A Distant Signal: Scott Walker

 

Scott Walker died five years ago today, the 22nd of March. I first heard about it on Radio 4's Today Programme on the morning of the 25th and immediately sat down to write the following.

 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.

New Peter Skellern CD on kickstarter - pledge by March 8th

 

For those who might be interested, Richard Moore, who has already put together two comprehensive collections of Peter Skellern's recordings, thus rescuing Skellernites or Skellernatics like me from the frustration of earlier random collections, is doing it once more for Happy Endings,  the album of the TV series for which Skellern wrote the songs and in which he appeared. 

The songs were issued on LP at the time - that's the image which adorns the top of this post - but the forthcoming CD expands that compilation - and judging by Mr Moore's earlier CD releases it is likely to be in top-notch sound, and comes, moreover, with the approval of the Skellern family. There are only a few days left so hurry, if you're interested. It's great that someone has taken the time to put together the kind of release which major companies obviously don't think will be cost-effective. 

I must admit I'm not that familiar with Happy Endings, having only sampled it briefly on youtube but it's surely worth taking a punt if you like Peter Skellern's work, as the chance to get such a CD might not come round again. Prices begin at £13 for a CD with UK postage, though it's more if you want a credit on the disc (why?) or if you want a copy of one of Mr Moore's earlier Skellern collections thrown in (makes more sense to me). You can find fuller details about the different pledging options and see a short video of extracts from the TV series on the kickstarter website here:

Other posts about Peter Skellern:

If - and the thing is, I suppose, remotely possible - you are new to this blog I've written two posts about Peter Skellern, one forever unfinished piece devoted to his music in general entitled Not Without a Fan:

 And the other specifically about the wall-to-wall frolicking of the Decca album Holding My Own, entitled  Music for Pleasure:

 

Outrageous: new book by Kliph Nesteroff

 

Kliph Nesteroff is the author of the book The Comedians,  a gossipy, scandalous, irresistibly written history of the underside of the development of American stand-up comedy. But although you get all sorts of juicy details along the way (the Mafia figure prominently) it does also provide an excellent overview of how the form evolved in America and is hugely enjoyable.. 

His new book, Outrageous, overlaps to some extent, as comedians feature prominently, but its focus is on the culture wars in the US - far from a recent phenomenon, as Mr Nesteroff reveals. He starts in the 1800s with a discussion about blackface, and the many protests by successive immigrant groups - Irish, Jewish, Italian, among others - to stereotypical depictions by comics. The long-running Amos 'n' Andy radio show had two white performers playing black characters whose personae had been stolen from two black performers, who were never remibursed; when, much later, it moved to TV there were black actors surrounding the two stars, and despite protests from the NAACP those actors defended the show on the grounds that without such programmes, demeaning as they were, there'd be no work for them at all. 

It's not all about racism, however, as quite often the target is a perceived decline in standards of moral behaviour, though frequently the two issues are interlinked. What becomes clear as the tale progresses is that companies sponsoring of TV and radio programmes are all too ready to capitulate to protests, never wanting to rock the boat or run the slightest risk of their products being boycotted: money, not morality.

There is an amusing tale which illustrates this sense of priorities. Desi Arnaz, Lucille Ball's husband who also played her spouse in the long-running TV sitcom I Love Lucy, which the couple also produced, found that the show's sponsor, tobacco giant Philip Morris, had given in to protests that Ball's real-life pregnancy should not be depicted in the show, and it was strictly no go. Rather than wasting more words on the company's intransigent American representatives Arnaz got directly in touch with the head of Philip Morris, based in Britain, reminding him that I Love Lucy had made a great deal of money for the tobacco giant and it would be a pity to put such a fruitful relationship in danger. Whereupon the head honcho blasted off a curt memo to his Stateside underlings: "Don't f--- with the Cuban".

There is - though it's no reflection on Mr Nesteroff's writing - a certain grim sameiness about proceedings, in that members of the ultra-right-wing, anti-communist John Birch Society, once that group becomes subject to general ridicule, have a habit of cropping up again in a series of differently named organisations who are essentially doing the same sort of thing, or searching for new targets to justify their bile. It's also depressing to see that over the years there is almost a consistent house style for the language employed by a wide range of protest groups or journalists, mainly involving exaggeration and repetition, possibly echoing the oratory of the pulpit. 

There are, however, optimistic moments dotted throughout the narrative when the majority of Americans quietly decide, by their refusal to desert a favourite sitcom, that some former source of moral controversy is really no longer a big deal and protests quietly die away; as mentioned earlier, the sponsors' main concern is to maintain the successful promotion of their products. And the cumulative effect of all the events over the centuries and decades is to make it very clear that the present day is far more liberal than one might have supposed; it's simply that today's social media gives a skewed sense of popular opinion.

The story has been assembled from a wide range of sources, all indicated in the notes. It's such a vast topic that it cannot quite have the coherence of the earlier book with its narrower focus, but it's a compelling and lively read nevertheless. Music, from rock'n'roll to rap, and beyond, is also covered, with the suggestion that attacking the supposed corrupting influence of various musical genres is a front for the racism which dare not speak its name anymore. Anyway, this is well worth reading.

Waterloo Sunset excerpt

 

I must have been eight years old when I first heard Waterloo Sunset, in the year of its release, and - like just about everyone else in the world - realised it was something special.

Perhaps for a child the fact that it wasn't, strictly speaking, a love song had something to do with it, even though lovers figure in it. But for someone growing up in Scotland the song's setting was enough in itself to suggest something magical, even if the Engerland in my head may not have swung like a pendulum do. My childish notions of the country and its capital came largely from Ealing films on the telly, all decency and community spirit, tempered by odd glimpses in police series of a modern day city seemingly awash with criminals, spies and pyromaniacs like George Cole  (below) in Gideon's Way.

Whatever the reason, the song stayed in my imagination. A few years later, when a family holiday finally necessitated an overnight stay in London, I eagerly craned out of my room's tiny window to take in the stretch of water in the reddening dusk: it was Waterloo Sunset.

We were in Camberwell at the time.

You can find a great deal about the song on the net, and I'm not going to try to provide a digest of others' comments here. Instead, I'm going to pick up on a few points which have stuck with me over many years of thinking and reading about the song.

To start with the identity of the lovers: my only contribution to the Terence Stamp/Julie Christie question is that I'm prepared to swear that on one early occasion when the Kinks were performing the song on TV (possibly Top of the Pops, possibly not), I distinctly heard Ray sing the words: "Terence meets Julia."

A playful reference to one half, at least, of cinema's golden couple (they starred in Far From The Madding Crowd that year) or an equally playful booting of the song's original pair a rung or two up the social ladder?

I think I prefer the latter explanation. And even if the revision was a momentary whim to amuse his bandmates it still suggests the inclusivity of the song: no matter how much of an allowance your daddy gives you, the healing balm of that view is yours for the gazing. (And I didn't even need to be there.)

In the act of listening, of course, the song makes perfect sense. Scanning the lyrics cold on the page, however - without the benefit of additional information about family members who may have inspired it - you can't help wondering about the character of the speaker and his relation to this couple. For a kickoff, he seems to have been watching them regularly enough to note that

Terry meets Julie, Waterloo Station
Every Friday night

But there's no clear indication he actually knows them. He appears to be a recluse, claiming in his defence:

I don't need no friends

[...]

I am so lazy, don't want to wander
I stay at home at night

But two details suggest that he has somehow absorbed the couple, is them as well as himself: an artist, in other words, identifying with his subject.

He is an omniscient narrator, swooping down on them as though via a crane shot, picking out the young lovers from the "Millions of people swarming like flies." And he even knows that they, like him, "don't need no friends" - that the city itself, the beauty of the scene, is enough to sustain the watcher and the watched.

Waterloo Sunset has already been compared by others to Wordsworth's famous sonnet about Westminister Bridge. But a small detail from his book-length poem The Prelude may illuminate the song further. Subtitled "Growth of a Poet's Mind", the poem might be crudely summarised as "boy meets Lakes - boy loses Lakes - boy gets spirit of Lakes back again." (Other synopses are available.)

One section deals with his sense of alienation in London until he too is able to zoom into the swarm to pick out tiny details of humanity:

.... In the tender scenes
Chiefly was my delight, and one of these
Never will be forgotten. 'Twas a Man,
Whom I saw sitting in an open Square
Close to an iron paling that fenced in
The spacious Grass-plot; on the corner stone
Of the low wall in which the pales were fix'd
Sate this One Man, and with a sickly babe
Upon his knee, whom he had thither brought
For sunshine, and to breathe the fresher air.
Of those who pass'd, and me who look'd at him,
He took no note; but in his brawny Arms
(The Artificer was to the elbow bare,
And from his work this moment had been stolen)
He held the Child, and, bending over it,
As if he were afraid both of the sun
And of the air which he had come to seek,
He eyed it with unutterable love.

Suggs (how's that for a cultural leap?) was talking in a TV series about the impact of first hearing Lola . He said something to the effect that although he didn't get the details, he knew enough to understood it was describing an adult world, and set in a place - Soho - associated with adult pursuits.

He went on to say, however, that he had found the song reassuring: the message he took was that whatever the obscure challenges to come later in life, they could somehow be coped with, that ultimately he'd be alright, just as the speaker seemed to be.

The subject matter isn't quite the same, but Waterloo Sunset had, I think, a similar effect on my younger self. The speaker may be a reclusive adult - is it merely being "lazy" which keeps him indoors? - or he may be an artist. But it could equally easily be a child's eyes which are timidly peeping out at life from that window, at the big city with its "millions of people", and those as yet unknowable adult challenges.

That, at any rate, was how I think I took it - and the London I knew then only from TV seemed more remote and dangerous, closer to my notion of "The City", than nearby, familiar Glasgow.

Taken like this, Terry and Julie could be seen as imaginary figures, brought into being by the child-artist in an effort to make sense of that frightening mass of people and bring them down to a manageable scale: two people who at least know each other.

Their names are friendly, reassuring, perhaps absorbed from film or TV (which might bring Terence Stamp and Julie Christie back into the equation); they presumably have found proper grown-up jobs in the big city as they meet at the end of a working week; maybe, too, the fact they have discovered each other in all this crowd offers hope for that peeper-out at the window that he might someday be redeemed from his isolation.

As would be consistent with a child's-eye view, however, the speaker doesn't enter into details of their lives beyond the suggestion that they have in some unspecified way completed each other ("they don't need no friends") and feel "safe and sound" - a phrase perhaps more associated with children than adults - once they have crossed the river.

And instantly I see in my head the image used to sell Start-Rite shoes in the sixties and well beyond: two small children hand in hand, a boy and a girl, walking along a road which stretches to infinity with the dark unknown safely fenced off:

 

Read the full post here.