Cinematic Genius and Haunting Poetry of Noel Scott Engel

Noel Scott Engel a.k.a. Scott Walker was born on January 9, 1943 in the midwestern United States. His ancestry on his father’s side was German- the meaning of the surname “Engel” is “angel”, echoed later in his song “Angels of Ashes”- and his ancestry on his mother’s side was French. The meaning of her surname Fortier is “fortress” and historical imagery of military, soldiers, and war is also found in many of his songs.

Though he and his bandmates (the Walker Brothers) became popular in the Los Angeles, California music scene (clubs like the Whisky-a-Go-Go) through their smash hits, such as “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore”, he always dwelled on escape. Even though he was only in his 20s, he was ready to move away from pop music and from what he felt was a bland, boring, and restrictive society in the United States. He was influenced and inspired by European art, cinema, culture, and poetry. He moved to England during the late 1960s where his direction in music changed because of hearing the songs of Belgian Jacques Brel while in a German girl’s apartment. He found Brel’s lyrics to be exciting and provocative so he began to cover the French translations in English on his first two solo albums.

A bigger change in direction happened during the recording of his third solo album. He began to increasingly write his own lyrics. Where almost the entirety of his first two albums were Brel covers, only three cover tracks were tacked on to the end, while the other ten tracks were his own original songs. The avant-garde, experimental orchestrations by Wally Stott (Angela Morley) added abstract atmospheres. Recorded during the autumn and winter of 1968, Scott 3 contained contemplative, delicate, and nostalgic songs surrounded by a string section of somber darkness.

The opening track “It’s Raining Today” is autumnal, gray, misty, and overcast and his lyrics (“train window girl…replace the empty space…cellophane streets…street corner girl’s a cold trembling leaf“) share similarities with Leonard Cohen’s songs from around this same time period. “Copenhagen” contains Christmas chimes and, at the end, a carnival carousel. His voice is reminiscent of crooner Andy Williams, yet the lyrics are akin to Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way in their recollections upon faraway childhood innocence (“We’re snowdrops falling through the night…gone and made me a child again, warmed my feet beneath your cold sheets…children aren’t afraid to love and laugh when life amuses them.”) “Rosemary” moves away from the narrator to a character who gazes at the “moon through frosted glass” as the clock “strikes like a hammer pounding the nails one day further in the coffin of her youth.” She remembers “stained glass whispers.” “Big Louise” is a portrait of another woman mourning the loss of her younger years. She is described as a “haunted house and her windows are broken…her bathrobe’s torn and tears smudge her lipstick.” The arrangements are a bit too bombastic on the rapid “We Came Through” yet returns to its airy elegance on “Butterfly”. The closing track on side one, “Two Ragged Soldiers”, is more reflective than “We Came Through” in its scrutiny of war (“there were meals in the missions for two frozen statues and long drafty sermons devouring their knees…there were nights on park benches, stale bread for the pigeons, good mornings to faces who just turned away…other had no memories left for his mind.”)

The opening track on side two, “30 Century Man” is a departure from the record’s orchestrations with only an acoustic guitar rhythm and his voice as he prophesies about the future. “Winter Night” is a crystalline, melancholy mood piece that is best accompanied by a glass of Amontillado sherry.

Following the release of Scott 3 in March 1969, Noel Scott Engel reentered the studio during the autumn of 1969 and quickly recorded Scott 4. While his former three studio albums had respectable sales, Scott 4 did not receive the same success. This was partially attributed to the fact that it was released under his birth name (rather than his moniker Scott Walker), yet it is also clear that his alienated fans simply did not understand the scope of Scott 4. Arguably the best album of his career, you can hear from the first notes of the opening track that he was ambitiously and boldly pushing both his lyrics and soundscapes into a stronger terrain. “Seventh Seal” is his retelling of Ingmar Bergman’s film of the same name and is an Ennio Morriconesque epic. “On Your Own Again” is similar in its more subdued style to the songs on Scott 3. “World’s Strongest Man” is a confession of weakness but with a triumphant, uplifting orchestration. His lyrics in “Angels of Ashes” are spiritual and share similarities with Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies. “Boy Child” contains celestial, ghostly orchestration as his lyrics explore oneiric images of “mirrors dark and blessed with cracks through forgotten courtyards…fragments swirling through the winds of night.”

On the second side of Scott 4, the opening track is his most biting and cutting depiction of war (“get his medals hand them ‘round to everyone, show his guns to the children in the street, it’s too bad he can’t shake his hands or move his feet… what made him leave his mother for a gun?”). “Old Man’s Back Again” (with its satirical subtitle “Dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist Regime”) is arguably Scott Walker’s most powerful song. David Bowie was heavily influenced and inspired by Scott Walker not only in his deep, baritone vocals but also in his own Cold War contemplations in the instrumentals of Low. I shared this song with my international students at United World College to discuss how history and politics can be analyzed and critiqued by popular music. One of my students focused on how bold the bassline is, fiery and funky, and yet there is no rock rhythm from any guitar, only drums and symphonic orchestration. Another of my students found the funereal voices of the sepulchral choir striking. Many of my students were moved by the lyrics showing the chaos and destruction from the Soviet Union invasion of in 1968, ranging from the bombers and tanks to the people of Prague (“shadow crossed the sky and it crushed it to the ground, just like a beast… I seen a woman standing in the snow, she was silent as she watched them take her man… the crowds just gathered, their faces turned away…”) He breaks into a jazz scat at the end of the track. “Duchess” incorporates country music with its steel guitar.

“Get Behind Me” is my favorite Scott Walker song since you can feel him bringing all of his gifts and talents into one track. The soaring gospel choir of background vocalists, sublime orchestrations (and even rock guitar!) joined with his own soulful and stunning vocals make this a magnificent masterpiece. The closing track “Rhymes of Goodbye” returns to aching, poignant steel guitar with Scott Walker’s lyrics a profound protest against the desolation he documented throughout Scott 3 and Scott 4.

“I’ve come far from chains
From metal and stone
To grab for the truth
I turn and it’s gone
The bells of our senses
Can toll out the boundaries
That level our lives
The rhyme of our madness
Burn cities
Roaring through darkness
The night children fly
I still hear them singing
The rhymes of goodbye.”

by Mark Lager