Republic of recluse

You have to hand it to director Stephen Kijak – he truly has a gift with reclusive people.

Dublin Film Festival veterans may well remember Cinemania, his hilarious look at the five most dedicated film fans in Manhattan. But his latest documentary goes one better by granting the viewer unprecedented access to Scott Walker. Brian Wilson may have relented and hit the tour bus in recent years, but Walker remains as enigmatic as ever.
30 Century Man, a title taken from a track on Scott 3, charts an extraordinary career in music – in the ‘50s, young Scott pioneered the bass guitar as a teen idol in the mould of Fabian or Frankie Avalon. Eventually he joined John Maus then Gary Leeds to form The Walker Brothers in Los Angeles in 1964. In America, Walker was still a glorified session musician but a move to London made his a superstar.
“People forget just how big he was in England at that time,” says director Stephen Kijak. “His fan-club had more members than The Beatles. He had his own TV show. It was a sea change for him and I think he quickly got freaked out by it. He needed to escape. We’re so used to watching people who crave celebrity we forget about people who become famous purely because they are artists. They don’t necessarily have any desire for fame. He certainly doesn’t.”
Walker has rarely toured or given interviews since the demise of The Walker Brothers in the late 60s and, as a solo artist, is prone to long disappearances. On his fourth solo LP, Scott 4, the first made up entirely of his own material, he moved away from the Brel balladry of earlier work into a surreal world featuring Death from Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal and Sartre’s analysis of Stalinism in (The Old Man’s Back Again). It would take 12 years for the boy-band pin-up turned existentialist to produce Tilt, his 1995 follow-up and another eleven years for his 2006 comeback The Drift, hailed in this here organ as “...relentlessly unsettling and enlightening, exhaustive and exhausting, and like the Sibyl’s spidery handwriting, the measured moments of bad trips within are part documentation, part admonition.”
Happily, Scott Walker 30 Century Man contains exclusive footage of the relevant recording sessions, a one-time opportunity to watch the genius at work.
“It was an incredible experience,” Mr Kijak tells me.” We watched him spend entire afternoons tapping things to get just the right sound. It’s the most methodical behaviour you’ve ever seen. As the director I’d have to spend time worrying about getting the shot and every so often it’d hit me that I was watching Scott Walker at work.”
So how does one go about persuading Mr. Walker to open up and illustrate the slow trek to discover the detours of art?
“Well, it was the pitch I suppose,” says Stephen. “A lot of people, like BBC’s Arena programme, had tried to get him before. But we were more interested in the man as an artist. He has two very loyal and protective managers – a husband and wife team – and they check everyone out. When we started shooting, I’d get a polite ‘hello’ from Scott but he soon got used to us and the cameras and everyday you’d get a little bit more.”
In addition to securing the cooperation of Mr. Walker, Stephen’s portrait of an artist includes contributions from Radiohead, Jarvis Cocker, Brian Eno, Damon Albarn, Marc Almond, Alison Goldfrapp, Sting, Dot Allison, Simon Raymonde, Richard Hawley, Rob Ellis, Johnny Marr, Gavin Friday, Lulu, Peter Olliff, Angela Morley (arranger of Walker’s ‘60s recordings as Wally Stott), Ute Lemper and David Bowie, who also acted as executive producer. Fortunately, Stephen had help from Tanya Sweeney, lately of this parish, to round them all up.
“I only wanted A-list people,” recalls the director. “It’s Scott Walker. I wanted the people who’ve collaborated with him rather than a bunch of quasi-famous talking heads. But I was lucky because I had a great music supervisor in Tanya. I’d never have got them all together without her.”
The good people of Trinity Street aren’t remotely surprised.