A documentary called 30 Century Man has just come out on DVD in the UK. It tells the story of Scott Walker, who in his 40-plus year career has gone from being a teen idol to an MOR crooner to one of the most unique avant garde musical artists in recent history. The odds are strong that most people reading this column have never heard of Scott Walker. He hasn’t done a live concert in more than 30 years and in the past 25 has released only four albums, but if you listen to David Bowie, Radiohead or the Smiths you’re listening to music that wouldn’t exist if Walker hadn’t gone there first.

Scott Walker was born Noel Scott Engel in Ohio in 1943. His parents pushed him into show business when he was 13 years old and he found his biggest fame in his early 20s as the lead singer for The Walker Brothers, a boy band before the term existed. Much like Hong Kong’s own Twins, the three Walker Brothers were not brothers and none were actually named Walker. But after they moved from Los Angeles to London in 1965, they had a string of smash hit singles starting with The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore that put them consistently at the top of the UK pop charts. On tour, their opening acts included Jimi Hendrix and Cat Stevens.

There is a marvellous moment early on in 30 Century Man: the Walkers are in their dressing room, John and Gary sitting next to each other, obviously a bit drunk. Scott is across the room, sitting on a make-up table, sunglasses on, beer bottle firmly in hand. The interview goes like this:

John: It’s good for money, that’s what pop’s good for.
Gary: Pop means money. Pop backwards spells money.
John: Pop backwards spells pop.
Scott: I’m in it for different things. I’m really not in it for money. I don’t care about money – which sounds ridiculous – but I really actually don’t. I’m in it strictly from a creative point of view. If I can do records and produce records, write music…

It all sounds so precious, doesn’t it? And yet if you look at the rest of Walker’s career, it turns out he was really being honest. The Walker Brothers broke up after three albums and Scott released four increasingly ambitious solo records which had nothing to do with rock. To casual listeners, they were pure British ’60s pop, filled with the kind of big brassy orchestral arrangements familiar to anyone who has ever watched a James Bond movie. Lyrically, they were a different matter. While most ’60s artists were looking to Bob Dylan for inspiration, Walker’s came from Jacques Brel and his songs of hustlers and whores. In the documentary, Walker tells a great story about how he first discovered Jacques Brel’s music. Just one of life’s odd coincidences the way things sometimes come together, in this case sex and booze and Flemish tunes.

The first three albums were massively successful but the fourth, Scott 4, failed to even chart. Walker spent the next few years drifting, singing boring covers of boring songs that meant nothing to him. And then something unexpected happened. The Walker Brothers reunited in 1975 and had a hit single. For the resulting album, Scott Walker decided to just go for it, to do exactly what he’d always wanted to do. And on four of the songs on Nite Flight, the results are astonishing.

In 30 Century Man, there’s a scene of Brian Eno listening and reacting to those four songs: “I remember taking those to Montreux, which is where I was working with David [Bowie] at the time, saying, ‘Christ you gotta listen to these. This is really going somewhere.’” He listens for a while longer and then says, “I have to say, it’s humiliating to hear this. It is. I just think, Christ, we haven’t got any further.”

Since then, Walker has released just four solo albums, the most recent of which is 30 minutes of instrumental music written to accompany a dance piece for a company made up of mostly disabled dancers.

This is most decidedly not music to dance to. It’s not the kind of music that you can put on for background noise while you eat your dinner or talk about your day at some party. I’m not even sure that a lot of what he’s done in the past 20 years could be properly termed ‘songs’. It’s the kind of music you don’t necessarily understand but have an instinctive emotional reaction to. David Bowie, the executive producer of the film, gets it exactly right
when he says, “I have no idea what he’s singing about, I have no idea. I never bothered to find out and I’m not really interested. I’m quite happy to take the songs that he sings and make something of them myself.”

30 Century Man was directed by Stephen Kijak, whose previous directing credits were episodes of Queer Eye For the Straight Guy. It has all of the elements you’d expect – clips from old TV shows, studio footage, interviews with rock critics and fans. But Kijak also does something I don’t recall ever seeing before. He plays the records to some of the people he’s interviewing, focusing the camera on their faces while they’re listening and catching their comments and reactions. This includes Bowie, Johnny Marr, members of Radiohead, Sting, Jarvis Cocker, Damon Albarn, Alison Goldfrapp and Marc Almond.

One of the bits I really love is the interview with Wally Stott, the man who did the arrangements on those first solo albums, and who now happens to be a woman named Angela Morley. Listening to the amazing Montague Terrace (In Blue) from Scott’s first solo album, there’s this wonderful moment as the chorus and orchestra powers in and Morley asks, “Did I do that one? It’s almost like I’m hearing it for the first time.” Walker’s music can have that effect on you. Each time you hear him, it’s like simultaneously sitting down with an old friend and hearing it for the first time.

The DVD 30 Century Man may not be the easiest to find in Hong Kong. I don’t expect many stores will stock it, but the better shops should be able to order it for you, or you can buy it online. I think it’s worth the effort to seek this out. Personally, I’ve always been something of a Scott Walker fan but since seeing the film, I’m having a hard time listening to anything or anyone else. So please, go buy this – but you have been warned.