including And Who Shall Go To The Ball? And Who Shall Go To The Ball? which came out in 2007 with the excellent 4AD. Tucked into my vinyl stash is a Walker Brothers album that I found in a charity shop recently - all their hits, the soaring over orchestrated ballads that I loved at the time, although these days I am much more of an avant-garde minimalist. 

But in 1965 I did go to the ball. The Walker Brothers played the Frolickin' Kneecap in Market Harborough. It was insane, really. They must have booked the venue just before Make it Easy On Yourself hit the number 1 spot. The lads must have been stunned to find themselves in a less-than-one-horse town in the East Midlands, where I was mocked for wearing a beret and a maxi skirt. 

I don’t think I was a huge fan. At age 14, My favourite artists were The Who and Bob Dylan. I was alternately a mod and a New York intellectual. The venue I most frequented in the town was the Peacock Folk Club. But there was no denying these were handsome lads, although didn’t they look old? And so unfashionably well fed. 

I don’t honestly remember how any of it worked. Did we buy tickets or just turn up? It was also my first time in this venue although later I saw Family (a really excellent band). How wonderful to have a venue like this in the town! 

My main memory of the 'concert' is of utter chaos, screaming, and the poor Walker Brothers being nearly torn apart by frenzied teenage girls. They literally lost their shirts. We did not hear any of the music at all - which 

annoyed me even then, as it had earlier at the De Montfort Hall at the Stones concert. I went for the music - and the sex of course, but the music was where the real excitement was. And we did not hear a single note. 

I’m surprised nobody got hurt. I was too far back to do any ripping, and anyway that wasn’t my style. Also I was (still am) very short sighted and was not wearing my glasses. There was ear splitting screaming, a massive press of overheated girls. It was over very quickly and a friend of mine, clutching her hard won bit of fabric, passed me a thread, which is still somewhere in my attic. I have no idea which 'brother; was the wearer of the shirt. 

Jo Colley is a Writer, editor, blogger and maker of poetry films. You can follow her on Twitter.

The night Family and Fairport Convention jammed together in Market Harborough

I was swapping tweets earlier today (as you do) about the night that the Walker Brothers had their shirts ripped off by the teenage girls of Market Harborough. More about that another day, I hope.

But the Walker Brothers weren't the only big names to play Harborough in those days. I've blogged before about Jethro Tull, and now I can add some more names to the list.

Because a reader kindly pointed me towards an old post about the town on the Soul Source site:

The club was called the Frollockin' Kneecap and had been there since 1968, I saw Brenton Wood, Blossom Toes, Ferris Wheel, Keef Hartley, Dantallian's Chariot (Zoot Money), Brenton Wood and the best of all the Family 3 times, once with Fairport Convention jamming; about 700 in for that one!

It goes on to say that the club called itself The Lantern for "allnighters", which suggests there was such a thing as East Midland Soul.

I can't give you Family and Fairport jamming, but here's Dantalian's Chariot (Andy Summers, later of the Police, is on guitar) with their most famous track.

When the Walker Brothers lost their shirts in Market Harborough

This is a cutting from the Leicester Daily Mercury for Monday 6 September 1965, so the concert must have taken place on 4 September.

I see newspapers were still giving 'pop' scare quotes, but I like the wiggly line around the item. I used to do a similar thing with a black felt pen when I included press cuttings in Focus and we pasted the artwork down. Letraset and Cow Gum, isn't it? Marvellous. 

Where did the concert take place? A Scott Walker timeline gives the venue as 'Embi Hall', which must mean the Embi Club.

Cinema Treasures says this was the old County Cinema on The Square, which was originally the New Hall, where the Liberal Party held its public meetings. 

I like the idea that two of my heroes, J.W. Logan MP and Scott Walker, performed on the same stage. (More prosaically, New Look and Superdrug occupy the modern building on the site.)

Another Leicester Daily Mercury cutting, this one from 18 May 1968, reports a break in at the Embi Club, but gives its address as 55 St Mary's Road. 

This would have been the old Oriental Cinema, so if Cinema Treasures is right the Embi Club changed venue at some point. 

Yet another club, the Frolickin Kneecap, was still using a venue on The Square that year, which must have been the old County Cinema.

Can any reader confirm where the Walker Brothers concert took place?

The Walker Brothers: Orpheus

The Walker Brothers were an American act put together to appeal to the British market of the Sixties. Fronted by Scott Walker's glorious baritone, they had two number one hits: Make It Easy on Yourself and The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore.

This track from their 1967 album Images, with its appealing melody, changes of mood and allusive lyrics, shows us the path Scott Walker was about to take on his solo albums.

The Walker Brothers would not record together again until 1975.

Scott Engel: Kathleen

This is very American and very 1958, and it's not a bad record, especially when you learn that the singer was only 15.

And Scott Engel, of course, grew up to become Scott Walker, the coolest man of the coolest decade we have ever experienced.

Youthful fame can be a burden for a musician. Ricky Nelson struggled with the transition to being Rick Nelson - it's what his song Garden Party is all about.

I've seen it argued that Steve Marriott's West End success as the Artful Dodger made him worry about authenticity in later life, explaining some of the strange turns his career took.

Some are luckier: Kate Bush's record company left her to study and write songs for some years before they launched her with Wuthering Heights. And young Scotty Engel had the sense to come to Swinging London to reinvent himself.

Meanwhile, Aksel Rykkvin, the best treble you've ever heard, is training as a baritone.

The week the UK top three were all about death

I saw this on Twitter, checked and discovered something remarkable.

On the day I turned 14 the top three records in the UK singles chart were all about death:

1. Seasons in the Sun - Terry Jacks
2. Billy, Don't be a Hero - Paper Lace
3. Emma - Hot Chocolate

I remember there was an item at the time remarking on the phenomenon and discussing its significance on the BBC Radio 4 arts programme Kaleidoscope - no doubt introduced by Paul Vaughan.

For what it's worth, I hated the Terry Jacks record in 1974, though in later life I was to fall in love with Scott Walker's renderings of Jacques Brel.

Paper Lace were meh, as we didn't say in those days, and I suspect Hot Chocolate are undervalued.

Scott Walker: Plastic Palace People

A tribute to Scott Walker, who died this week.

But what is it about? Jon Dennis tries to explain:

lastic Palace People is from Scott 2, the most commercially successful of the four revered solo albums Walker released between 1967 and 1969. 

This music is not rock, but it’s effortlessly cool. It was in many ways quite unlike anything else produced at the time. John Franz, who had produced the Walker Brothers, now brought in orchestral arranger Wally Stott. Together they created the lush, expansive soundscapes in which Walker’s sonorous baritone could luxuriate. 

Not rock – but Plastic Palace People has touches of psychedelia. Like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, we float through the dreamlike verses in 3/4, then suddenly become grounded in 4/4 with the rude awakening of the chorus. String and harp arpeggios rise and fall in the verses before evaporating, the chorus dominated by guitar, tambourine and bass. 

Is Plastic Palace People a dream or a nightmare? The boy in the song, Billy, floats away like a balloon, to his mother’s horror. Amid mockery and violence, Billy descends until he is suspended in a tree, “just hanging there”. A hideous, confusing narrative that wouldn’t be out of place on his later, more obviously confrontational and frightening albums.

Scott Walker (1943-2019)

A sad thing about growing older is that your heroes die off one by one and you are too cynical or set in your ways to replace them.

Scott Walker had always been there, as far as I am concerned, because I cannot remember a time when I did not know the great Walker Brothers singles Make it Easy on Yourself and The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine (Anymore) and his golden voice.

Later I discovered his peerless solo career in the late Sixties, when his albums mixed Jacques Brel songs with his own compositions.

Before all that he had been a teen sensation in the US under his real name of Scott Engel and after the last of those solo albums, Scott 4, had bombed he had a period as a crooner, recording film soundtracks and the like.

Later in his career, refusing to allow his voice to trap him in that role, he became an avant-garde experimentalist.

Farmer in the City is more approachable than much of his work from this period, but it is how I shall remember him tonight.

Walker Brothers: No Regrets

After the commercial failure of his album Scott 4 in 1969, Scott Walker rather retreated as an artist.

He stopped recording his own songs and acceded to his manager and record company's attempts to market him as the new Sinatra. Well, he had the voice for it.

The reformation of the Walker Brothers in 1975 gave him a way forward and proved to be the springboard from which he became the avant-garde artist we celebrate today - try Farmer in the City.

No Regrets, which reached no. 7 in the UK singles chart that year, was the great commercial success of the Walker Brothers' revival.

Note the guitar solo and its lack of connection to the rest of the song: this feature was obilgatory on mid-Seventies records that took themselves seriously.

Scott Walker: On Your Own Again

I have spent the past week in Shropshire with the songs of Scott Walker going through my head.

Before I left I watched the BBC Prom devoted to those songs and I thought it was wonderful.

I had heard it on the radio, but the staging in the Royal Albert Hall added magic. Without it, on the radio, you missed Scott Walker's voice.

But then the fact that Walker devoted himself to these songs when, with that voice, he could have done anything he wanted in music was somehow a statement of their importance in itself.

On Your Own was at the Prom by Susanne Sundfør. You can see her performing it in a preview of the concert for Newsnight.

I have sometimes been a little sceptical of the new emphasis on accessibility at the Proms - or at least of the BBC's insistence on promoting those concerts above all others.

But the Scott Walker Prom reminded us that the important difference is not the one between classical and popular music but the one between good and bad music.

I find I have chosen four Scott Walker songs for my Sunday music video before:

• Jackie
• The Amorous Humphrey Plugg
• Farmer in the City
• The Girls from the Streets

So it's no surprise that I enjoyed this concert.

Scott Walker: The Girls from the Streets

Scott Walker made the songs of Jacques Brel much better known in Britain. This, taken from Scott 2, was an attempt by Walker to write a Brel song himself.

I think it is safe to say I like it more than Then Play Long does:

The deliberately leaden procession of the verses, combined with words like "Snap! The waiters animate, luxuriate like planets whirling ‘round the sun," suggest a predication of Gary Numan, but the transition into the choruses sounds a little forced and its hideous Light Programme backing singers and accordion are more in keeping with Benny Hill avec comedy beret; it tries to be greater, more ambitious, than Brel, but Walker hasn’t yet worked out how to pull it off.

Sensational Alex Harvey Band: Next

Alex Harvey was once voted Scotland's answer to Tommy Steele and his band opened for an early version of the Beatles, but he found fame as the front man of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band in the 1970s before his early death. The band is still going today without him.

Next is a Jacques Brel song - see him perform it here. It is best known to British audiences through the version by Scott Walker, but as Walker sounds like a god rather than a skinny recruit, you suspect he had nothing to worry about in the showers.

Scott Walker: Farmer in the City

Julian Cope once put together an album with the subtitle The Godlike Genius of Scott Walker. This track shows why.

Tony Cornwell tried to account for its appeal on the World Socialist Web Site:

The opening track on Tilt - “Farmer in the City (Remembering Pasolini)” - is the most accessible song on the album. Against a backdrop of grim horrors, wry humour, beauty and grief, it lights the last hours of Pasolini’s life with musical and lyrical strobe. 

The lyrics are fragmentary and presented as images on a moving pathway. You barely focus and the next lot of images close in: fragments of voices, Pasolini’s and his killers; neighbourhood cries and noise. Pasolini is seen from a distance - geographically and biographically - but the overall effect is a portrait that words alone can’t sufficiently express. Walker’s disquieting and restless tenor sobs and surges, bringing colour and movement to the scene but without offering any explanation. A high point is where Walker cries: 

And I used to be a citizen
I never felt the pressure
I knew nothing of the horses
nothing of the thresher.

And the string section of the London Sinfonia heaves upward in a monstrous crescendo to echo and cradle the lyric. It is a most moving and unsettling moment.

Scott Walker: The Amorous Humphrey Plugg

Young, innocent and exposed to the wiles of old Europe, Scott Walker resembled a Henry James hero.

He first came to prominence as a member of the Walker Brothers, a band manufactured in America (they were not brothers and none of them was originally called Walker) to succeed on the other side of the Atlantic.

He later emerged as a considerable artist in his own right. He was known for popularising the songs of Jacques Brel to the English-speaking world (we heard him singing Jackie in one of my first Sunday music choices), but he also composed many songs of his own.

This, which blends his wonderful voice and a lovely melody with difficult, elliptical words, is a good example of his own work from the 1960s.

Scott Walker: Jackie

This Sunday's video is a live TV performance by Scott Walker of Jacques Brel's "Jackie".

Such are the wonders of YouTube that you can also enjoy a performance of the song by Brel.