A distant signal

The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore, as recorded by the Walker Brothers, is one of those rare non-Beatles songs remembered from childhood before I became any kind of conscious music fan (the Beatles, part of a fraternal bond, were obligatory). But even when I started buying records, for a long time I didn't have - didn't want - a copy of it in any form, fearful of holding the experience up to the light. This went beyond stereo/mono snobbery or any notion of good taste or coolness: for me the magic was in the memory of the warmth and fuzziness of first hearing it on a medium wave radio in another room in another house.


When young I was friends with a boy who lived in a nearby street and while we were playing together indoors his elder brother would be strumming a guitar - I can't remember whether he had any ability - or listening to the radio in the next room: a friendly enough presence but not of us. Possibly he had been assigned to babysit or was just idly relaxing at home after school; I can't remember. But The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine ..., heard at a distance via an AM signal, has become part of that generalised memory of a brief but much-valued friendship.

Some years later - and I'm aware this is going to sound as though strings, not necessarily arranged by Wally Stott, are called for - I recall envying boys such as my friend, who had been given a genuine Action Man for Christmas or a birthday, as I gazed longingly at its cheapo Hong Kong equivalent in the window display of a shop in Burnside on my way home from school. I couldn't afford it, even though the price was around a third of the real thing, and secretly went without school dinners for a week or two, saving up the money. (Not quite as secret as all that, as I was blackmailed about this matter by my elder brother, though that's but a trifle here.)

Eventually I was able to secure my prize but knew I couldn't play openly with it, and so this knock-off Action Man, this Chinese imposter in a bright orange jumpsuit, was hidden in the pocket of a heavy, dark unused coat in the wardrobe in my bedroom. And at some point - most likely in my imagination, as I wouldn't have had, or thought to ask for, a radio by then - one summer evening with the curtains closed but orange light filling the room I recall opening the wardrobe, seeing the arms of the boy-doll hanging out of the pocket and suddenly hearing the song, which became associated forever after with a sense of the sadness of that need for subterfuge. I had my Action Man - of sorts - but realised I could only ever enjoy it furtively.

Which I suppose was about recognising, in my childish way, the sadness and joy intertwined in that Walker Brothers record - and particularly in the voice of Scott Walker. I didn't hear My Ship Is Coming In until about ten years later but instantly grasped the same quality, even though the lyrics of that song were all about good times on the horizon.

Eventually, more than three decades later, I bought a Walker Brothers compilation CD which included both songs but the stereo separation made The Sun ... seem far removed from those good and bad memories and I regretted having made it dwindle into one more track to be summoned up at will instead of an experience better left at a distance, unexplored but instinctively understood.

Now I have heard the Four Seasons' original as well as the Walker Brothers' version numerous times on any number of nostalgia stations, AM, FM and digital, and can call up mono and stereo versions of the Walker Brothers' recording on youtube or spotify. The mono comes closer to that early memory but even if the sound of an original 45 could be processed to simulate a 1960s medium wave radio heard from an adjoining room I don't suppose it would really conjure back that sense of hearing something strange and magical: a sadness and a pain in that distinctive, echoing baritone which was also somehow joyful and celebratory.

The song's opening line may have been what sparked the association with my illicit plaything and made that radio start playing in my head. But I think it was also an early example, perhaps the first I experienced, of the way in which music can answer, or name, a confusion of emotions, even if they are not directly addressed in the song, and bring a kind of comfort: I didn't know or understand about the pain which attends relationships, but that simple pleasure which could not be enjoyed openly, and that mix of sadness and happiness in my childish mind, found a response in the voice of Scott Walker. I didn't have the experience or imagination to understand what he was singing about; I only knew it was important.