Early life Noel Scott Engel was born on January 9, 1943, in
Hamilton, Ohio in the Greater
Cincinnati Metropolitan area, the son of Elizabeth Marie (Fortier), who was from
Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and Noel Walter Engel. His father was an oil industry manager whose work led the family to successive homes in
Ohio,
Texas,
Colorado, and
New York. Engel and his mother settled in California in 1956. Engel was interested in both music and performance and spent time as a child actor and singer in the mid to late 1950s, including roles in two Broadway musicals,
Pipe Dream and
Plain and Fancy. Championed by singer and TV host
Eddie Fisher, he appeared several times on Fisher's TV program. Engel cut some records including one named "Misery", which saw him briefly promoted as a
teen idol.
1964–1967: The Walker Brothers As a trio, the Walker Brothers cultivated a glossy-haired and handsome familial image. Prompted by Maus, each of the members took "Walker" as their stage surname. Scott continued to use the name Walker thereafter, with the brief exception of returning to his birth name for the original release of his fifth solo album
Scott 4, and in songwriting credits. Initially, John served as guitarist and main lead singer of the trio, with Gary on drums and Scott playing bass guitar and mostly singing harmony vocals. By early 1965, the group had made appearances on TV shows
Hollywood A Go-Go and
Shindig and had made initial recordings, but the start of their real success lay in the future and overseas. Although this is no indication that their actual fan base was larger than that of the Beatles, the Walker Brothers—especially lead singer Scott—attained pop star status. Between 1965 and 1967, the group released three albums,
Take It Easy with the Walker Brothers (1965),
Portrait (1966) and
Images (1967), and two EPs,
I Need You and
Solo John/Solo Scott (both 1966). Following "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore", the group's subsequent singles in 1966 were "
(Baby) You Don't Have to Tell Me" (No. 13 UK), "
Another Tear Falls" (No. 12 UK) and "
Deadlier Than the Male" (No. 32 UK), the latter a co-write between Scott and
Johnny Franz for the soundtrack of
the film of the same name, while 1967 brought two more singles in "
Stay With Me Baby" and "
Walking in the Rain" (both of which reached No. 26 in the UK). The Walkers' 1960s sound mixes
Phil Spector's "
wall of sound" techniques with symphonic orchestrations featuring Britain's top musicians and arrangers, notably
Ivor Raymonde. Scott served as effective co-producer of the band's records throughout this period, alongside their named producer
Johnny Franz and engineer Peter Oliff. Many of their earlier numbers had a driving beat, but with the release of their third album,
Images, in 1967 ballads predominated. By 1967, John Walker's musical influence on the Walker Brothers had waned (although on
Images he sang lead on a cover of "
Blueberry Hill" and contributed two original compositions), which led to tensions between him and Scott. At the same time, Scott was finding the group a chafing experience: "There was a lot of pressure. I was coming up with all the material for the boys, and I was having to find songs and getting the sessions together. Everyone relied on me, and it just got on top of me. I think I just got irritated with it all." Artistic differences and the stresses stemming from overwhelming pop stardom led to the break-up of the Walker Brothers in the summer of 1967, although they reunited temporarily for a tour of Japan in 1968.
1967–1974: Solo work For his solo career, Walker shed the Walker Brothers' mantle and worked in a style clearly glimpsed on
Images. Initially, this led to a continuation of his previous band's success. Walker's first four albums, titled
Scott (1967),
Scott 2 (1968),
Scott 3 (1969), and
Scott: Scott Walker Sings Songs from his TV Series (1969), all sold in large numbers, with
Scott 2 topping the British charts. Walker also achieved two UK Top 20 singles during this period with "
Joanna" (1968) and "
Lights of Cincinnati" (1969). During this period, Walker combined his earlier teen appeal with a darker, more idiosyncratic approach (which had been hinted at in songs like "Orpheus" on the
Images album). While his vocal style remained consistent with the Walker Brothers, he now drove a fine line between classic ballads,
Broadway hits and his own compositions, and also included risqué recordings of
Jacques Brel songs (translated by
Mort Shuman, who was also responsible for the hit musical
Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris). Walker's own original songs of this period were influenced by Brel and
Léo Ferré as he explored European musical roots while expressing his own American experience and reaching a new maturity as a recording artist. Walker continued to grow as a producer. In 1968 (during the brief Walker Brothers reunion and tour of Japan), he produced a single with the Japanese rock group the Carnabeats, featuring Gary Walker on vocals. Upon his return to the UK, he produced a solo album for the Walker Brothers' musical director and guitarist
Terry Smith. In 1968, Walker also produced ''
Ray Warleigh's First Album''. According to Anthony Reynolds, "[Warleigh's] album, recorded on December 13 and released in the following year, had little in common with the more esoteric progressive jazz that Scott was digging at the time, and the result veered more toward pleasantly middle-of-the-road muzak than the jazz fusion just around the corner." building on an interest in
lieder and classical musical modes. At the peak of his fame in 1969, Walker was given his own BBC TV series,
Scott, featuring solo Walker performances of ballads, big band standards, Brel songs, and his own compositions. Archival footage of the show is extremely rare as recordings were not conserved. However, audio selections from the show were released in 2019 as the box set
Live on Air 1968-1969. In later interviews Walker has suggested that by the time of
Scott 3, his first album to be dominated by his own songwriting, a self-indulgent complacency had crept into his choice of material. His next album,
Scott: Scott Walker Sings Songs from his TV Series, featured no original material and exemplified the problems he was having in failing to balance his own creative desires with the demands of the entertainment industry and of his manager Maurice King, who seemed determined to mould his protégé into a new
Andy Williams or
Frank Sinatra. Walker then entered a period of self-confessed artistic decline, during which he spent five years making records "by rote, just to get out of contract" Walker would later prevent these four albums, and the 1969
TV Series album, from being released on
CD. The last two did receive a CD release by independent label
BGO Records in the late 1990s, though without Walker's own approval. In the 2006 documentary
Scott Walker: 30 Century Man, Walker describes these as his "lost years" in terms of creativity. He has also confessed to having surrendered his direction due to outside pressure:
1975–1978: The Walker Brothers reunite By the mid-1970s, Walker's career was at its nadir, and he joined back up with John Maus and Gary Leeds to revive the Walker Brothers in 1975. Their first comeback single, a cover of
Tom Rush's song "
No Regrets", from the
album of the same title reached number 7 in the UK Singles Chart, some months after its release. However, the parent album peaked at only number 49 in the
UK Albums Chart. The two singles from the next album
Lines (its
title track, which Scott regarded as the best single the group ever released, and "
We're All Alone") both failed to chart, and the album fared no better. Neither
No Regrets or
Lines included any original material by Scott. With the imminent demise of their record label, the Walkers collaborated on an album of original material that was in stark contrast to the soft rock/easy listening style of the previous two albums. The resulting album,
Nite Flights, was released in 1978 with each of the Brothers writing and singing their own compositions (the opening four songs by Scott, the middle two by Gary and the final four by John). Scott's four songs – "Shut Out", "Fat Mama Kick", "
Nite Flights" and "
The Electrician" – were his first original compositions since ''
'Til the Band Comes In and represented his first steps away from the MOR image and sound he had cultivated since the commercial failure of Scott 4''. The extremely dark and discomforting sound of Scott's songs, particularly "
The Electrician", was to prove a forerunner to the direction of his future solo work. Building on the critical and sales momentum of the compilation, Walker subsequently signed with Virgin Records. Soon afterwards, Walker was dropped by the label. Walker spent the late 1980s away from music, with only a brief cameo appearance in a 1987
Britvic TV advert (alongside other 1960s pop icons) to maintain his profile.
Tilt, Walker's first album for eleven years, was released in 1995, developing and expanding the working methods explored on
Climate of Hunter. Variously described as "an anti-matter collision of rock and modern classical music", it was more consciously avant-garde than its predecessor with Walker now revealed as a fully-fledged modernist composer. Lyrically, subject matter included the life and murder of
Pier Paolo Pasolini (and his relationship with
Ninetto Davoli),
cockfighting,
the Holocaust, the
First Gulf War, a conflation of the trials of
Adolf Eichmann and
Caroline of Brunswick, and a man talking to the corpse of
Che Guevara. In 2000, Walker curated the London
South Bank Centre's annual summer live music festival,
Meltdown, which has a tradition of celebrity curators. He did not perform at Meltdown himself, but wrote the music for the Richard Alston Dance Project item
Thimblerigging. The following year he served as producer on
Pulp's 2001 album
We Love Life (whose track "
Bad Cover Version" includes a mocking reference to the poor quality of "the second side of ''
'Til The Band Comes In''"). In October 2003, Walker was given an award for his contribution to music by
Q magazine, presented by
Jarvis Cocker of Pulp. Walker received a standing ovation at the presentation. This award had been presented only twice before, the first time to
Phil Spector, and the second to
Brian Eno. The release of a retrospective box set,
5 Easy Pieces, comprising five themed discs spanning Walker's work with the Walker Brothers, his solo career (including film soundtrack work), and the two pieces composed for Ute Lemper, followed soon after. The British independent label
4AD Records signed Walker in early 2004.
2006–2019: Later years On May 8, 2006, Scott Walker released
The Drift, his first album in eleven years (the same amount of time that separated his previous two albums
Climate of Hunter and
Tilt). Critical acclaim for the album garnered a
Metacritic score of 85. In both composition and atmosphere,
The Drift was a continuation of the surreal, menacing, partially abstract approach displayed on
Tilt. It featured jarring contrasts between loud and quiet sections; instrumentation was similar to
Tilt in the use of rock instruments and a large orchestra, but the album also interpolated unnerving sound effects such as the distressed braying of a donkey, a demoniac Donald Duck impression, and (during a recording sequence captured on film) an orchestral percussionist punching a large cut of raw meat. Lyrical subjects included torture, disease, the relationship and eventual shared death of
Mussolini and his mistress
Clara Petacci, and a conflation of the
9/11 attacks with a nightmare shared by
Elvis Presley and his dead twin brother Jesse. In contemporary interviews, Walker appeared more at ease with media attention, revealing a wish to produce albums more frequently and hinting at significant changes in the nature of his own material if and when it suits him. Although he mentioned the possibility of touring again with a compact, five-piece band in an interview with
The Wire this never transpired. In June 2006,
Mojo and radio honored Scott Walker with the
MOJO Icon Award: "Voted for by
Mojo readers and Mojo4music users, the recipient of this award has enjoyed a spectacular career on a global scale". It was presented by Phil Alexander. A documentary film,
Scott Walker: 30 Century Man, was completed in 2006 by filmmaker
Stephen Kijak. Interviews were recorded with
David Bowie (executive producer of the film),
Brian Eno,
Radiohead,
Sting,
Gavin Friday,
Jarvis Cocker,
Richard Hawley,
Cathal Coughlan and many musicians associated with Walker over the years. The World Premiere of
Scott Walker: 30 Century Man took place as part of the 50th
London Film Festival. When
The Independent released its list of "Ten must-see films" at the 50th London Film Festival,
Scott Walker: 30 Century Man, was among them. A documentary on Walker containing a substantial amount of footage from the film was shown on BBC1 in May 2007 as part of the
Imagine... strand, presented by
Alan Yentob. Walker released "Darkness" as part of
Plague Songs, an album of songs for the
Margate Exodus project, a re-telling of the
Book of Exodus, the story of
Moses and his search for the
Promised Land. Ten singer-songwriters were commissioned by Artangel to write and record a song inspired by one of the
ten biblical plagues. Walker's evocation of "Darkness" appears as the ninth. On September 24, 2007, Walker released
And Who Shall Go to the Ball? And What Shall Go to the Ball? as a limited, never-to-be-re-pressed edition. The 24-minute instrumental work was performed by the
London Sinfonietta with solo cellist
Philip Sheppard as music to a performance by London-based
CandoCo Dance Company. The recording is currently unavailable. From November 13 to 15, 2008,
Drifting and Tilting: The Songs of Scott Walker was staged at
The Barbican, in London. It comprised eight songs, two from
Tilt – "Farmer in the City" and "Patriot (a single)" – and the rest from
The Drift: "Cossacks Are", "Jesse", "Clara (Benito's Dream)", "Buzzers", "Jolson and Jones" and "Cue". Each song was presented in a music-theatre manner, with the vocal parts taken by a number of singers, including
Jarvis Cocker,
Damon Albarn and
Dot Allison. Walker collaborated with
Bat for Lashes on the song "The Big Sleep" from her 2009 album
Two Suns. He wrote the score for the ROH2 production of
Jean Cocteau's 1932 play
Duet for One, which was staged in the
Linbury Studio in June 2011. Walker's final solo album,
Bish Bosch, was released on December 3, 2012, and was received with generally favourable reviews. In 2014, Walker collaborated with the experimental drone metal duo
Sunn O))) on
Soused, which was released on October 21, 2014. A year later, Walker composed the score for
Brady Corbet's film
The Childhood of a Leader; this was followed in 2018 by the score for Corbet's film
Vox Lux, also featuring music by Australian singer-songwriter
Sia. ==Collaborations==