Archive
Scott Walker, 1943-2019
Singer, songwriter and composer Scott Walker died in London on March 22, 2019, at the age of 76. The cause of death was not publicly announced.
One of the most singular figures in modern popular music, Walker travelled an extraordinary path from 1960s pop idol to uncompromising avant-garde composer. His involvement with cinema was comparatively limited, but his scores for Pola X, The Childhood of a Leader and Vox Lux provided a remarkable late chapter to one of music’s most unpredictable careers.
Walker was born Noel Scott Engel in Hamilton, Ohio, on January 9, 1943, and grew up largely in California. After working as a child performer and session bass guitarist, he joined John Maus and Gary Leeds in the Walker Brothers. The trio moved to Britain in 1965 and became enormous stars with records including “Make It Easy on Yourself” and “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine (Anymore),” Walker’s deep baritone making him one of the most distinctive singers of the era.
After leaving the group, Walker embarked on a remarkable solo career. The albums Scott, Scott 2, Scott 3 and Scott 4 combined orchestral pop, existential songwriting and his fascination with Jacques Brel. Following a lengthy period of declining commercial success, he gradually reinvented himself with increasingly experimental music, culminating in Tilt (1995), The Drift (2006) and Bish Bosch (2012). These dense, frequently unsettling works used unconventional percussion, dissonance and vast orchestral textures in ways that often seemed inherently cinematic. Read more…
THE CHILDHOOD OF A LEADER – Scott Walker
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Any time you have a film based on the work of Jean-Paul Sartre you know you’re in for a challenging time at the movies; so it is with The Childhood of a Leader, director Brady Corbet’s film based on the great French existentialist philosopher’s 1939 short story. It tells the tale of a man named Prescott (Robert Pattinson), an American who grew up in Paris, and who at the story’s outset has already been revealed to be a fascist leader in a far-right European political party in the years immediately preceding World War II. The film then jumps back to his childhood in the years immediately following the conclusion of World War I, and examines both the child’s innate predilection for egotism, as well as the circumstances and influences that caused him to develop his particular identity and authoritarian world-view, drawing comparisons with people like Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and other megalomaniacal leaders of their ilk. The film, which also stars Bérénice Bejo, Liam Cunningham, and Tom Sweet, was the darling of the 2015 Venice International Film Festival, and has been lauded by art-house film critics, who called it “a strange and startling film,” “relentlessly sombre and compelling,” and “a dark, enigmatic piece of work”. Read more…
Shop at the Movie Music UK Store
Member of the
MOVIE MUSIC UK 