The Black Sheep Boy: Scott Walker Gets His Due

The Playlist finally saw the “Scott Walker: 30 Century Man” film last night. A documentary we’ve been excitedly awaiting for weeks, it did not disappoint and in fact, was illuminating and powerful; especially hearing masterfully haunting pieces from Tilt and The Drift on the big screen. You forget how grand and majestic these nightmarish avante-garde operas can be (and just how radically different they are from his earlier melancholy crooner work).

Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson were seated right behind me and I swear Lou dozed-off several times, snoring raucously. A notorious recluse who turned his back on huge pop success, a remarkable revelation in the film was when Walker briefly hints that alcoholism was partly to blame for his almost double-decade long disappearance and glacial-paced output (a brief comment about, “imbibing,” that he nor the director care to embellish on is all we get).

It’s a strange, tense moment and as director Stephen Kijak – who also directed the extraordinary cinema-obsessive’s portrait, “Cinemania” – noted in the QA afterwards, there was a taciturn understanding about certain off-limit topics. Kijak also told the Voice that another sensitive topic was Walker’s little-known draft-dodging past.

It was fascinating to watch producers Walker worked with in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s marvel about his’s atypical influences, both aesthetical and philosophical: artists like Michel Legrand (composer for film auteurs like Godard, Jacques Demy, Agnès Varda) the writings of Beckett, Sartre and Camus and the theatrical Parisian Jacque Brel (Nine Brel compositions appear on Walker’s first three albums).

It turns out Walker was a cinematic obsessive himself, lauding the early influence of Ingmar Bergman and Ken Loach on his pre-conceptions of Europe (and lamenting the fact no one in ’60s Europe wanted to discuss anything but American films).

Other intriguing moments in the film include:
– David Bowie (the film’s executive producer) recalling how he came across Walker’s music from a former girlfriend in the late ‘60s who had also dated the solitary star.
– Brian Eno marvelling over the Walker Brothers’ last ’77 comeback album Nite Flight, and admitting that the record had an influence and kinship on the late ‘70s triptych that he and Bowie recorded (and despairing that music since then hasn’t gotten any further)
– Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker discussing Scott Walker’s now-ubiquitous baseball cap and how the brim of said cap was a barometer of how comfortable he felt around you (Walker produced Pulp’s 2001 disc, We Love Life and if he didn’t know you his hat was pulled disconcertingly tight to conceal his gaze).