The sob-story of pop.....

May 7th – I suppose, if put to it, I’d have to agree, begrudgingly, that the Walker Brothers did have a certain… attraction. Not to me, of course. At the time, I couldn't see it, why all these young ladies, when they had me to pursue, chose, for some strange reason, to run after this trio of decidedly effeminate looking songsters. I know, I know; unfathomable, isn't it? I can’t understand it either; still, no accounting for taste, said the old lady as she kissed the cow.

That was the bane of most young men such as me. Before I began to use the label, musician (even if I was just a drummer) as a calling card, attracting the ladies was always a difficult process not made any easier by the likes of Kookie (of 77, Sunset Strip fame) a young Riff Pilchard and Scott Walker. Their brushed and pampered photos adorning album covers and posters meant the pizza-faced road crew I used to hang about with never stood a snowball’s chance in purgatory of getting the dame. And when they came out with songs, the lyrics of which dripped with a take pity on me unsubtlety…well, game over really. Make it Easy on Yourself and The Sun Aint Gonna Shine Anymore garnered the Walker Brothers with a following that was said, as far as fan-club membership went, to be bigger than the Beatles FFS! And what did he do when he'd got all that femininity chasing him down the high street? Why, he spiralled down into a depression and went into a monastery, that's what! What a waste! Did he think to send them our way when he took his sabbatical? No, he bloody didn't. I mean, the Walker Brothers were built on a lie in the first place! Like Lord Rockingham’s Eleven (there were 14 of them) there was only one real Walker, the other two adopted the moniker and faked kinship so they could be called…guess…yup, ‘brothers’ and then, to add insult to injury, they had the audacity to tour with Jimi Hendrix!!! Jimi Hendrix; and they were top of the bill FFS! There’s a downer; Mr. Hendrix comes on stage and sets fire to his Fender Strat and then the Walker Brothers come on and blub out the flames…makes you want to weep barbed-wire, dunnit?

Mind you, some of Mr. Hendrix’s psychedelia must have rubbed off ‘cos Scott Walker released a really left-field piece of work in which, at one point, he spent time in the studio punching a side of pork to get the percussion sound he wanted…Bowie helped produce (how come he ALWAYS moths his way round the pretty ones) and I believe the whole album was totally indecipherable. The other ‘brothers’ went their own ways in the 60’s citing musical differences (that’s like a politician saying he’s left his 140k a year job to spend more time with the family) and, on this day in 2011, John Walker nee Maus died.
Scott Walker nee Engel and Gary Walker nee Leeds are still working although, at 60+ respectively, my guess is the only thing they’re pulling these days is a muscle…saucer of milk anyone?