Scott Walker
The Childhood of a Leader OST

“All my life I've had bad dreams” (Scott Walker).

The California sun is just the painted grin of a clown who can't make anyone laugh for that young nerd who wanders frowning through the streets of Los Angeles, all dressed in black and hidden by his perpetual dark glasses, slipping with annoyed detachment among tanned bodies, healthy smiles, vacuous joy of life, the ostentatious youthfulness that surrounds him.

What's he doing there, young Noel, born Noel Scott Enderson in Hamilton, a hole in Ohio, to a mother who ended up there - no one knows how - from Canada and a father with German blood in his veins?

What's he doing there, little Noel who dreams of Europe and independent cinema and instead ended up as a child prodigy in a couple of Broadway musicals and recording some 45s under the name Scotty Engel?

Music and California happened to him by chance: yes, he's talented, he plays guitar and bass and sings with “that” voice. But he's interested in cinema and literature.

And he hates pop, he likes jazz, the kind made by people like Stan Kenton and Bill Evans.

What are you doing there, Noel Scott Engels?

It can't be real, it's not right. It just seems like a dream. A bad dream.

Wake up.

Noel is in London and has become Scott Walker. And London has the right color. In Jack Nietzsche's studios, he met John Maus, who was trying to make it as John Walker; the two try to put something together, but quickly realize that it's not meant for them there. So they bring along Gary Leeds who plays drums but, more importantly, has a father willing to pay for their trip to England.

They call themselves Walker Brothers, the three fake Walker brothers.

And it's a success.

An enormous success. On both sides of the Ocean.

In America, they mistake them for English, they end up in the “British Invasion” cauldron, their orchestral and sugary pop seems to even outshine those fancy Beatles. Because, in the end, the Walker Brothers are good, they make songs that stick in your head, drowned in a sea of strings and, above all, “that” voice.

And people like them. They're not good-looking, but they please, and magazines and TV compete for them.

And Noel?

Noel is there, still frowning, hidden behind the smiling mask of Scott Walker.

What's he doing there, surrounded by adoring teenage girls? What's he doing there smiling in glossy magazines? Who is that idiot wiggling on TV?

It's not right, it can't be you. What are you doing there, Noel?

Wake up.

And Scott ditches the other two! And he's right to! And he could have done it sooner!

Scott is not a vacuous pretty boy with a nice warm voice, placed there to tickle the fantasies of girls caught in post-adolescent hormonal development.

No, Scott is an artist, a true artist. Sensitive and cultured, steeped in Central European moods and morbid Yankee vitality.

And he's also an interpreter par excellence!

His idols are the French chansonniers, Brel above all; but all songwriting intrigues him: that thin line drawn between literature and music, between life and its mythical transposition, between blood and soul. He adds cascades of strings and echoes of asymmetric folk (today we would call it “americana” or “alt-folk”) and his voice, “that voice”.

Here are his records: 1, 2, 3, and “Scott: Scott Walker Sings Songs from his TV Series”.

Because Scott, in the meantime, also had a British television show with decent success, and then he produced stuff – even in Japan (the Carnabeats, with whom he sang a few tracks) – and then the records of former Walker Brothers guitarist Terry Smith, and Ray Warleigh's first LP (worth seeking out: esoteric jazz-rock that even anticipates future choices by Scott himself) and other stuff.

Not bad for someone who runs away like our Scott.

But still not enough, Scott is not satisfied. He goes to a Benedictine convent to study Gregorian Chant and then more classical studies, German Lieder, the “New Thing”, the music moving in the twilight of the '60s. A blend of ancient mystery and near future.

And, when he's ready, he releases “Scott 4”.

Do I need to tell you what an extraordinary masterpiece it is? Do I need to tell you that, naturally, it was a flop in terms of sales?

The record label and music merchants, employers of our Scott, decided it was time to reel in the young man and explain that, yes, he had fun being the eccentric artist, that he wasted tens of thousands of pounds, and now recess was over.

That was not your place, Scott. What are you doing there pretending to be the artist? Scott doesn't belong to Noel!

Wake up.

Now Scott is awake, perhaps truly for the first time in his life: they've put a leash on him and ordered him to dance; and Scott dances.

Do they want the crooner, the melodic whisperer for the once hormone-heated girls, the groomed and caressing professional, harmless and reassuring?

And they'll get him.

5 albums from '70 to '74 of bored craftsmanship, between country, covers taken a bit from here and there, film music, and songs destined for the forgotten. But always, always with “that” voice.

And Noel?

He's run away, took refuge at the bottom of a bottle. Alcohol and depression, and what's left of success and Mette's caresses, who even gave him a daughter: little Lee, are of no use.

And indeed, Mette gets tired of waiting for him and takes little Lee away too.

You've done it: now you're alone, you're truly alone, Noel/Scott.

Wake up.

Wake up, because now the friends are coming!

Oh God, friends my ass! It's John and Gary, the fake brothers: their careers are stalled worse than Scott's. So, someone comes up with the idea of getting the three Walker brothers back on track.

Why not? It's an idea like any other, Scott thinks: The problem is those two idiots who think they're still from the previous decade. It becomes a matter of styled hair and toothy smiles. First, they get by with a handful of covers, and then, John and Gary bring out a handful of washed-out songs, poor copies of their old hits, convinced that out there are plenty of ex-girls in heat ready to throw their bras at them.

Scott throws his songs in their faces: "Shutout”, "Fat Mama Kick”, "Nite Flights”, and – especially – "The Electrician”, masterpieces of icy modernism, between powerful orchestrations and electric gusts, mature and disorienting music. And “that” voice.

Needless to say, except maybe the first album, the other two go quite unnoticed. It's '78, and music is taking a different path. Certainly a path that Scott himself largely paved, which he embarked on first and alone; the public hasn't noticed, but many musicians who followed have.

Some start to praise him (first and foremost the usual Julian Cope), somewhere people start to mention his name, someone starts to wonder where he is.

Yeah: where is Scott Walker?

He's disappeared; he's done it. His demons have taken him away. Puck lost himself among the woods seeking his pink moon, Scott is Sigismund of Poland lost in that space, impalpable, between waking and dreaming.

6 years pass, 6 years of darkness at the bottom of a bottle, 6 years of screaming with his demons, 6 years of lucid, dreamless sleep.

Wake up.

Why “Climate Of Hunter”? Why does that little gem suddenly appear in 1984? Perhaps because Beverly's smile showed him a way out? Perhaps because Lee, if not quite forgiving him, started trying to understand him? Perhaps because when the demons scream, only music can calm them? Perhaps, only, because his name is becoming fashionable among the important people?

I don't know, and ultimately I don't even care to know. What I know is that Scott reappears in a recording studio, with him is a group of musicians (and what musicians! People like Evan Parker, Mark Knopfler, Billy Ocean, Peter Van Hooke, among others). Julian Cope practically imposed him on Virgin, and Scott took all the time (and even more...) he wanted; he demanded that musicians play without knowing the vocal melodies and that tracks had no titles so they had no preconceived ideas to base themselves on, so they were just free to play.

“Climate Of Hunter” is a masterpiece, do I need to tell you? Forerunner of all the “post” that will follow.

“Climate of Hunter” sells little more than nothing, do I need to tell you?

So Scott disappears again.

This time it's 11 years. 11!

Someone spots his ghost in '87. In '92 Goran Bregovic manages to get him to record “Man From Reno” for the “Toxic Affair” soundtrack. Scott is not there but his ghost is: Bowie records one of his pieces, someone begins to call him “dad”.

But the best is yet to come. But first, you must wake up.

Wake up.

And the awakening is “Tilt”. A clump of blood vomited from the depths of a soul afflicted with autism and bitten by malignant spirits.

Epochal album if ever there was one. Indecipherable black monolith, where the lyrics (and their themes) are even more scouring than the music. Sinatra singing Berg's “Wozzeck”, a flow of honeyed mud. The voice of a thousand demons screaming in the dark, music never heard before. Dense, annihilating.

And “that” voice.

Needless to say, the album does not fly high in the sales charts: you don't go on the charts with something like “Tilt”.

But by now, Scott doesn't give a damn anymore. He disappears again.

And so it will be for all the following years: Scott’s ghost appears only to disappear intermittently. A collaboration here, a production there. A cameo and a soundtrack here. Even a ballet for a company of disabled dancers (And Who Shall Go to the Ball? And What Shall Go to the Ball?).

Another 11 years for “The Drift” and another 6 for “Bish Bosch”. Black albums of mud, infested with hostile ghosts. Abstract music, closer to contemporary classical music than singer-songwriter rock, no longer pop music but not yet avant-garde. The soundtrack of a nightmare. Unheard music and “that” voice.

And meanwhile everyone's there clapping their hands, calling him a genius even if the public doesn't know it, looking for him, proposing projects to him; from Ute Lemper to Sunn (((o, from Marc Almond to Thom Yorke to Damon Albarn. Jarvis Cocker almost makes it a disease….

And Scott?

Scott has continued to go to bed early. And, perhaps, to dream. And, perhaps, to fight with his nightmares.

Wake up.

Did Scott know he didn't have time left to follow up on “Bish Bosch”? Would he have cared? Was he already imagining another future lost in those dark nightmares of his? Would he have found a truce with his demons?

In the end, this “The Childhood of a Leader” remains, whether Scott knew it or not, his testament (“Pola X” is more of a posthumous thing).

Music for a film (a good exercise in historical drama from newcomer Brady Corbet), abstract and cold music, leaden and autistic. But above all “mute”: Scott's farewell is missing precisely “that” voice.

Could it really be a coincidence?

And now, what's Noel/Scott doing on that bed surrounded by frowning faces? Frowning like that boy who hated the California sun.

They wait to weep for the surly genius who is leaving in silence.

What are you doing there, Noel?

It was all just a dream. A bad dream. But now it's over.

Wake up!

Wake up!

Wake up!

Wake up…..

“Everyone dreams what they are, but no one understands it.” (Pedro Calderón de la Barca)