Scott Walker Radio Interview 2013
A radio interview by Stuart Maconie for his BBC 6 radio show “Freak Zone”, conducted late 2012 and broadcast January 2013 in occasion of Scott Walker’s 70th birthday.
I can drive a herd of cattle through the studio now and they wouldn’t blink an eye, you know. It’s like, with machetes, when I brought these machetes in, everyone really panicked. I don’t know what they were thinking, but I thought, “Well, of all the things we’ve done in the studio, why are you concerned about this?” We had to do it. I had to be able to get them out — the machetes out — that very day because it was worrying too many people, you know. So, these were big — we’re talking about things with blades that were, oh, I don’t know, three or four feet long — I mean, these were big.
— Scott Walker on machetes, never looking back on old records, and reaching the point of no return
Interview by Kyle MacKinnel, Filter Magazine, 16 November 2012.
“Nearly a decade was taken away from me before Climate of Hunter, and quite rightly so for doing that. I should have kept my nose to the grindstone, but I lived in bad faith—that’s the best way to describe it. I can’t say I regret it so much now, because I’m making the records that I choose to make. Whether they’re any good is another thing, but at least I can make them now. So, better late than never.”
IT’S RAINING TODAY
“A lot to do with my teenage years. We are all flower/hippy now. My teenage days were in the beatnik era. I was involved in progressive jazz and writers like Jack Kerouac. Hitch-hiking over America. Meeting a lot of people with whom I had ephemeral relationships. A song…
‘MP3s are a Disaster’: Scott Walker on the Nightmares That Plagued ‘Bish Bosch’.
By Ned Raggett. Spin, 13 December 2012.
With one of my favourite opening gambits of any interview, probably:
I’m sure everyone reading this knows the sudden jarring sensation of getting half way through a joke or an anecdote before realising what they’re saying is completely inappropriate. The ill-judged story at a wedding or wake; the “too soon” pub joke; the “you had to be there” tale from a crashing bore, all leading to the panicky thought: what is this blasted drivel I’m spouting and God help me while I grimly soldier on to the appalling punch line. But more to the point, why did this embarrassing act of verbal hara-kiri have to be my opening gambit to musical legend and hero, Scott Walker?
It’s probably sheer nerves but as an ice breaker I find myself describing an imaginary film scene that his new album Bish Bosch made me dream up: “…so you’ve got an entire orchestra full of zombies all murdering each other with their instruments. And in the end it’s just a musical saw-playing zombie hacking away at the conductor.”
And my voice fades away to a querulous whisper of self-loathing: “And in the audience there are a load of zombies saying, ‘Brahms! Brahms’ instead of ‘Brains…’”
Pitchfork: Well, in a dark world there’s no darkness.
SW: Or no silence in a silent world.
Pitchfork just posted an interview with Scott, it’s full of fun ruminations on darkness, disease, and of course Bish Bosch. Check it out here.
“I think I did temporarily go crazy.”
In a very nice (and completely endearing) new interview with The Guardian, Scott talks about existence, ideas, chart-toppers, and warns us not to listen to Bish Bosch for hours on end — “You’ll end up dead if you do that.”
A 2011 interview with Rod Stanley for the 20th anniversary issue of Dazed & Confused:
http://rodstanley.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/scott-walker-interview.html
