Scott Walker's "Joanna": Classic or Dud?

It's a song that I think Scott felt like he should do in the light entertainment mode. I doubt that he thought much of it; I certainly think its not very good at all.

I"m a Mathilde kinda dood…

I still don't get this guy as anything but pure camp. To my ears, he's always in light entertainment mode even with something "naughty" like "Next." And why on earth anyone would dig "Joanna" and not, say, Sondheim's "Johanna" is beyond me.

Perhaps because it's a song and not an extended middle eight pretending to be a song.

This is superb and you have to understand it as much as "The Electrician" to really grasp the nature of Scott.

My mum likes it, so CLASSIC

I still don't get this guy as anything but pure camp

ugh christgau.

There's a camp aspect to Scott, but why is that a bad thing?

Anti-American

I don't like Joanna too much, though. Of Scott songs in that style, I think I prefer "Lights Of Cincinnati" (his last ever hit I think?)

"Lights of Cincinatti" is more MOR than Lounge tho... or something, don't know the right terminology - "Joanna" is something Tony Bennett might sing, "Lights" is more like Glen Campbell

"There's a camp aspect to Scott, but why is that a bad thing?"

well excatly. doesn't affect how good he is per se.

Scott also sang "When Joanna Loved Me" which was written by Tony Bennett.

"Lights Of Cincinatti" was his last solo hit, but of course he was back in the top ten with his "brothers" in '76 with "No Regrets."

"ugh christgau."

I wrote the notes for a U.S. comp of Scott's big late '60s songs, which Christgau roundly panned shortly after it came out in '96.

I saw him awhile afterwards and ended up standing around with him and some folks he liked. I decided to ask him about Scott. I don't remember exactly what he said, but the upshot was that Scott was too much like Engelbert Humperdinck, Jack Jones, etc etc, who seemed to embody old school show biz tropes of the sort that were held up to Xgau by "establishment" types as proper music.

I think he just couldn't (and probably still can't) let go of the resentment he must have felt towards his "social betters" who would say that Chuck Berry is inferior to not only singers like that but exponents of the European classical tradition.

Nothing wrong with a bit of Jack Jones!

One of our greatest union leaders.

How familiar is Xgau with the Jack Jones-like tendencies of later Scott Walker records such as Tilt or The Drift?

he probly thinks Tilt and the Drift are too euro-arty…

ugh christgau.

Show me where Xgau calls Walker camp.

There's a camp aspect to Scott, but why is that a bad thing?

It's not at all. I think the dude's a fuckin' laff riot. But most of his fans would treat my guffawing (a serious pleasure, I insist) as sacrilegious. Or they'll distort what's supposedly so unique about him in order to set him off from the guffawable likes of Humperdinck or Tom Jones or Neil Diamond or the teenpop star of the week or musical theatre. Observe:

Perhaps because it's a song and not an extended middle eight pretending to be a song.

See what I mean? According to Veronica's liners, Scott "preferr(ed) to turn more traditional styles inside out." So then "an extended middle eight pretending to be a song" would appear to be Walker's domain, not Sondheim's.

And come on. I'm no fan of Sondheim (or even musical theatre). But that's one melodious, chorus-like middle eight in "Johanna!" And the implication that Sondheim can't write a song is ridiculous, esp. given that he's one of very few Broadway bunnies to hit the American pop charts in the rock era.

I'm not saying he's a carbon copy of Humperdinck. But he's waaay less avant than his fans make him out to be (apart from the 4AD stuff). Again from Veronica's liners: "It's tough to imagine such tunes as Brel's 'Mathilde' or 'My Death' taking the audience by storm in (cabarets, supper clubs and British TV variety shows)." And yet here he is "performing the Jacque (sic) Brel song "Mathilde" on a TV variety show hosted by Dusty Springfield":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbhGyD4ZZzY

So I think it's very easy to imagine his "Mathilde" taking the audience by storm. After all, it's a Brel song - how utterly avant could it be? And besides, the odd bits might get lost underneath all that orchestration.

P.S. He was extremely pretty. And had amaaaazing hair.

Scot totally outmoded and unnecessary now we have Last of the Shadow Hunters.

No wait there, Shadow Puppets?

12 variations on a theme from "Female of the Species" by Space anyway.

Portishead's "Machine Gun" to the Last Shadow Puppets on Later = Siralan telling Spiv Simon "you're out of your depth, son" last night.

(several xposts)
I don't think Scott's Brel covers (or indeed any of his covers) are much of a measure of how "avant" he was or wasn't. The lyrics were a bit risqué for the mid-sixties, the music not so much. Its Scott's own compositions that strike the "avant" note: with Montague Terrace, Plastic Palace People, Boy Child etc, we're a long way from Humperdinck territory.

I think Kevin has been talking to the wrong Scott fans, none of the ones I know are remotely po-faced about him, nor do they care whether he's "avant" or not

Apart from the po-faced Wire readers who have been buying his more recent work, of course.

"Show me where Xgau calls Walker camp."

well actually i was responding to the entirety of your sentence which was "I still don't get this guy as anything but pure camp", ie i can't take this guy seriously, because he's [hyperbole, adjective].
then you claim, perhaps disingenuously, camp as not perjorative. xgau: "We're talking Anthony Newley without the voice muscles, "MacArthur Park" as light-programme boilerplate, a male Vera Lynn for late bloomers who found Paul McCartney too r&b"

I still don't see what Xgau has to do with any of this. But allow me to rephrase what I said: "I still don't get the way most people are hearing this guy (more on this below). I take him to be pure camp which is a serious pleasure to me. But it's a pleasure that finds me guffawing incredulously. This is NOT how most of his fans take him. In fact, most would get mad at my reaction."

So there was nothing disingenuous about what I said. In fact, it's right to the point given how camp is an alternative reading strategy.

And here's where the Scott fans come in (and again, none of this refers to his 4AD work). That 1996 Walker comp was my introduction to him and Veronica's liners (apparently co-written with Marshall Crenshaw) are po-faced with a vengeance. Not only that, they quite explicitly announce his avant credentials: "...intended to further cement his place in the front rank of sophisticated pop music." (emphasis added) All throughout, he's written as standing apart from mere pop music: "bizarre;" "preferring to turn more traditional styles inside out;" "somehow, masses of the British (and European, but never American) public made an album suffused with loathing, longing, desperation and discontent (Scott 2) the U.K.'s biggest-selling LP in a pop landscape composed of acid-etched optimism and inoffensive MOR." But to my ears, Walker is par for the pop course. He IS inoffensive MOR. How offensive could the man possibly be when he had the number one freakin' album in the UK?!?!

So I listen to Walker, think he's a lark, and then read these po-faced liners or po-faced Simon Reynolds or talk to his po-faced fans (the wrong ones?) and think "what the hell are you people hearing?" Going back to the original thread question, I hear "Joanna" as of a piece with "Mathilde" and "Montague Terrace (In Blue)" and "Boy Child." The lyrics of "Plastic Palace People" really aren't all that more avant than those of "MacArthur Park" and it ain't all that far away from Humperdinck territory (certainly it parachutes right down in the heart of Diamondville). And all of this is very much the stuff of musical theatre, esp. Sondheim (see Assassins, Sweeney, Company, etc.).

So in the end, these claims only augment Walker's camp appeal for me. He's the pink flamingo on the lawn of indie.

For someone who supposedly specialises in "inoffensive MoR" he has certainly succeeded in offending you.

I don't know who was buying his records at the time or what the pop landscape was really like, but yeah, "inoffensive MoR" doesn't seem apt at least to these modern ears. I mean... the shit's pretty weird. I'll leave someone else to mount an actual defense.

he has certainly succeeded in offending you.

OMG. Can you read? Where do I even intimate that Walker offends me? I like him! I'm just baffled by the fan reaction (or at least the fan reaction i encounter most).

Errrrrrrr, "MacArthur Park" is pretty weird, if you ask me

Would help if terms were defined, I don't know anyone who considers Scott's 60s work as "avant garde"

If you reread what I wrote, you'll find that I agree with your "MacArthur Park" statement and I answer your "avant garde" question.

I'm faintly embarrassed that KJB has access to my words, which I'm fairly sure I would revise if I had the chance. I had to write those notes double quick, and in any case was at a disadvantage in that I was born in 1971 in Louisville Ky and thus was not terribly reliable vis-a-vis explaining Scott's context in late '60s British culture as a 25 year old.

I dunno: I guess I'd say now that at least his own lyrics (and the Brel adaptations) seem to set him apart from Engelbert, Jones etc. And I think that his persistent use of drones is pretty striking in light of those artists as well—we may have that arranger who's name escapes me, the one who began life as a man but as per last year's doc is now a woman, to thank for that.

Avant garde is not really the right term; from a 60s popular music perspective it makes one think of The Beatles' "Revolution 9" or The Velvet Underground's "European Son" or something. I guess Scott Walker was working in a MOR genre that was by its nature far more tightly defined, far more conservative both musically and lyrics-wise. From that perspecitve, you can see what he was doing was out of the ordinary. He was working the Tony Bennett territory, but skewing it into something else.

we may have that arranger who's name escapes me, the one who began life as a man but as per last year's doc is now a woman, to thank for that

Wally Stott. But then Wally Stott (and Peter Knight) were also doing arrangements for Tom Jones, Engelbert etc and, for the most part, they don't sound like Scott Walker records.

Somehow I doubt Tom Jones was telling Wally Stott to make it sound like Sibelius...

Well, first off, Veronica, your liners are well-written; I personally just don't see how they mesh with the realities of the music.

Again, I understand Walker's not doing the exact same thing as Tom Jones, Humperdinck, etc. If pressed, I'd say he's a fusion of Ian Curtis avant la lettre and Humperdinck, a combination which, yet again, I find a riot.

So yes, it was out of the ordinary; but not THAT out of the ordinary.
Yes, he skewed Bennett territory into something else; but something else not THAT far away from Bennett territory (although I think Humperdinck's the better analogy here).
And while Walker may have been shooting for Sibelius, he got much closer to Humperdinck instead.

I played that Walker comp for my husband yesterday. He's not a music professional nor even all that much into music. The FIRST thing he said upon hearing Walker? "This sounds like something that'd get played on The Lawrence Welk Show." And later: "I could play this for my mother and she wouldn't be offended by this. Hell, even my grandmother." Now, yes, the closer you listen, the more peculiar the man gets. But the brutal fact is that his music blends into MOR just as much as (if not more than) it points to the brooding artiste behind it. This is a reality that I don't think his fans are willing to tackle. Again, how out of the ordinary could he have been with the number one record in the UK?

Never mind the number one record, he had his own TV show too! Like Dusty Springfield did, and Tom Jones, and Lulu etc.

It's a strange argument to make that just because something gets to number one it can't be out of the ordinary. I mean, many critics point to Strawberry Fields as a groundbreaking record. Popular music is, by definition, popular, at least potentially.

But I think KJB points to one of the things that in fact made Scott Walker unusual - that duality where from a certain perspective he fits in with Humperdinck, Tom Jones and that strand of orchestral pop, and from another he's in a quite different place - the chanson-singing, Camus-reading aesthete. It's marrying those two things up that is weird. Who else was doing that?

Neil Diamond.