plus de détails ici : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Walker_%28singer%29

Chanteur, songwriter et bassiste, Scott Walker a été une énorme source d’inspiration pour de nombreux artistes, dont les membres du groupe Radiohead.

En tant que chanteur du groupe les ’Walker Brothers’ dans les années 60, il avait connu le succès avec quelques tubes dont ’The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine (Anymore)’ ou ’Archangel’ avant de se lancer à la fin des années 60 dans une carrière solo et  avoir émigré en Angleterre. Ses premières chansons sont d’ailleurs des reprises de… Jacques Brel, plutôt des transcriptions, puisqu’ils les a arrangées à sa manière. Il a ainsi sorti quelques albums, s’est remis quelques temps ensuite avec son groupe originel…

Ses albums très sombres, portés sur l’instrumentalisation, et exprimant un degré d’ennui jamais abordé auparavant ont souvent rebuté les Américains, alors qu’il est devenu une vraie vedette en Angleterre. Scott animait même son propre show télévisuel.

Il semblerait que les membres de Radiohead soient très très fans du monsieur, et cela depuis toujours.  Creep par exemple, n’est rien d’autre, au départ qu’une simple chanson écrite dans l’esprit de celles de Scott que le groupe jouait comme ça, en répétition… Depuis fin 1991, Radiohead est sous contrat avec EMI. Le groupe travaille donc d’arrache-pied, aidé de deux producteurs Sean Slade et Paul Q. Kolderie, pour sortir un bon premier album et enregistrer de nouveaux titres. Creep n’est pas alors vraiment considérée comme un titre de grand importance… C’est plutôt Inside My Head qui est alors au centre des attentions. Il semblerait qu’un jour, lors d’une répétition, le groupe ait joué spontanément Creep, et que cela a beaucoup surpris les deux producteurs, qui pensaient que c’était une reprise.

Kolderie a raconté dans le Magazine Q :

[quote cite=”Kolderie / Q”]And the one day in rehearsal, they burst into this other song, which I guess they’d just written. When they finished it, Thom mumbled something like, »That’s our Scott Walker song« … except I thought he said »That’s a Scott Walker song« . Now I was pretty familiar with Scott Walker, but Jeez, there’s a lot of albums and I could have missed something ! We walked out of the rehearsal that night and Sean said, »Too bad their best song’s a cover. Jonny played the piano at the end of the song and it was gorgeous. Everyone who heard Creep just started going insane. So that’s what got us the job doing the album.”[/quote]

Colin est même un peu plus précis :
[quote cite=”Colin / Dissident, mai 1993″]One of my favourites is Creep A lot of people have said the same. ls it true it was basically more of a rehearsal and the tape kept running.

Yes, we weren’t going to do that. This time last year we were in the studio recording two songs with the two Americans and we set every thing up to record live. We were all standing in the studio room and they said why don’t you play something to check the recording levels on the mix on the desk and we thought what shall we play. We didn’t want to play either of the songs we were doing we wanted to play something different, so we played Creep and called it the Scott Walker song. We have a habit of calling songs after someone we like. Vegetable we called the Neil Young song. So we put it down and Jonathan didn‘t know what to play, (because l don’t think he liked the song very much) He played all this guitar stuff and they turned it and said man you’ve got to do that Scott Walker cover. We said it wasn‘t a cover and they said you‘ve got to do that song. So that ended up being the main song of the session and the other two songs became B sides. [/quote]

En 1997, un journaliste demande à Thom quels chansteur il admire le plus… Quel est le premier nom cité ?
[quote cite=”Thom / Mojo, juillet 1997″]Who are the singers you admire?
“Scott Walker, Michael Stipe, Elvis Costello – I like the way he’ll go from singing in a completely neutral, detached way to being really violent and alarming. P.J. Harvey’s the same. She’ll deliver a [verse] and then switch. [/quote]

Dans le journal qu’il tenait sur le web, à l’époque de l’élaboration de Kid A, pour maintenir les fans au courant de l’avancée du travail du groupe, Ed mentionna une chanson qu’il appelait « JONNY’S SCOTT WALKER SONG » en la décrivant comme « very short and sweet ». On a jamais eu de précisions supplémentaires, et on a jamais entendu la chanson.
[quote cite=”Journal en ligne de Ed, 9 septembre 1999″]thursday, september 9th 1999
‘knives out’ sounding quite ‘smiths-esque’. especially phil who has got that mike joyce thing down to a tee. on to ‘optimistic’ -must record that soon before we lose it (remember ‘lift’?). ‘up on the ladder’ sounds pretty grim. ‘say the word’ (or c-minor song); great drum, bass and vocals – personally getting a bit anxious over it, as i can’t find anything that works with it, or rather i have an idea but can’t get the sound right. makes me a bit neurotic. finish on what i used to call the ‘jonny scott walker song‘ – very short and sweet.
last diary piece for a couple of weeks. how was it for you? i’m finding it a little difficult to set the right tone, but as i’m not a journo i guess that’s fair enough. hopefully this is going to be an ongoing thing throughout recording and maybe even touring, so it will get better. [/quote]

A l’époque de la sortie de Kid A, Radiohead a été invité à jouer au festival Meltdown à Londres, le 1er juillet 2000, à la demande de Scott Walker :
[quote cite=”Uncut, août 2001″](…)Radiohead also played London’s Meltdown festival at curator Scott Walker’s personal invitation – a full circle of sorts, since “Creep” was their attempt to write a Walker song.[/quote]

Et on apprend d’ailleurs au passage que les membres de radiohead ont rencontré leur idole (Scott Walker) et que le courant est bien passé :
[quote cite=”Mojo, juin 2001″]What about something like Scott Walker’s Tilt?
Thom: Oh God, I don’t know what to make of that record (laughs). It’s hardcore. Do you know Tilt was being made at the same time as The Bends in the same studio? We’d been in when he was out. Nigel was on both sessions. We finally met him at the Meltdown festival. He’s a top geezer – a really nice bloke. We did that gig for him basically. I was on-stage the whole time thinking, “Scott Walker’s in the audience. I don’t give a shit who else is here.” [/quote]

En octobre 2004, Phil, Ed et Colin témoignent pour un reportage sur Scott Walker, “3Oth Century Man”. Ils expliquent qu’iils aiment tant Scott Walker pour la “sensibilité européenne” qu’il y a chez cet artiste américain à la voix si caractéristique.

 
(transcription partielle de l’interview : http://citizeninsane.eu/t2004-11ScottWalker.htm)

Un autre moment de l’interview nous en apprend plus sur le moment en 1995 où Radiohead, enregistrant “The Bends” s’est presque retrouvé en studio avec Scott Walker, travaillant sur “Tilt”. Le canadien Adrian Mack, éditeur du magazine Nerve Magazine raconte que c’est lui qui a donné envie au groupe de se réintéresser à Scott Walker:

[quote]This was before Tilt was released, but as I remember it, Radiohead had entered a studio Walker had vacated, and there were hair-raising stories about what he’d been up to in there. When I expressed my excitement over Walker’s 60s material and did the whole salesman bit, Jonny Greenwood became interested. I was fairly drunk and it was a really long time ago, but I recall Greenwood muttering something about checking it out. A few years later, that Radiohead movie came out, and his music was in it… Incidentally, later that night, Greenwood kind of turned on me when I confessed that my friend had destroyed his and Thom Yorke’s secret acoustic performance at the Railway Club a year or so prior. It’s a long and crazy story, and Radiohead vowed they’d never return to Vancouver (they did, of course). [/quote]

Colin ne raconte pas cela à Stephen Kijak, le réalisateur du reportage, qui nous fait un d’ailleurs un résumé : les membres de radiohead aiment Scott Walter depuis l’enfance !

[quote]Colin at one point – I was asking him at what point they got turned onto him, and he said someone had taped the Boychild compilation for him. So it would have been around the early 90’s. He said it was ‘the album Marc Almond did,’ because Marc Almond had done the liner notes. So I’m guessing someone just passed them a tape, and it just rocked their world. They had never heard the Nite Flites stuff before, so it was fun to play that for them, but, um Scott 3 and 4 loom large for them – “Duchess” is a big favourite, and “On Your Own Again,” I know Ed says its his favourite record to have on tour. But yeah… the source of it. It” — ie, Adrian’s version – “could be true – they were doing OK Computer at Rack when Scott was doing sessions for Tilt.[/quote]

Le 4 juillet 2006, dans une interview accordée au magazine français Les Inrocks, Thom, qui parle de son virage musical (plus d’electro, moins de mélodies), avoue qu’il n’écoute plus de songwriters, et hormis évidemment, Scott Walker !
[quote cite=”Les Inrocks, 4 juillet 2006″]It was interesting to distance myself from song writing. Because I’m not really a songwriter, I don’t listen to – besides a few old ones like Scott Walker or Stephen Malkmus – songwriters… I mainly listen to beats, sounds, grooves…[/quote]

Scott Walker lui-même raconte un peu la même chose, il faut parfois se détacher de la voix :
[quote cite=”Interview de Walker2006″]I’ve heard recently Thom Yorke from Radiohead whom I know saying, ‘If I could do without harmony of any kind I would do it, I’d just use rhythm’. In a sense I know what he means because I have done that, almost literally. You don’t know why you have to at that point, but you have to do that to make those kinds of records. Maybe down the line another one of the other kind of records will come to you, I don’t know.[/quote]

Dans une autre interview il déclare même que Radiohead est son groupe préféré (sic !) et qu’il aimerait bien retourner les voir en concert :
[quote cite=”Interview de Walker par Tigersare, 12 mai 2006″]
Do you have much interaction with popular culture?
Maybe not as much as, I know what’s going on, I know what’s out there. I don’t go to a lot of concerts, but then I never have. If Radiohead’s on I’ll go and see them.

Who do you see as your own musical peers?
I can’t think of anyone who’s exactly doing what I’m doing. My favourite band is Radiohead cause in a sense although the music is different, in another way as far as mood goes or textures, there is some equivalence there. But I think that they’re incredible, the whole band, they played at the Meltdown festival that I curated over here, and everybody’s so good in it, it doesn’t seem to have a weak link. I’m very impressed by them.[/quote]

Dans une interview de 2011, Ed cite toujours l’album de Scott Walker comme son album préféré !
[quote cite=”BBC Radio 1 Zane Lowe, 3 novembre 2011″](…)Because, those elements in our music that you recognize there very much come from things like Scott Walker, and I said, “Have you… you guys must… Scott 4!” Probably my favorite album ever! And they said, “Uh, no.” And I said, “Right, I’m buying it for you. Next time I see you I’m going to have a copy of it for you.” Because to me, there’s direct lineage, they might have been influenced by the kind of stuff that we have put out. [/quote]

En 2012, Nigel Godrich conseille à ses followers sur tweeter d’écouter du Scott Walker :

Scott Walker. Failing to disappoint… Check it out >>>>> Epizootics!http://t.co/9Po7gSqt

— nigel godrich (@nigelgod) 25 novembre 2012

Dans une interview de 2013 pour standartmagazine(à lire ici), Scott Walker cite Radiohead parmi ceux qui ont contribué à faire connaître son travail :
[quote cite=”Standard, 22 avril 2013″](…)Tout ça est arrivé par bouche à oreille, par la presse et bien entendu grâce à David Bowie [producteur d’un documentaire sur Scott, 30th Century Man, en 2006], Pulp [dont il a produit un album, We Love Life, en 2001] ou Radiohead, qui se sont intéressés à moi. [/quote]