“Scott Walker could sing “Three Blind Mice” and make it sound like the only song in the world.” –Marc Almond 

“I realised all the phenomenon of existence very young and it was a very hard thing for me” –Scott Walker 

Let’s face it: rock & roll has a lot to answer for. “What!?” you say, indignantly, pulling out your seldom played CD copy of Rust Never Sleeps. “It says it right here, man, ‘Hey Hey, My My, Rock And Roll Will Never Die’.” Yes, what a lovely philosophic sentiment. But me, I look back in anger and consider that, as Noel Scott Engel, otherwise known as Scott Walker, was releasing some of the greatest pop music ever heard in the late 60s to diminishing audiences, an evil musical virus was taking root which would soon overrun the Western world. Boogie, as in Foghat, Ted Nugent, and all the other fine representatives of pussy-crazed and pimply dumb white boys everywhere. Not to mention Progressive Rock, Yes, Tales of Topographic Oceans, fake virtuosity, twenty minute drum and synthesizer solos. Never die? Rock was in rigor mortis back then! When rock first abandoned pop, it lost its heart and soul. 

All this was fomenting as the Pop revolution of the ’60s slowly metamorphosed in the Neanderthal ’70s, and revolutionary musical geniuses like The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson and Love’s Arthur Lee fell victim to their own excesses, leaving a gaping void which would eagerly be filled by a host of Spinal Tap-type lunkheads with no imagination but a warehouse of stolen John Lee Hooker riffs, huge amps, no songs, and a Whole Lotta Gall. Divorced from their original emotional contexts, these blues templates lacked all meaning, becoming mere vehicles for previously unimaginable acts of musical masturbation, guitars now employed as electrified phalluses with which to wank over stinking stadiums of ‘luded-out zombies. As Wilson and Lee took psychic flight and tried to cope with this Invasion of the Dumb in a variety of unsatisfactory ways, Walker, a similarly-gifted pop contemporary and fellow American living the expatriate’s life in Britain, was preparing for his own act of musical exile after releasing four albums worth of some of the most advanced music heard then or since. 

It’s Raining Today is the first U.S. release of Walker’s late-’60s solo work, which came after a successful career as a “pop star” fronting the Walker Brothers, whose melodiously gloomy hit “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore” made Scott’s baritone croon internationally famous. But Walker’s reaction to a fame which for a time surpassed that of The Beatles in the U.K., was a freak-out which rock music buffs of the present might associate more readily with that other pop-rock star, the late Kurt Cobain: the elegant, dandyish, almost aristocratic Walker became reclusive, suffering from stage fright, hiding behind shades, alienated from his audience and the trappings of mass success, even attempting suicide, being found unconscious in a gas-filled apartment. Finally, determined to mine a much deeper realm of meaning in his work, Walker immersed himself in European culture–the films of Ingmar Bergman, the existential philosophy of Sartre and Camus, the songs of Jacques Brel–and embarked upon a solo career that saw him incorporate these influences within a contemporary framework of orchestral pop, the result best described as a merger of vocal chops of Frank Sinatra with the style and vision of Leonard Cohen. 

Walker’s singular avant-pop stylings are well-chosen here. “Big Louise” from Scott 3 leads things off with an impeccable Walker vocal redolent of an almost mystic melancholy, shaking with tremulous passion as he tells the story of an aging transvestite a la Van Morrison’s equally great “Madame George” from Astral Weeks. Those hung-up on the sneering Seinfeld-ish irony typical of most postmodern rock will no doubt be running for the exits as Walker mournfully intones the lines “Didn’t time sound sweet yesterday? / In a world full of friends, you lose your way,” while the rest of us are transported to a magical realm far beyond that of mere everyday mundanity. Hey, don’t slam the door on your way out. 

Belgian singer-songwriter Jacques Brel is an important figure for an understanding of Walker’s solo efforts, and he is represented here by two of Walker’s most famous Brel covers, “Jackie” and “Next.” The former is a comical tale of a low-life’s dream of hedonistic sovereignty (also covered by Marc Almond to great effect), while the latter is a tale of psychological disfigurement, the story of a young soldier who loses his virginity in a “mobile army whorehouse” in a grotesque fashion. Both songs are given zesty, invigorated readings by Walker, who obviously exults in the artistic liberation Brel’s work has given him. “When Scott discovered Brel, the effect was devastating” wrote Phil McNeill in a 1977 NME article. “Not even Bob Dylan or Jim Morrison or Lou Reed has ever made more nihilistic, grandiose, debauched, schizophrenic, souls-in-torment, night-riding, heart-rending music.” Conspicuous by its absence is Walker’s classic reading of Brel’s “My Death,” famously (and beautifully) covered by David Bowie in his final concert with The Spiders From Mars. 

The core of It’s Raining Today, however, is found in four stunning Walker originals. “Montague Terrace (In Blue)” (from Scott) encapsulates Walker’s take on an English-language version of Brel, as the singer exhibits a keen eye for picaresque detail in depicting two lovers who huddle together in a seamy apartment and dream of better times: “The only sound to tear the night / comes from the man upstairs” he sings. “His bloated, belching figure stomps / He may crash through the ceiling soon.” Delicate strings bounce and weave, creating aural patterns finally shattered by the soaring chorus, Walker’s vocals riding atop the orchestral blast concocted by Wally Stott. Scott 2’s more abstract “Plastic Palace People,” meanwhile, incorporates psychedelic touches as it evokes a fantasy world ultimately shattered by stark reality, this sentiment most likely a comment on then-current hippy culture, about which Walker told MOJO’s Jim Irwin: “It was just so silly. They really weren’t prepared to go far enough … everything I was influenced by was being blown away by this inane attitude.” 

By the time Walker completed the last of this quartet of solo works, his talent was in full bloom. “The Seventh Seal” takes its title from Bergman’s film of the same name–a pulsing, mid-tempo, Spanish-flavoured backing is employed this time to underscore Walker’s haunting, poetic (re)framing of the movie’s existential theme, as a medieval Knight faced with his own mortality challenges Death to a chess match to try to save himself, all the while pondering a life that amounts to a “vain pursuit of meaningless miles.” As with Brel’s “My Death,” Bergman’s movie provides a perfect vehicle for Walker to develop his own vision; seldom, however, has a date with the Grim Reaper sounded as enticing as in this perfectly realized pop-rock gem. “The Old Man’s Back Again (Dedicated To The Neo-Stalinist Regime),” also from Scott 4, traverses similarly sophisticated musical terrain to denounce the Soviet Union’s 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, these sentiments driven by a busy, roiling bass line. 

With Scott 4, Walker’s creativity had reached its zenith–he had created a masterpiece only to see it flop commercially, as British fans of Walker the Pop Idol couldn’t reconcile his increasingly mature artistic vision with the boychild who had crooned “Make It Easy On Yourself.” Walker himself found that his magnificent, technically perfect voice was as much a curse as a blessing: “Everybody’s always imagined that at a certain stage I could have been George Michael or somebody” he told James Hunter of SPIN. “And of course if I’d written anything in that vein, they’d like that as well. But I couldn’t do that.” 

Walker would go on and make some half-hearted albums with the reunited Walker Brothers, as well as release a few (now rare) solo singles (thankfully collected on It’s Raining Today) before changing musical direction completely with 1983’s transitional Climate of Hunter, which saw him begin to deconstruct the standard pop song format and turn to a more experimental, alinear form of art-rock which made use of his voice in new and intriguing ways, liberating him from the aforementioned dilemma of the Golden Throat. After a 12-year exile/gestation period, this new direction was finally brought to deconstructed fruition on the avant-garde Tilt and its even more experimental follow-up, The Drift.