Noel Scott Engel (January 9, 1943 – March 22, 2019), better known by his stage name Scott Walker, was an American-British singer-songwriter and record producer who resided in England. Walker was known for his emotive voice and his unorthodox stylistic path which took him from being a teen pop icon in the 1960s to an avant-garde musician from the 1990s to his death. Walker's success was largely in the United Kingdom, where he achieved fame as a member of pop trio the Walker Brothers, who scored several hit singles during the mid-1960s, including two number ones with "Make It Easy on Yourself" (1965) and "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" (1966). He lived in the UK from 1965 onward and became a UK citizen in 1970.

After the Walker Brothers split in 1967, he began a solo career with the album Scott later that year. Strongly inspired by Belgian singer/songwriter Jacques Brel, Walker moved toward an increasingly challenging musical and lyrical style on late 1960s baroque pop albums Scott 2 (1968), which reached number one in the UK, Scott 3, and Scott 4 (both 1969). After Scott 4 and its follow-up Til the Band Comes In (1970) failed commercially, Walker released a number of MOR covers albums, all of which he later disowned, to appease record companies. He reunited with the Walker Brothers in the mid-1970s. Walker would progress this style through his subsequent albums The Drift (2006), Bish Bosch (2012), and Soused (2014); of this period in his career, The Guardian said "imagine Andy Williams reinventing himself as Stockhausen".

Life and career

Early life

Noel Scott Engel was born on January 9, 1943, in Hamilton, Ohio in the Greater Cincinnati Metropolitan area, the son of Elizabeth Marie (Fortier), who was from Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and Noel Walter Engel. His father was an oil industry manager whose work led the family to successive homes in Ohio, Texas, Colorado, and New York. Engel and his mother settled in California in 1956. Engel was interested in both music and performance and spent time as a child actor and singer in the mid to late 1950s, including roles in two Broadway musicals, Pipe Dream and Plain and Fancy. Championed by singer and TV host Eddie Fisher, he appeared several times on Fisher's TV program. Engel cut some records including one named "Misery", which saw him briefly promoted as a teen idol.

1964–1967: The Walker Brothers

As a trio, the Walker Brothers cultivated a glossy-haired and handsome familial image. Prompted by Maus, each of the members took "Walker" as their stage surname. Scott continued to use the name Walker thereafter, with the brief exception of returning to his birth name for the original release of his fifth solo album Scott 4, and in songwriting credits. Initially, John served as guitarist and main lead singer of the trio, with Gary on drums and Scott playing bass guitar and mostly singing harmony vocals. By early 1965, the group had made appearances on TV shows Hollywood A Go-Go and Shindig and had made initial recordings, but the start of their real success lay in the future and overseas. Although this is no indication that their actual fan base was larger than that of the Beatles, the Walker Brothers—especially lead singer Scott—attained pop star status.

Between 1965 and 1967, the group released three albums, Take It Easy with the Walker Brothers (1965), Portrait (1966) and Images (1967), and two EPs, I Need You and Solo John/Solo Scott (both 1966). Following "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore", the group's subsequent singles in 1966 were "(Baby) You Don't Have to Tell Me" (No. 13 UK), "Another Tear Falls" (No. 12 UK) and "Deadlier Than the Male" (No. 32 UK), the latter a co-write between Scott and Johnny Franz for the soundtrack of the film of the same name, while 1967 brought two more singles in "Stay With Me Baby" and "Walking in the Rain" (both of which reached No. 26 in the UK).

The Walkers' 1960s sound mixes Phil Spector's "wall of sound" techniques with symphonic orchestrations featuring Britain's top musicians and arrangers, notably Ivor Raymonde. Scott served as effective co-producer of the band's records throughout this period, alongside their named producer Johnny Franz and engineer Peter Oliff. Many of their earlier numbers had a driving beat, but with the release of their third album, Images, in 1967 ballads predominated.

By 1967, John Walker's musical influence on the Walker Brothers had waned (although on Images he sang lead on a cover of "Blueberry Hill" and contributed two original compositions), which led to tensions between him and Scott. At the same time, Scott was finding the group a chafing experience: "There was a lot of pressure. I was coming up with all the material for the boys, and I was having to find songs and getting the sessions together. Everyone relied on me, and it just got on top of me. I think I just got irritated with it all."

Artistic differences and the stresses stemming from overwhelming pop stardom led to the break-up of the Walker Brothers in the summer of 1967, although they reunited temporarily for a tour of Japan in 1968.

1967–1974: Solo work

For his solo career, Walker shed the Walker Brothers' mantle and worked in a style clearly glimpsed on Images. Initially, this led to a continuation of his previous band's success. Walker's first four albums, titled Scott (1967), Scott 2 (1968), Scott 3 (1969), and Scott: Scott Walker Sings Songs from his TV Series (1969), all sold in large numbers, with Scott 2 topping the British charts. Walker also achieved two UK Top 20 singles during this period with "Joanna" (1968) and "Lights of Cincinnati" (1969).

During this period, Walker combined his earlier teen appeal with a darker, more idiosyncratic approach (which had been hinted at in songs like "Orpheus" on the Images album). While his vocal style remained consistent with the Walker Brothers, he now drove a fine line between classic ballads, Broadway hits and his own compositions, and also included risqué recordings of Jacques Brel songs (translated by Mort Shuman, who was also responsible for the hit musical Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris). Walker's own original songs of this period were influenced by Brel and Léo Ferré as he explored European musical roots while expressing his own American experience and reaching a new maturity as a recording artist.

Walker continued to grow as a producer. In 1968 (during the brief Walker Brothers reunion and tour of Japan), he produced a single with the Japanese rock group the Carnabeats, featuring Gary Walker on vocals. Upon his return to the UK, he produced a solo album for the Walker Brothers' musical director and guitarist Terry Smith. In 1968, Walker also produced Ray Warleigh's First Album. According to Anthony Reynolds, "[Warleigh's] album, recorded on December 13 and released in the following year, had little in common with the more esoteric progressive jazz that Scott was digging at the time, and the result veered more toward pleasantly middle-of-the-road muzak than the jazz fusion just around the corner." building on an interest in lieder and classical musical modes.

At the peak of his fame in 1969, Walker was given his own BBC TV series, Scott, featuring solo Walker performances of ballads, big band standards, Brel songs, and his own compositions. Archival footage of the show is extremely rare as recordings were not conserved. However, audio selections from the show were released in 2019 as the box set Live on Air 1968-1969. In later interviews Walker has suggested that by the time of Scott 3, his first album to be dominated by his own songwriting, a self-indulgent complacency had crept into his choice of material. His next album, Scott: Scott Walker Sings Songs from his TV Series, featured no original material and exemplified the problems he was having in failing to balance his own creative desires with the demands of the entertainment industry and of his manager Maurice King, who seemed determined to mould his protégé into a new Andy Williams or Frank Sinatra.

Walker then entered a period of self-confessed artistic decline, during which he spent five years making records "by rote, just to get out of contract" Walker would later prevent these four albums, and the 1969 TV Series album, from being released on CD. The last two did receive a CD release by independent label BGO Records in the late 1990s, though without Walker's own approval.

In the 2006 documentary Scott Walker: 30 Century Man, Walker describes these as his "lost years" in terms of creativity. He has also confessed to having surrendered his direction due to outside pressure: