When you send a birthday message to David Bowie and it leaves him speechless, you know you must have done something right.

But for a complex artist like Scott Walker, who went from boyband heartthrob to the dwelling in darkest fringes of rock music, maybe it isn’t surprising that his relationship with the legion of dedicated fans was at times equally complicated.

Born Noel Scott Engel in Hamilton, Ohio in 1943, he moved with his mother to California in 1959 where he attended art school. After a short stint as a teen singer, he became interested in progressive jazz and European art films (like Ingmar Bergman and Robert Bresson), and travelled around the US making a living as a session bass player.

In 1961, while playing with a surf group called The Routers, he met John Maus (who performed as John Walker) and a few years later they formed The Walker Brothers with Gary Leeds — not that they were brothers, or named Walker for that matter.

Bankrolled by Gary’s dad, the group moved to London and Scott’s iconic baritone sent the trio to the top of the charts with hits like ‘Make It Easy on Yourself’ and ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore’ with a sound that mixed Phil Spector’s Wall Of Sound with the grand orchestral arrangements of classical music. It made Scott a bona fide pop star and an uncomfortable one at that.

With an official fan club bigger than The Beatles’, and teenage girls screaming louder than the music at their concerts and overturned touring vans, Scott retreated from the chaos of The Walker Brothers and went solo.

The Man’s Back Again

Walker’s first solo album Scott merged his own uniquely modern compositions with classic crooner ballads and English versions of the earthy chansons of whores and death by Belgian singer/songwriter Jacques Brel.

He released four critically acclaimed solo records between 1967 and 1969, with tracks like ‘It’s Raining Today’, where dissonant strings hover menacingly in the air over a tale of his beatnik youth, and ‘The Old Man’s Back Again’, a Morricone-esque soundtrack to the spectre of Stalin looming over the toppling of Khrushchev.

But as peace, love and rock n’ roll took hold, these heady, depressing themes and sonic explorations were increasingly alienating Walker from his fans.

But as peace, love and rock n’ roll took hold, these heady, depressing themes and sonic explorations were increasingly alienating Walker from his fans. Headlines ran rampant about his drinking and depression, and Scott retreated more and more from the public eye to focus on music. In 1968, he took a trip to Quarr Abbey monastery on the Isle of Wight to study Gregorian chants, before being forced to leave by fans that had discovered his whereabouts.

His music became increasingly opaque in meaning, and, in the case of Scott 3, wildly more adventurous in sound. By the time Scott 4 (an album now revered by many as a classic) was released in 1969 under his real name, rather than the stage name he was so well known as, it failed to chart and was swiftly removed from sale. Tellingly, a poem written by “14 ex-Scott Walker fans” was published in a British newspaper at that time, ending simply with “you’ve had your lot”.

The Lost Years

Scott was placed under record label house arrest, not allowed to write any songs and being forced to release “commercial” albums under contract — featuring covers of movie songs, standards and country music.

His lost years continued until he finally reunited with The Walker Brothers and, in 1978 with their record label shutting down, Scott released four new original tracks for the first time since 1970. These included ‘The Electrician’ — a dark conversation between a CIA torturer and his victim during the 1973 Chilean coup d’état, where the orchestra explodes with the thrill of the torturer seeing his victims suffer.

This was the new Scott Walker. He had paid his dues and would no longer entertain compromise or act in bad faith.

This was the new Scott Walker. He had paid his dues and would no longer entertain compromise or act in bad faith. He earned himself a whole new generation of fans from the worlds of punk, avant-garde and metal with his critically acclaimed albums Climate of Hunter (1984), Tilt (1995), The Drift (2006), Bish Bosch (2012) and Soused (2014), a collaborative record with Seattle drone metal group Sunn O))) and soundtracks to the films Pola X, The Childhood of a Leader, and Vox Lux.

These albums became more like audio art films than collections of songs, with industrial noise, punched meat, distressed donkeys, and machetes set against orchestral and rock arrangements telling surrealist stories of humanity’s darkest corners; the journey of a plague as it spreads, and Attila the Hun’s court jester climbing a giant ladder and transforming into a star.

A Unifying Force

Since 2012, I was fortunate enough to be a small part of sharing Scott Walker’s story with the world by running his social media profile on Facebook. I originally volunteered to help out running a fan page in my spare time — and before long the page had grown by tens of thousands of followers and it got the attention of his record labels who entrusted his social media in our hands.

It was definitely an honour to be responsible for representing the art of a man who had inspired me so much, but the thing that really struck me was completely unexpected. While much has been made over the years of Scott’s reclusive ways and his groundbreaking and challenging art, little has been made of the astonishing breadth and depth of his fan base. Every post on the page would garner likes and comments from all around the world, from a truly diverse group of people.

There are the fans from the sixties, who talk about his lush ballads, how he was their first crush as a teenager or how they saw him live, performing with Roy Orbison, Jimi Hendrix and Cat Stevens; his cult following in Japan, and his younger fan base who were introduced to his work by their heroes like David Bowie, Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails.

So very sad to hear that Scott Walker has passed away, he was a huge influence on Radiohead and myself, showing me how i could use my voice and words. Met him once at Meltdown, such a kind gentle outsider. He will be very missed. https://t.co/v33Ey91hbn

— Thom Yorke (@thomyorke) March 25, 2019

They work together to meticulously analyse the lyrics on his each album, finding obscure references to Russian poets and beasts from Roman mythology and attempt to decipher their meaning. Sometimes there is yearning for a return to the old days of crooning while others want Scott to dive further into the unknown.

For these fans, even the more famous ones like David Bowie (who executive produced a documentary about Walker), Alex Turner, Radiohead, and Aussies like Tropical Fuck Storm and Kirin J. Callinan, who have sung his praises — what unites them is a man who made such personal music that it spoke to a part of us all. He spoke to the part of us that felt like an outsider, and looked at the world so unflinchingly that it became comforting.

He spoke to the part of us that felt like an outsider, and looked at the world so unflinchingly that it became comforting.

While Scott was content to maintain his privacy, he became more open in later years taking part in a documentary on his life and career, compiling a book of lyrics and joining fans all over the world at Royal Albert Hall for a prom of his music.

The back cover of Walker’s 1969 album Scott 4 features a sole quote from French absurdist author and philosopher Albert Camus. “A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover through the detours of art, those two or three simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.”

When asked about what would be his final album Soused, he said it was “pretty much perfect.” Noel Scott Engel was a man who searched tirelessly until the end and opened the hearts of many.

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William Bennett is an Australian writer and social media producer for projects in entertainment and environmental and social justice.