Oh man, this guy Scott Walker, he bangs ’em, he bangs ’em all.
What I mean by that is he came back to bite indie-rock on the boo-boo in slow motion, starting with 1984’s Climate of Hunter, continuing through 1995’s Tilt and culminating with an explosion of interest circa 2006’s The Drift.
The sudden upswing of interest naturally led to a film. This is that film, and it’s fantastic. David Bowie is involved, as is Grant Gee, the man who put together Radiohead’s Meeting People is Easy, so the right personnel, in thise case, culminated in the perfect bio-slash-doc-slash-build-hype-for-the-next-album experience.
Every time I’ve read about this film the first thing that gets mentioned is the infamous meat-punching scene. It is a wonder to behold, but it is also perhaps the least fascinating thing about this scintillating movie.
A glorious trip down memory lane, garnished with tons of glorious flyer/album art and other tokens of the 1960s, is the inborn starting point. Chronicled in this section are Walker’s origins as a wunderkind and his eventual ascent with the Walker Brothers.
If you didn’t live in the UK at the time, you might have missed Scott Walker altogether. Save “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine,” he barely had any hits in the U.S., settling happily instead with an overblown fame in Europe that resembled pure pop-worship pandemonium, scads of fanclubs popping up overnight and goading Walker into his eventual status as a recluse.
But HOLD ON: After three top-10 solo records in the UK, Walker STRUCK THE FUCK OUT with Scott 4. It didn’t even chart, for Christ’s sake, after all the goodwill thrown his way by the general public and fanboys/girls alike.
30 Century Man zooms in on Walker’s huge successes with old newspaper headlines galore — many of them written in hilarious NME screed — interviews with people who used to worship him, and still photos of his TV show, which, if the pics are any indication, amounted to a spaced-out dude in sunglasses rapping drowsily to the crowd and crooning the occasional number.
Sounds great to me! Not so great-sounding were a few of Walker’s records in the mid-1970s, which included a TV theme covers record; if you record one of these it basically means your career’s in the CRAPPER.
And a flat-out crazy-looking reunion of the Walker Bros. didn’t rescue him either. What it did do, however, was give him a reason to write, and write he did. Four songs on the Bros’ second reunion album were his, and they were spooky.
It set the stage for what was to come. If you listen to any of his solo records since his re-emergence, you’ll realize they’re almost too good to listen to; they’re so abrasive and unyielding they’re like museum pieces, cold and calculating and clinical and you’re not allowed to touch them — or listen to them.
And when you do you feel a sort of rush, a criminal sense that your ears are being violated and you — the sick fuck you are — actually enjoy it. Much in the same way Walker apparently enjoys tinkering with anti-instruments for hours in a vague search for the right sound. No, scratch that, the only sound.
He wouldn’t have it any other way. He’s a sound-sadist, a punch-puller, a tune-tripper.
He’s not a common-man artist like you and I. He’s special and we must appreciate his gifts, if not because Bowie does then because Eno does.
And if not because Eno does, because Thom Yorke does. Give 30 Century Man a watch and, if you’re one of the people who doesn’t cotton to Scott Walker’s stuff, you might find yourself a convert, or at least you’ll have learned something anyway.
