SCOTT WALKER: 30 CENTURY MAN

UK, 2007, 95 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Steven Kijak.

This is a very interesting and striking documentary, even if you do not know anything about its subject, Scott Walker.

While it uses the usual elements of documentary: history and background of the subject, archival material, interviews, it puts them together in a way that keeps the interest, is informative but also stimulates a lot of reflection on characters, issues and the music scene in the UK and the US in the latter 20th century.

Scott Engel was a young singer from Ohio who joined the group The Walker Brothers whom some saw as a rival to the Beatles in the mid-1960s. They went to England and achieved some success, with Scott writing songs and eventually some solo albums. Then he seemed to vanish from public sight.

In 2004, he was persuaded to be interviewed. And an interesting and genial interviewee he turns out to be. He is private, quite unassuming in many ways, but quite a Renaissance Man in terms of music, literature, history and culture, poetry, language.

We learn about his past and some songs, like The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore, that are there in the consciousness from the sixties. Lulu and others turn up to talk about him and there are TV clips of the period. David Bowie, who produced this film, also turns up to give an impression of Walker’s subsequent musical talent. Producers, sound engineers and others offer interesting background.

In the 1990s, Walker spent some years scoring the French film, Pola X, but his energy has gone into an art piece called Drift. We are shown workmen setting up boxes and casings that will be used for a variety of sounds (as is raw meat for punching effects). We see percussionists, conductors, orchestra members. We are offered some excerpts. This is a symphonic experience: singing, sometimes to music and sound, sometimes a cappella, instruments, effects and lyrics of the symbolist kind. This is a long way from the rock’n roll of forty years before. Walker is also a demanding perfectionist with an extraordinary sense of rhythms.

Walker is a man ahead of his times.

1.The impression of Scott Walker? An impressive documentary? Those who know about him? Those who don’t?

2.The documentary style, biography, study, interviews, archive material, the performance of the music and songs, the cumulative effect? Editing and pace and the rhythms?

3.The title, audience knowing Scott Walker, reclusive, wearing the cap, shielding his eyes, gaining confidence in interviews? A man ahead of his times?

4.His history: born in Ohio, his childhood, singing, his mother’s pushing him, the records, his cultural background, literature and film, joining the Walker Brothers, their success, the visuals of their TV performances, Paris, the United Kingdom, success in England? Scott as a singer, composer? Success, the album Scott 4?

5.His disappearance for decades, slow worker, his explanations, the comments of friends? A private man, composing, writing, his love of classic music, his Eliot-like music, poetic?

6.The 1990s, the years composing the score for Polar X? Preparing for Drift? The 21st century?

7.The framework of the installation of the material for Drift? Sounds, the performers, percussion, rhythms, the conductors, the orchestra? The demanding sounds and rhythms? Scott and his ear and skills for knowing what was right?

8.Drift as a symphony, song, the sounds, poetry?

9.The interview with Walker, frank, genial, articulate? His American past, work in the United Kingdom? People, people he worked with, friends?

10.The range of interviewees, from the music world, contemporaries, the pop artists of the 60s, David Bowie, later?

11.An interesting man, tormented? His dreams and psychology?

12.His achievement, personality, artist, a 20th century man into the 21st century ahead of his time?