Scott Walker - Rosary (Live 1995 on Jools Holland)

Scott Walker performing Rosary from his album Tilt (1995). Re-uploaded after the original got deleted from youtube.

Text from: http://hypnopompandcircumstance.blogspot.com/2013/04/scott-walker-scares-empty-studio-rosary.html

Walker agreed to perform live on a television program called "Later...with Jools Holland". Jools Holland was a founding member of Squeeze, has a very successful post-Squeeze solo career, and has been hosting a music show for almost twenty years featuring interviews, live performances and impromptu collaboration.

Walker agreed but only if they allowed him to tape his performance without an audience. The clip shows how "Later" handled this, making it appear as if Walker was in a packed studio.

"Tilt" is filled with noise as I said before. The one exception is the song that closes the album, "Rosary". It is also the only track on the album where Walker plays an instrument as well as sings. It is this stark confrontational difficult song that Walker chose to perform. He COULD have chosen anything from the album, brought an impressive bizarre orchestra to showcase the ambitious sonic scope of the album.

Instead Walker chose a song that is so bare, so stripped of recognizable traditional song structure that the result is almost embarrassing, like watching someone in a private moment that they would never want you to see.

I almost never read comment threads but I perused these just to see what people thought. Old fans were dismayed that he was abandoning melody and beauty, those unfamiliar with him wondered how a man who couldn't sing or play guitar got on a TV show and even new fans wondered why he would choose THIS song to sing.

But again, Walker wasn't interested in presenting some IDEA of himself. He'd lost the ability to do that years ago. He was only capable of the performance that was as close to authenticity as he could possibly muster. It is a very disorienting performance. The music seems to be barely written, as if some kind of savant had discovered an electric guitar sitting next to him at a moment of great crisis.

I am not sure of the origin of the following quote but I recently became aware of it through Ricky Gervais' twitter account, which I highly recommend. The quote I refer to is, "If you want to lead the orchestra, you must turn your back on the audience."

Scott Walker took it a step further. He made them leave the room.

Watch Scott Walker perform "Rosary" live from 1995.

NME.com: "Scott Walker, a ‘60s heartthrob who’s since become pop’s great enigma, decided in 1995 to treat Jools to an extremely rare TV appearance, unaccompanied by the avant-garde orchestras he commands on record. We don’t know whether Walker’s fragile performance that night fulfilled his fears of returning to the spotlight – he hasn’t returned to TV since, or even played live – but it stands as a haunting reminder of the man’s dark majesty."

Видео Scott Walker - Rosary (Live 1995 on Jools Holland) канала Pannu Huone