SIMON SWEETMAN considers the bizarre career path and unsung genius of Scott Walker: 30 Century Man in this candid look at the making of his first album in over a decade.


THIS LATE addition to Telecom 2007 New Zealand International Film Festivals is a real treat for lovers of music documentaries – a very popular sub-genre within the extremely popular, always growing, doco-section of the festival.

Scott Walker was a giant pop star in the 1960s. It is hard to explain just how huge he was. He was a member of The Walker Brothers – a manufactured band that featured three young men, none of whom were brothers, nor was their surname actually Walker, who played baroque pop ballads, written by the likes of Burt Bacharach, evocative of the early Bee Gees and – briefly, but crucially – bigger than The Beatles! Yup, in 1965, when the American band toured England (which would become a spiritual home) with Lulu and various other chart-making cutesy pop acts, they were bigger and more important than the world’s most famous band. It really is mad to try to explain it in any other words than that.

What happened next was – and is – supremely bizarre.

Scott, the most talented of the Walker Brothers, a musician who appeared to, even at the time, be using this instant shot of fame as the set-up for a long-running musical career, began to make solo albums. His influences extended out to the French poet and crooning dramatic balladeer, Jacques Brel. Walker cut many of Brel’s tunes as well as recording songs of his own. He was a huge influence on David Bowie.

And then things got weirder.

Scott’s fourth album – Scott 4 – was a flop. A disaster. He disappeared – only to surface every half-decade or so for the occasional cash-cow-flogging Walker Brothers reunion and to release his own increasingly idiosyncratic solo experiments.

Imagine a giant pop star, say Kanye West, heading off to work with Brian Eno and Kraftwerk. It’s that kind of deal we’re talking. But that doesn’t quite do it justice. Imagine a musical Marilyn Manson-makeover for someone like Robbie Williams.

Last year Scott Walker released The Drift – and after years of hiding away, doing his thing far from the public eye, he invited cameras to record and document the making of his album; his first in over a decade.

That is the basis for the documentary – and we get to hear from many of the people who have been blown away by Scott’s work: Bowie, Sting, Marc Almond, Damon Albarn, Jarvis Cocker... the list is long and impressive. And in and around all the back-patting and cries of utter genius we are never far from the truth (Almost admits that he sat at a special listening-party keen to hear Walker’s 1995 album, Tilt, and couldn’t believe, when the album kicked in, how unbelievably crap it was. “This is utter shit” he admits to the camera).

Through it all, brilliantly, Walker is very giving and seems, well, normal. That is perhaps most disturbing (like when David Lynch released The Straight Story and the weirdest part about the movie was the fact that it was so straight and that Lynch’s name was on it).

Percussionists are instructed on the correct way to slap sides of raw meat for background effects, compositions roll on in a sonorous way – never close to having a chorus – for up to 10 minutes. And through it all we get the picture of a man who never wanted to be a pop-star, rather choosing to be an artist.

Tellingly, at one point, Walker is asked if the outcome would be different if his album Scott 4 were to have been a smash-hit. He shakes his head and explains that that would have merely prompted him to make his transition immediately. And it’s not lip service. It is utterly believable, coming from a man who has been exploring musical and artistic truths for the past 30 years.

This is one music documentary where you won’t even need an appreciation of the artist’s music before hand (and you might not necessarily want to hear any of the experimental solo stuff afterwards). Just take your open mind – and a friend – and discover the magic of one of the most unique and innovative musicians, an under-sung hero who sits somewhere between Warhol, Eno, Bowie and Laurie Anderson.