10. Scott WalkerTilt
I love Scott Walker. I got into him when he did an album called Scott Walker Sings Jacques Brel, which was the go-to album for people that were discovering Brel; you could get the translations of what Brel was singing about! But here was this voice of Adonis, like a god, a Greek god, singing these songs about prostitutes. It just felt otherworldly.
When Tilt came out, I was very familiar with noise music from Einstürzende Neubauten or Throbbing Gristle, but this really was different. Immediately the world switched when you turned on the record. It felt you were that ‘Farmer In The City’. And then you go, “Is this about Pasolini?” And suddenly, you really are on a beach where Pasolini is being murdered. It’s so theatrical and it’s so heavy. For me, he did what Francis Bacon was doing with creating his lovers as if they were slabs of meat. Scott Walker hit me in the face musically, but he’s making the lyrics so separate.
And that other song, ‘Bolivia ‘95’. You think you can’t relate to it, but then you hear him sing, “Lemon bloody Cola” and you go, “Oh, Jesus! It’s American imperialism coming right into Central America. The guy is like a Samuel Beckett who makes albums.” You’ve got to think outside the box to really see what he’s saying. And once you realise that these aren’t songs, that they’re poems, that they’re worlds, then you’ll get Scott Walker.
I had the privilege of working with him. One of the hardest tasks in my life was performing with him in the Barbican when he did his Tilting And Drifting shows, and he picked three contemporary singers – Jarvis Cocker, Damon Albarn and myself – to do various songs along with ballet dancers and slabs of meat as his percussion. Trying to sing to a 48-piece orchestra that was out of tune, it was one of the most challenging things in my life.
