This is mirrored in a blog post (500 People, Places and Things to Define Jim Shedden, (http://www.jimshedden.com/500-people-places-and-things-that-define-jim-shedden/), and in turn derived from a number of 1000 Songs entries I made between 2007 and 2014 (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1000Songs/).
If any artist belongs on this list, it’s Scott Walker. I was a fan the second I heard him, at age 18, and relentlessly so until the present day.
When I started my Facebook Group (which was really a collective blog) where we discussed music for 7+ years, Scott Walker’s “Seventh Seal” was the second song we discussed (the Allman Brothers’ You Don’t Love Me/Soul Survivor was #1 and, for context, Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman” was #3).
Song #2: "The Seventh Seal," by Scott Walker
1000 Songs in 1000 Days
October 4, 2007
Song #2: "The Seventh Seal." Scott Walker, from Scott 4, 1969.
"Anybody seen a knight pass this way
I saw him playing chess with Death yesterday
His crusade was a search for God and they say
It's been a along way to carry on." (Scott Walker, after Ingmar Berman)
I first heard "Seventh Seal" back in 1981 when I my friend Lisa Godfrey gave me Fire Escape in the Sky: The Godlike Genius of Scott Walker, a compilation of Walker's self-penned songs collected by Julian Cope (The Teardrop Explodes). I knew nothing about him, or even The Walker Brothers, his wildly successful pop balladeer group (especially their "Make it Easy on Yourself," and "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore."). The album was very seductive, especially to my pretentious high school sensibility: a beautifully-packaged album of impeccable, madly idiosyncratic pop songs, thrust into an unsuspecting world by another madman of pop, Julian Cope. I think Lisa G ended up giving this to me, having a love-hate relationship with Cope, Walker and Brel. The "romanticism" of the work always borders on sentimentality at best, and misogyny at worst.
After the breakup of the Walker Brothers in the late 1960s, Scott Walker (really Scott Engel) started releasing strange solo albums featuring covers of much of the Jacques Brel catalogue, as translated by Mort Shuman (many of them were performed in the edgy musical Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris). Walker also began to record his own compositions which were strongly influenced by Brel, but which were much more eclectic in their influences, drawing on classical music, Broadway and the American songbook, Lieder and Gregorian chants.
The albums were dark, introverted, existential, and definitely not chart-toppers. The apotheosis of this period is Scott 4: if there is a masterpiece in this career, this is it. It was a tremendous bomb, however, and led to Walker reorienting his career around his British TV series, Scott, with covers of popular film tunes, ballads, country and western songs, showtunes, etc. I have a fondness for this material as Walker's voice remains beautiful and haunting, and his interpretations and arrangements are usually compelling.
Hearing the Godlike Genius compilation meant all my other musical obsessions had to take a back seat for at least a year: the Velvet Underground, Bowie, Eno, Dylan, Elvis Costello. I had to learn everything there was to know about Walker, get every recording there was to get (thank God for Peter Dunn's Vinyl Museum in Toronto!). And I had to meet any like-minded souls. There weren't many of us, but the late Steve Banks (Ministry of Love, Trans-Love Airways) was one; Marc de Guerre, a painter at the time and leader of the band Rongwrong, was another (though he reminded me that I introduced him to Walker’s music); Kathleen Robertson, as she was known at the time (Fifth Column) was another, though she definitely had a hard time with aforementioned misogyny (I remember her especially bristling at the interpretation of Brel's "The Girls and the Dogs").
Getting back to Scott 4 though. This is the first Walker album of entirely original compositions, each of them Big, Dramatic and Earnest, highly original and beautifully arranged. The song that stuck out for me from it was "The Seventh Seal". I played it more than any other song for a year, maybe two. It was my introduction to the films of Ingmar Bergman. The Seventh Seal became my favorite film for years, and I became obsessed with the theological problem of "the Silence of God". All of this from what might be, in retrospect, a mighty cheesy pop song. But, still, the hair on the back of my neck still stands up when I hear:
"My life's a vain pursuit of meaningless smiles
Why can't God touch me with a sign
Perhaps there's no one there answered the booth
And Death hid within his cloak and smiled"
There's a beautiful understated ghostly choir, Spanish-influenced horns and strings, and Scott's voice at its absolute hauntingliest best.
I can't decide, but I think it's a masterpiece of pop music composition and execution. Perhaps that's still my adolescent insanity talking though.
Song #202: Black Sheep Boy
1000 Songs in (more than) 1000 Days
September 26, 2008
Song #202: "Black Sheep Boy." Tim Hardin, Tim Hardin 2, 1967.
I came to this song, and to Tim Hardin, through Scott Walker. Two giants I wasn't expecting to encounter while still hoping for punk salvation.
My fall into Scott Walker started with his own songs as collected on the compilation Julian Cope put together, Fire Escape in the Sky: The Godlike Genius of Scott Walker. I was so taken with songs like "Seventh Seal" (#2 in this group), "Plastic Palace People", and "The Amorous Humphrey Plugg", that I can honestly say that all my ideas about what constituted great music were forever changed.
That infatuation opened up many doors. I soon got into the Jacques Brel covers by Scott Walker, themselves mostly derived from the incredible Eric Blau/Mort Shuman translations from the Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris revue (I had the privilege of seeing the 2006 revival of it off Broadway). And I got into the Walker Brothers which, in turn, opened a lot of doors. And then, finally, I got into the final group of Scott Walker's music, the non-original, non-Walker Brothers, non-Brel material. What a fabulous hodge-podge!
"Wait Until Dark"
"The Impossible Dream"
"Will You Still Be Mine?"
"If"
"Ain't No Sunshine"
"Any Day Now"
"Sundown"
"Delta Dawn"
"The Look of Love"...
Songs by Kurt Weill, Charles Aznavour, Andre Previn, Kern/Hammerstein, Barry Mann, Morricone, Rota. And, starting with his first solo album, Scott, songs by Tim Hardin: "Lady Came from Baltimore", on that first album, and "Black Sheep Boy" on the second album. To the best of my knowledge, those are the only two Hardin covers that Walker recorded.
I love a lot of things about Scott Walker. With his own compositions it's one thing, because the unorthodox lyrics and arrangements, along with his haunting and powerful voice, stop me in my tracks still to this day. With the Brel material, there's a special alchemy of the sort you hear with Sinatra doing Cole Porter, Miles doing Gershwin, and Jennifer Warnes doing Leonard Cohen (thought I'd throw that in). But it's so fucking strange and perfect all at the same time.
I think Walker-does-Brel is almost equaled in these two Hardin songs, though Hardin, on the surface, was so much more conventional than Brel. After the Walker covers, I first heard Hardin himself shortly thereafter when my friend Barry made me a tape of his songs, or included the material on a compilation. Of course, then I realized that I already knew "Reason to Believe" by Rod Stewart, "If I Were a Carpenter" by Bobby Darin I guess (and now many others including the Four Tops and Johnny Cash), and even "Eulogy to Lenny Bruce" by Nico on Chelsea Girl.
So what is it about Tim Hardin? On the surface, he sounds like just another singer-songwriter, a Jackson Browne or Tim Buckley who didn't quite break through. Indeed, his output is uneven and his career was seriously damaged because of his anxiety and heroin addiction, which eventually killed him in 1976.
Because Alan recently wrote on Okkervil River, who put out an album called "Black Sheep Boy", inspired by the Hardin song, and including a cover of BSB, I thought I'd let the band's Will Sheff help to unravel the Tim Hardin question.
Some general remarks. The best Hardin material is on Tim Hardin 1 and Tim Hardin 2, though there are gems that you'll find on later releases. Listen to the Hardin versions. And then listen to the various covers over the years. It seems to me that most artists have picked up on a latent Hardin, the one that might have become Jackson Browne or Tim Buckley: big, full and showy. The other Hardin, the Hardin that comes across most obviously on his own recordings, is tentative, introverted and in considerable pain. That's the Okkervil's Hardin, as you can hear in their stunning cover of "Black Sheep Boy."
"Black Sheep Boy" is probably my favorite Hardin song. It seems to capture his sensibility and autobiography succinctly and poignantly. And, though Scott Walker's version is more polished, more extroverted and almost boisterous in comparison, it seems to have integrity as Walker himself is definitely a black sheep boy. Like Will Sheff.
Here's what Sheff has to say:
"These famous songs were my first exposure to Tim Hardin, and I knew them long before I knew his name. I knew them as sung by artists whom I mostly scoffed at, like Bobby Darin, with his hit versions of "If I Were a Carpenter" and "Lady Came from Baltimore," or the insufferable Rod Stewart crooning "Reason to Believe." When I heard Hardin's original versions, though, I found that they were nothing like those covers. Their arrangements were largely acoustic and elegantly simple, mixing the earnest earthiness of singer-songwriter folk with the sophistication of Cool Jazz artists like Chet Baker. And Hardin's voice - though possessed of a tremolo quality that's very different than what's in style today - was startlingly intimate, emotional, and direct. Hardin's music transported me to the same tender, warm little world that I associate with artists like Nick Drake and Van Morrison, and I realized that both of these artists were probably in fact deeply influenced by Hardin and his then-famous, jewel-like little songs. (These days, Van Morrison is a legendary figure and Nick Drake has achieved a posthumous fame as perhaps the definitive treasured cult songwriter, but Tim Hardin's revival has been slow in coming.)"
I agree with almost everything Sheff has to say. The invocation of Chet Baker. The comparisons with Drake and Morrison. The "intimate, emotional, and direct" voice. The "tremolo quality".
But I don't agree where the covers are concerned. I'm not a huge Bobby Darin fan (though if you have a copy of "Gyp the Cat" please e-mail it to me!), because of the homogeneous quality of his recordings. But I've loved so many of the covers. I mean, I really, really like Rod Stewart's "Reason to Believe" (hey Rick C. - wasn't that ACTUALLY the b-side to Maggie May, not I Know I'm Losing You)?
On the other hand, listening again to every Hardin recording I have, and then the covers, I came to the conclusion that his recordings were even more original, beautiful and terrifying that I ever remembered them being. And the covers are starting to fade from view for me. At least for a while.
I'm listening to "How Can We Hang on to a Dream" right now and I can hardly do anything else. I don't know why I never noticed the staggering greatness of this cut before.
Sheff goes on to say: "As I listened to Hardin's first two records over and over again, I also started having that weird proprietary feeling that I get towards Drake and Morrison: no matter how famous their music is, I have this odd and comforting sense that each time I cue up the record they're singing just for me. I became obsessed with Hardin's songs on Tim 1 and Tim 2, with the economy of their language, their swooping, lyrical string arrangements, the halting rhythms of Hardin's acoustic guitar playing. At first my favorite Tim Hardin song was "It'll Never Happen Again," then it was "Don't Make Promises," then it was "Misty Roses," but before long I became especially obsessed with the song "Black Sheep Boy," with its mysterious lyrics and darkly confident theme, which, as far as I could figure out, could be summed up thusly: 'I know I'm fucking up - leave me alone'."
WOW. The "odd and comforting sense taht each time I cue up the record they're singing just for me" describes how I feel with Hardin and Drake for sure, and maybe Astral Weeks Morrison. And maybe Scott Walker (doing his own material though).
So many great songs. I'm listening to "Simple Song of Freedom Right Now." "Red Balloon" was covered nicely by Rick Nelson, who had a Hardin-like quality to him, but with all the edges smoothed out. The Small Faces also covered it, and I'm posting a sub-adequate YouTube instance of it, but what the hell.This love song to heroin is somehow more convincing than the Velvet Underground:
Bought myself a red balloon and got a blue surprise -
hidden in the red balloon, the pinning of my eyes.
You took the love light from my eyes. Blue, blue surprise.
We met as friends and you were so easy to get to know,
but will we see each other again? Oh... I hope so.
If you want to keep digging through the Hardin material after the first two albums, you'll eventually get to the 1970 album,
"Suite for Susan Moore and Damion: We Are One, One, All in One." Sheff's take on this album is dead on: "Suite for Susan Moore and Damion - We Are - One. One, All In One is an unbearably sad record, and its sadness comes not from contemplation or from clear-eyed and hard-won wisdom but from how empty Hardin's pronouncements on romantic commitment and fatherly love ring. There's a sense of despair to the album, but deeper than that there's a sense of confusion, of disconnectedness, not just of Hardin from his message but of Hardin from his muse, and maybe from himself. It's one of the most enervating records I've ever heard, full of directionless melodies, words that seem vulnerable and sincere but that barely add up to anything, clumsy and vapid noodling, songs that strain to mean everything and mean less than nothing. Here and there, though, Hardin stumbles onto lyrics as great as in his heyday, as in "Magician," when the clouds seem to part and Hardin presents the listener with what's probably a warped self-portrait:
You should see the troubles that he goes through
to free his house from sin.
Magic wands and weapons together in a room..."
And I'll close with this last observation of Sheff's: "We too often associate drugs and heavy drinking with wild creativity, but in the case of Tim Hardin - and in many more cases than I think people realize - all of his great work was done in spite of drugs, not because of them. Drugs ruined Tim Hardin as an artist, and in many respects they ruined him as a human being. Still, as he makes clear in "Black Sheep Boy" and, as I guess is part of the point of our little record of the same name, that was his choice."
As I said, get Tim Hardin 1 and Tim Hardin 2. You will be blown away.
Song #277: Jackie
1000 Songs
April 12, 2009 (Easter)
Song #277: Jackie. Scott Walker, Scott 2, 1968.
I discussed my Scott Walker obsession back in entry #2, where I covered "The Seventh Seal" (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5553156450&ref=ts#/topic.php?uid=5553156450&topic=3811). I also discussed "Black Sheep Boy," a Tim Hardin song that he covered (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5553156450&ref=ts#/topic.php?uid=5553156450&topic=6145).
My Walker obsession was one of those where I spent years trying to convince people, through mixed tapes and rhetoric, why he was a genius. And, yet, as soon as I encountered other people, especially in the music media, making a similar case, my reaction was one of "he's not THAT great." Sound familiar to anyone out there? Bitter when Tom Waits became (sort of) popular? When Nick Drake and Elliott Smith songs started appearing in popular films?
Anyhow, these days I honestly do feel like Walker is a genius, but he's so idiosyncratic that I have very little fight left in me for anyone who might disagree. I'm not necessarily convinced myself.
After I borrowed my friend Lisa Godfrey's copy of Fire Escape in the Sky: The Godlike Genius of Scott Walker, I did what research I could on him (damn those pre-Web, pre-Wikipedia days!) and discovered that he was in a band called The Walker Brothers. I remember searching the bins of Vortex (Church and Dundas) and Peter Dunn's Vinyl Museum (Yonge St., near Sam's and A&A's). Before I found a Walker Brothers album, I found a copy of Scott 2, with a very odd cover that I haven't seen since, as if a discount label was reissuing it or something. It was a pretty exciting moment, though, revealing a context for the oddball original tunes that I loved so much, mixed in as they were with covers of Jacques Brel and other material from the pop music archive:
"Best of Both Worlds," not the Miley/Hannah song, but a Lulu classic that I'm sure I'll have to return to.
"Black Sheep Boy," previously discussed here.
"The Amorous Humphrey Plugg," one of my favorite Walker originals.
"Next," one of several Brel songs translated and intrepreted by Mort Shuman for the musical, Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.
"The Girls from the Streets," an exquisite Walker ("Engel") original.
"Plastic Palace People," a candidate for the best Walker song ever.
"Wait Until Dark," the Mancini song for the film.
"The Girls and the Dogs," a hilarious Brel/Jouannest/Shuman composition.
"Windows of the World," an under-rated Bacharach/David tune.
"The Bridge," one of Walker's only unsatisfying original compositions on these early solo albums.
"Come Next Spring," a song I don't know outside of Walker's version and Tony Bennett's, and it very much sounds like a Bennett song.
Wow, what an incredible album! This opened up so many doors for me. For one, I almost immediately managed to find every other Walker solo album. Second, I did get my hands on the Walker Brothers Make It Easy on Yourself, as well as a compilation that that I can find no reference to online. Most importantly, it got this iconoclastic punk to slow down and listen to music that I'd either dismissed before, or just didn't know about.
I didn't know about Jacques Brel, that's for sure. I was allergic then, and still mostly am, to pop music in any language but English. But I did read an article somewhere on Walker where they discussed the transformative effect Brel's music had for him. And, I was hooked very fast. I bought an actual Brel album. I stumbled on a very expensive Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris at Sam's and quickly connected the dots. Walker's Brel was Brel via Mort Shuman, Eric Blau and company. I'd seen Pomus/Shuman on a bunch of singles that I owned, including "This Magic Moment." I was beginning to understanding something of the "parallel 60s" zeitgeist, and I was ready for it, having overdosed on the official 60s, at least for a while.
I also noticed Brel's songwriting credits on Sinatra's Reprise albums, including "I'm Not Afraid," and "If You Go Away," though these were not Shuman translations but Rod McKuen. I then heard the originals by Brel and my French was just good enough to realize that McKuen's translations were very loose, as were Shuman's (to a lesser extent). I figured out that "Le Moribund" was the original of "Seasons in the Sun," and realized that I'd been living with Brel for longer than I thought. It was all so fascinating, especially as even at that age I had assumed McKuen was the worst poet in the world. But even then I knew there was a big difference, in most cases, between what works on the printed page and what works as a pop song.
"Jackie" is a hoot. A combination of autobiography and fantasy, it's the story of a decadent chanson superstar who descends into a world of prostitutes and drugs and, worst of all, his own ego. Walker cranks up the volume on Brel's version, with larger and louder strings, and a quicker tempo. The lyrics are pretty faithful, but there are entirely new lines in the Shuman version. Brel's original would start something like "Even if one day at Knokke-Le-Zoute I become like I dread a singer for old ladies," whereas Shuman has it : "And if one day I should become/A singer with a Spanish bum/Who sings for women of great virtue."
These lines are fabulously ironic:
"And if I joined the social whirl
Became procurer of young girls
Then I would have my own bordellos
My record would be number one
And I'd sell records by the ton
All sung by many other fellows
My name would then be handsome Jack
And I'd sell boats of opium
Whisky that came from Twickenham
Authentic queers
And phony virgins."
I was still a romantic youth listening to this, hoping to find, in fact, a decadent hero I could emulate, a creative genius who indulged his hedonistic whims. But I also knew that was bullshit, and appreciated that comic relief in this song, especially in the context of Walker's very serious, very existential side. I can't say he was ever without a sense of humor, and that may have gone a long way to saving me from myself.
Scott 2, and especially this song, opened up all the doors I discussed above. But when I look on it now, I realize that it also opened up my interest in the American musical, be it Broadway or off-off in the case of the Brel piece, but also those crooners. I think my fascination with Sinatra began right around this time, and probably displaced the Walker obsession, given that, ultimately, there was more to Sinatra, more to sustain me over the years (and that obsession is going on 30 years).
A couple of years ago we were in New York, when Meredith was still 9 (or was it 8?). There were no big Broadway musicals that we wanted to take her to on that particular trip, so I bought tickets to the Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living Paris revival. I think she was fascinated, if a bit confused by the absence of obvious narrative. I was blown away at the chance to see it in something like the original context.
I'm listening to a Walker original right now, "Big Louise," and I'm positive we'll be coming back to him.
Song #278: The Amorous Humphrey Plugg
1000 Songs
April 13, 2009
Song #278: "The Amorous Humphrey Plugg." Scott Walker, Scott 2, 1968.
I started to reply to Alan and then thought, why not get another Scott Walker number in? "The Amorous Humphrey Plugg" is from the same album as "Jackie," Scott 2. Alan says he doesn't like the weird stuff, but prefers the ballads. This is one of the weird ballads. That's my favorite stuff my Scott Walker. I'm mostly into the 1960s and 1970s. Besides the Walker Brothers, that would be Scott 1-4, Scott Walker Sings Songs from His TV Series, Any Day Now, and The Moviegoer (I wish I had that whole album!). 1970's Till the Band Comes In is great, but already looks forward to the "weird stuff;" I like about half of it. And then Iike Stretch and We Had it All (the "Sundown" album). Then Walker doesn't release anything for a decade when he puts out Climate of Hunter, and then another decade before Tilt. Then Pola X OST (soundtrack to the film by Leos Carax), and most recently The Drift. The material from the past 20 years is hinted at in Nite Flights, the last Walker Brothers studio album.
I mostly love the pop covers, the Brel covers and especially the "Scott Engel" original material from Scott 1-4. I loved hearing all that material gathered together on the Fire Escape in the Sky compilation, but hearing it in the original context added a lot to it for me. The combination of the Brel/Shuman compositions"Jackie", "Next" and "The Girls and the Dogs," along with work by Bacharach, Tim Hardin and Henry Mancini, all mixed into the same gumbo with Engel originals like "The Girls from the Streets," "Plastic Palace People," and the song under discussion here was so disorienting, but so seductive, to my 18 year old ears back in 1981, that I still haven't recovered.
I did find music that I could compare it to, perhaps Jimmy Webb or Love or "Touch Me" by the Doors, but it mostly stood, and still stands, on its own. I had a high tolerance for his idiosyncratic and eclectic approach. Why NOT combine psychedelia, deep crooner vocals, lush orchestration, and romantic/surreal lyrics? Why wouldn't I like a song called "The Amorous Humphrey Plugg."
I knew it was a song by a loner, and I romanticized isolation then. Not that I actually was a loner but I craved solitude. I now see that as a form of mental illness, but there's no doubt that it has probably helped Walker produce his strange, imaginative songs. I know I've been quoting lyrics perhaps a little too often lately, but I must again in this case:
Hello Mr. Big Shot
Say, you're looking smart
I've had a tiring day
I took the kids along to the park
You've become a stranger
Every night with the boys
Got a new suit
That old smile's come back
And I kiss the children good night
And I slip away on the newly waxed floor
I've become a giant
I fill every street
I dwarf the rooftops
I hunchback the moon
Stars dance at my feet
Leave it all behind me
Screaming kids on my knee
And the telly swallowing me
And the neighbor shouting next door
And the subway trembling the roller-skate floor
I seek the buildings blazing with moonlight
In Channing Way
Their very eyes seem to suck you in with their laughter
They seem to say
You're all right now
So stop a while behind our smile
In Channing Way
It almost makes sense; and then it doesn't. But every single line evokes fantastic images in my mind, perhaps because Walker sings with such fabulous conviction, like when he's singing "The Impossible Dream," or perhaps because the strings (of the bowed variety and the plucked and strummed variety), the horns, the subtle percussive elements make it all seem so Meaningful.
When I first heard this, and "Plastic Palace People," and "Seventh Seal," I wondered why there wasn't more music like this. I think that more than anything I'd ever heard since those first magical moments with Johnny Cash, I was moved to rethink what I wanted from music, to reassess what I thought was good and cool. It led me down many incredible paths.
Despite all that, I was always a bit embarrassed introducing Walker to anyone. Evangelical, but embarrassed. I knew it was a huge stretch for those of us committed to punk and new wave, ska and reggae. I couldn't exactly invoke Julian Cope, because I didn't know anyone besides my girlfriend and me who liked them. As I said in the "Seventh Seal" entry, I was thrilled when I found a handful of people in Toronto who shared my passion. It’s hard to imagine this now that we’re more than 25 years into the Web, and more than a decade when everyone suddenly embraced social media in its various forms.
Good call, Alan, on Strangers When We Meet. As it has Kim Novak in it, I've seen it. I think that, and Sirk, are good analogies for Walker, as well as the obvious Bergman angle, and Sergio Leone.
"Mathilde" and "Next" are favorites (both Brel). "We Came Through," too, but I agree with the "The Old Man's Back Again:" something different is starting to happen there (both originals; "Seventh Seal" too).
It's possible that Walker's best work is overblown, almost, but then it's restrained. That may not be so true for "We Came Through."
By the way, the Brel musical opened in January, 1968, but Walker had already recorded some of the Shuman translations, including "Mathilde" on his debut solo album, Scott, in 1967.
Maybe there's room for one more Scott Walker. But, if you include "Black Sheep Boy," I guess we're already at 4. I really like "Will You Still Be Mine?" though.
1000 Songs
April 3, 2013
Song #762: "Amsterdam." Jacques Brel, 1964.
Speaking of Pin-Ups, Bowie's version of "Amsterdam" was recorded in 1970 but released as the b-side of "Sorrow" in 1973. Pin-ups was exclusively UK 60s covers so "Amsterdam" didn't qualify. Nor would it have for the sequel, had Bowie released it, of American 60s covers. "White Light/White Heat" would have been part of the sequel.
I first heard Bowie's version on Bowie Rare, which apparently came out in 1983. I could have sworn that I had it in high school but, as is so often the case, my memory is impressionistic rather than photographic.
I really love Bowie's take on this song, but it is really Bowie after Walker after Shuman after Brel.
I heard Scott Walker's version first. Like a number other Walker songs, it changed my notion of what pop music could do, and most importantly what it could do for me.
I first heard it on either Scott Walker Sings Jacques Brel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Walker_Sings_Jacques_Brel) or Scott (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_(album). I bought both albums in quick succession at Peter Dunn’s VInyl Museum in late 1981, shortly after my friend Lisa Godfrey gave me her copy of Fire Escape in the Sky: The Godlike Genius of Scott Walker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_Escape_in_the_Sky:_The_Godlike_Genius_of_Scott_Walker). Hearing Fire Escape, the classic Julian Cope compilation of Walker’s solo compositions, changed my musical landscape more than almost anything. Discovering the Brel side on the compilation and the first solo album was too much to ask for. Walker’s own compositions were enough, but to be joined by “Jackie” (https://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_5553156450&view=doc&id=10150226521116451 - where I also discussed the incredible album Scott 2); “Next,” “The Girls and the Dogs,” “If You Go Away” (https://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_5553156450&view=doc&id=10150216585281451), “Funeral Tango”, “Mathilde”, “Amsterdam,” “Sons Of,” and “My Death”? Well that’s an insane set of compilation albums.
Scott revealed even more layers to Walker’s musical depth. “Montague Terrace (In Blue)”, “Such a Small Love” and “Little Things (That Keep Us Together), three of Walker’s own brilliant compositions, are joined by not only three intense Brel numbers (translated by Mort Shuman), “Mathilde,” “My Death” and “Amsterdam,” but also by Tim Hardin’s “The Lady Came from Baltimore,” “When Joanna Loved Me,” and other songs that feel like standards when Walker gets a hold of them.
Those three purchases led to finding Scott 2, Scott 3, Scott 4, Any Day Now, and Scott: Scott Walker Sings Songs from his TV Series. I went into that rabbit hole and never came out.
One day at Sam’s I came across the soundtrack to the off-Broadway musical, Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. I bought it. And then I got that that was where Walker found his translations and interpretations of Brel. The album blew me away and a whole new world opened up for me. (I had the great pleasure of seeing a performance of the revival in NY in 2006, along with Shellie and Meredith, who was 8 at the time but managed to derive something from the experience).
Check out “Amsterdam” from the soundtrack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGoavSHFOHo. I wasn’t in the land or rock, pop, punk, or new wave, but they led me there and this is where I landed:
In the port of Amsterdam
Where the sailors all meet
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
You can see sailors dance
Paunches bursting their pants
Grinding women to paunch
They've forgotten the tune
That their whiskey voice croaks
Splitting the night with the
Roar of their jokes
And they turn and they dance
And they laugh and they lust
Till the rancid sound of
The accordion bursts
Then out to the night
With their pride in their pants
With the slut that they tow
Underneath the street lamps
Fantastic! I love this song, and all of the great interpretations, beginning with Brel’s original. Apparently there is no studio version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMzAmrNS164
So I went from Walker to Shuman back to Brel and then over to Bowie in 1983 when Rare came out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6wKKQMDNHo. It seems likely that Bowie heard Walker’s version on the 1967 Scott LP, but he also saw a London performance of Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and LIving in Paris. He apparently planned to end side of Ziggy Stardust with Amsterdam, twinning side 2’s “Rock and Roll Suicide” closer. I’m not sure why he didn’t, but it could be that he thought his execution of this song was too much in awe of Walker and Brel, without entirely delivering the goods.
Walker’s version is the gold standard for me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF_eVJ7WYaY. Nothing beats that huge, deep voice that never gets a chance to pause, the accompanying accordion, the quickening of tempo, and the strange tension that’s created by the incredibly earnest delivery of a song by someone who clearly never experienced the tale that he’s telling. It’s an apocalyptic tale, echoing the paintings of Breughel.
Dave van Ronk has a convincing enough version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7t-R9KH770.
I didn’t know that John Denver had recorded it though. First in 1970, and then as part of his live show throughout the 70s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5pwk3AAjjk. It’s not too bad.
And Rod McKuen, the other great English translator of Brel’s songs, translated the song slightly differently: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4psm7_3bIHs.