92: SCOTT WALKER
Jackie/Amsterdam
(Philips, 1967)

THE current critical and commercial success of The Last Shadow Puppets proves beyond any reasonable doubt that there is still plenty of mileage left in the cast-off persona and stylistic signature of the 1967-70 era Scott Walker.

Alex Turner and Miles Kane are but the latest in a long line of artistes to have drawn limitless inspiration from the music recorded by Walker during this golden period, when his commercial star waned just as his artistic worth soared into the stratosphere.

With the world at his feet – at a time when The Walker Brothers were even outselling The Beatles – Scott Walker went weird, in the most brilliant way. Checking himself into a monastery was an early indicator that fame and adulation were not sitting lightly upon his elegantly-tailored shoulders, and the sequence of solo albums that began with 1967’s Scott are the work of a man in restless and heedless pursuit of a capricious yet solemn muse.

So where did all of these brooding, insular and ravishingly arranged songs come from? Scott Walker had fallen under the spell of the inimitable Belgian chansonneur Jacques Brel, becoming in the interim the best interpreter of Brel’s material this side of the great man himself (although all interested parties should also check out The Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s version of Next).

The Jackie/Amsterdam single spoils the listener with masterful readings of two of Brel’s most enduring compositions. Amsterdam creaks with decadence and startling, vivid imagery:

There’s a sailor who eats
Only fishheads and tails
He will show you his teeth
That have rotted too soon
That can swallow the moon
That can haul up the sails
And he yells to the cook
With his arms open wide
Bring me more fish
Put it down by my side
Then he wants so to belch
But he’s too full to try
So he gets up and laughs
And he zips up his fly
In the port of Amsterdam...

The lustful gallop of Jackie, meanwhile, brims over with roaring, clamouring life and those singularly arresting opening lines:

And if one day I should become
A singer with a Spanish bum
Who sings for women of great virtue...

Intrigued? Watch a thrilling clip of Scott giving it stacks of theatrical pomp at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=i_XSXHm4vT4