Scott Walker - "The War Is Over (Epilogue)"

PROLOGUE: WAIT FOR THE SIGNS

A few weeks back, I had this post about Scott Walker's 1970 song "The War is Over (Epilogue)" locked and loaded, ready to share. At the last moment, I got the bright idea that I could quickly expand the piece to include the entire album on which this song originally appeared, 'Til The Band Comes In, with little effort. Big mistake.

Spending more time with 'Til The Band Comes In as a whole, I discovered some surprising threads connecting Walker's earlier work (crooning, string-drenched, melodramatic) to his more recent material (atonal, avant-garde, and, er, melodramatic). I even wandered down a few side streets exploring the origins of the cover songs featured at the end of Side 2.

This process birthed many new ideas for pieces, all of which were connected in some way to this record, and all of which distracted me from completing my original task: say something about this damn song.

I decided to put those greater and smaller pieces on hold for the moment. So, first thought, best thought: let's take a closer look at "The War Is Over (Epilogue)."



PART ONE: IT REALLY ISN'T FAIR

Scott Walker's 1970 album, 'Til The Band Comes In, is a record that has frequently been dismissed or ignored within Walker's discography. Compared to the praise heaped upon The Walker Brothers' best-selling singles, Scott's solo highlights Scott 1-4, and his post-1978 avant-gardisms, 'Til The Band Comes In seems to exist in a critical limbo, where the album itself is rarely discussed, yet several key tracks turn up on Walker compilations and retrospectives.

One of the better regarded of these songs -- no doubt because it recalls quintessential Scott ballads "It's Raining Today" and "On Your Own Again" -- is “The War Is Over (Epilogue)."

It's the final (non-cover) song, from arguably the final album of Scott’s baroque solo period. The proper endpoint of the "classic Scott" era depends on who you ask: those who feel Scott 4 marks the close of that phase could point to the number of genres Walker plays with on TTBCI, making the record stand alone in his catalog. Alternately, a case could be made that those earlier records moved between pop, jazz, rock, folk, and modern classical as frequently as this album, and hey, if the record had just been titled Scott 5, we'd be telling a different story about TTBCI relative to Walker's solo discography.

PART TWO: OUTSIDE THEY SING

(Note: If you're the kind of person who likes to read about music while listening to it, please cue the track in the video above and continue reading. If not, take a moment to listen to the song at least once without my interference, then read on, and listen again upon reading the end of this post.)

Can a song be simultaneously featherweight and exhausted? This one sure sounds like it. It's a relieved collapse following an extended struggle, fictional, musical, or otherwise. It's loaded with space, something at which Scott and his arranger/conductors (in this case, Peter Knight) excelled.

Instruments pan around the track, nearly empty, barely playing. First, chimes, then bass, guitar, piano, vibraphone, finger cymbals; left to right, center, and back again. A gently picked arpeggiated guitar continues throughout. Now, the voice. Scott is autumn and woodgrain, phrases ending in vibrato:

Everything still
everything silent
as after the rain
we lie here listening to night close down

Seriously, go back and listen to this part again. The lyric and music complement and further each other's actual sound. When Scott sings "everything still," the musicians barely move. When the instruments create droplets of sound, Scott sings, "as after the rain." You don't often hear this kind of marriage between singer and band, word and music, each intentionally underlining the other's mood and tenor. We continue:

Stare like a child
Wait for the signs to decide once again
Just when they looked here to stay

Scott holds out that last word - "stay" - in a highly romantic fashion, almost an exaggeration of the MOR ballads of the day. Only he's not singing a love song. This is something stranger, darker, more melancholy. That word cues the string section's entrance and the bass guitar's descending line.

Where to leave
Our world, our air
It really isn't fair

From the plea of "stay" to the motion of "leave." The music is now moving, just like the lyric. That balance again: interlocked (sturdy), ethereal (light). And another chord change on "our world." The track has motion, but still it floats: "our air."

Outside they sing, "the war is over,
raise your blinds, the war is over"
Sell your deepest dark
Goodbye

The horn section, often used in music in a cheerfully drunken manner, announces sobriety this time, memory, context for what came before. The weight is in Scott's voice, the horns, the timpani. The lightness is in everything else, even the drum kit. And a head-fake here: not really a "goodbye."

A distant waltz
turns in the head of an old lady's night
waiting hands unfold within the dark

There are brief moments in the verses where nearly everything drops out, leaving only a picked guitar figure, the reverberations of the other instruments hanging the air. This song is as much about the moments when the musicians stop playing, as when they combine into a larger picture.

Lighting her lamp,
seeing Prince Albert,
recalling the sight

Scott was an American living in London in the 1960s. Somehow, I don't think the above lyric was referring to this (NSFW).

They waltz again
through the park

That last phrase, however, recalls another similar, dramatic late 60's production, composed by the man who also wrote this song. Was Scott aware of Jimmy Webb's work? Hell yes. Scott covered several of Webb's songs during his 1970s "lost" period.

Floorboards creak
beneath the moon
the room below just sighs

The mention of a room, a floor, the moon, is an unexpected lyrical link to Scott's future: "Clara," his terrifying 2006 song about Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci.

Outside they sing, "the war is over,
raise your blinds, the war is over"
Let me get some sleep
Tonight.

The recording studios of the day were designed to house orchestras, and condenser microphones (and multi-track recording) helped capture that enormous, enveloping sound effectively. No wonder so many of these records are compact cathedrals, sonic architecture. Coupled with dramatic vocals, stark drumming and punchy horn arrangements, the sum total of these songs are towering things. "The War Is Over" is no exception.

EPILOGUE: EVERYTHING SILENT

There's some revisionist history about Scott becoming a recluse in the early 1970s: the story goes that he "disappeared" due to an intense fear and loathing of commercial success and the attention celebrity brings, only to resurface, dramatically, puzzlingly, with a more avant-garde sound in the 1980s. It probably makes for a better story, but at best, it's an exaggeration, and at worst, a load of PR bullshit.

The reality is that he continued to release major label records right up until, and including, the Walker Brothers' 1975 reunion. When was the last time a recluse did that? Indeed, he was likely frustrated by the fame game, and his move into MOR covers albums suggests he was equally dissatisfied with either the presentation of, or the response to, his own original compositions. Most likely, he simply involved himself less in the promotion of those records based on the standards expected of celebrity of the day.

Then again, Scott also spent those years, in his own words, doing "a whole lot of drinking."

Everything still
everything silent
as after the rain

So then: Scott's early-to-mid 1970s. Movie music and cover songs, one short-lived Walker Brothers reunion, and lots of booze. As a writer, however, he came out the other side around 1978, rediscovering his muse in frightened soundscapes, with four highly original pieces for the Brothers' Nite Flights album.

Let's consider 1970's "The War Is Over (Epilogue)" as a glance through a closing door, from the title, to the lyrics, to the ache of the strings.

Still we are,
after the rain.

Still and silent. Featherweight and exhausted. Goodbye classic crooning, hello modern terror.

END
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Note: a (very) highly condensed version of this piece originally appeared in a blog post I wrote on my old band's Tumblr account in 2010.