How a slur by Proby led me full-Tilt into Scott’s world of Gothic genius

About 35 years ago, I’d just finished an interview for a morning newspaper with pop crock PJ Proby.

Jim was making yet another comeback, this time by claiming that Madonna was singing on the notorious Savoy Sessions, his latest recording.

Of course she wasn’t and she was apparently threatening to sue him. What did she expect to get? Some ring-pulls and a few bottle tops?

So I’d called him.

I’d met Jim many times and this was just another stop along the way to the bottom of a Jack Daniels bottle.

But what surprised me more was his claim that the enigmatic Scott Walker was having an affair with Jacques Brel, the French doyen of songs of poetry and pomp.

Scott had sung many of them including Mathilde, Amsterdam and the heartbreaking If You Go Away.

Yes, over the years there had been hints of Brel being gay or bisexual in the French media. But that simply made him seem more exotic and charming.

But Scott?

There had never been any suggestion that he was gay.

I remember feeling a bit angry at Proby, who had rapidly become an inglorious singer most famous for repeatedly losing his career and falling off the stage drunk.

Anyway, I had met Scott years ago and despite his waif-like wasted elegance and the androgynous of the 60s and 70s there was nothing to suggest Proby wasn’t making this up as well.

Besides, Scott was married.

Yep, I was angry with Proby…

Anyway, round about then – it would have been 3pm – the office tea trolley squeaked and creaked across the editorial floor followed by another trolley which brought the latest review copies of CDs and tapes of the likes of Mariah Carey, Boyz II Men, TLC and Hootie & the Blowfish.

And there it was, Tilt… the new Scott Walker album – 11 years late as far as his die-hard fans were concerned.

I studied the paper artwork inside the slightly scratched plastic box it had arrived in. The original ‘rare’ jewel case had been ‘nicked’ of course.

But the cover imagery itself was darker than even Climate of the Hunter, a decade earlier, had managed to be… a mangle of eyes and fingers and the sensuality of high heels and stockings… the eyes were dark and brooding, yet lights pocked them like tears and pearls. There was also what could have easily been a distorted cartoon of Marilyn Monroe, dress drawn out into a flying saucer as it billowed around her waist …

But the gnarled-looking hand had me from the start. It turned out it was Scott’s. Hard, gnarled and dead. Scott was in his early 40s but that hand held its own story.

I left the office early claiming that I was going to drive to Prestwich where Proby was holed up in a grubby house rolling in discarded cans of super lager. It stood next to the Halfway House pub where by now he would be holding his addled court and telling tales and half-truths about Elvis.

I poured out of the big glass Art Deco office on Gt Ancoats Street, found my car and thought ‘stuff Proby’. I would be far more interesting to know what Walker had been doing.

So I turned left towards the dark Stockport garret I called home.

I was recently divorced and lived in two rooms on the top floor of on old dolorous Victorian house, heavy in dampness and ghosts. As I closed the big oak door I flicked the switch on my electric fire, pulled the curtains shut and switched on my midi-cd player. It hummed as it waited for my new cd.

And so it began. Something abandoned … other worldly, disembodied. Scott had created a burnt-out landscape, not smouldering, not smokey but stark, a place where only the dead could walk.

“… who’ll give me 21, 21…”

Scott Walker, that handsomeness of a smile had created the loneliest place in the universe.

Remembering Mr Invisible…

See more

And he was comfortable there. His voice was a clear sonorous bell – just like the opening of Farmer in the City… but it was now a clarion cry of surrealism over elements of industrial rock, Zappa. opera and aria.

And of course there is his dark Gothic poetry.

 Tilt threw out everything that we recognised of the Walker Brothers and even Brel. Now we had a new classical music. Tilt is a masterpiece. It isn’t easy listening like My Ship is Coming In or Like Walking in the Rain but it is astonishing when put up against them.

Which is better? The pop or the Art?

I think we just thank our gods for allowing this man to walk and create among us for more than half a century.

##SCOTTWALKER #walkerbrothers #engel #pjproby #jacquesbrel #brel #tilt #myshipiscomingin #walkingintherain #climateofthehunter #manchester #stockport #gtancoatsstreet

Do i hear
21
21
21

i’ll give you
21
21
21

Do i hear
21
21
21

i’ll give you
21
21
21

This night you
are mistaken

i’m a farmer
in the city

Dark farm
houses
against the
sky

Every night
i must wonder why

Harness on the
left nail keeps
wrinkling wrinkling

Then higher above
me – e e so o
e e e so o o

Can’t go by
a man from
Rio

Can’t go by
a man from
Vigo

Can’t go by
a man from
Ostia

Hey Ninetto

Remember that
dream

we talked about
it
so many times

Do i hear
21
21
21

i’ll give you
21
21
21

Do i hear
21
21
21

i’ll give you
21
21
21

And if i’m not
mistaken
We can search
from farm to
farm

Dark farm houses
against our eyes

Every night i
must realize

Harness on the
left nail

keeps withering withering

Then higher above
me e e so o
e e e so o o

Can’t go by
a man in
this shirt

Can’t go by
a man in
that shirt

Can’t go by
a man with brain
grass

go by his long
long eye
gas

And i used
to be a
citizen

i never felt
the pressure

i knew nothing
of the horses

Nothing of the
thresher

Paulo
take me with
you

it was the
journey of
life

Do i hear
21
21
21

i’ll give you
21
21
21

Do i hear
21
21
21

i’ll give you
21
21
21