Scott Walker...

The Walker Brothers weren’t brothers, and none of the trio was called Walker. They were Scott Engel, John Maus and Gary Leeds, who, for a few years in the sixties, created anthemic pop songs such as No Regrets, Make it Easy on Yourself and The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore, with Scott Walker’s rich baritone voice to the fore. The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore was playing on the jukebox in The Blind Beggar pub in east London when George Cornell was shot dead by Ronnie Kray, a ricocheting bullet hitting the jukebox to leave it playing the refrain on repeat.

I ‘remember’ The Walker Brothers topping the bill at the Grand Theatre in Leeds some time in the sixties. I went with an old friend, David Buchanan; it was the first ‘proper’ gig either of us had ever been to. Second on the bill were The Flowerpot Men (a load of guys wearing Kaftans who had one hit about wearing flowers in their hair). Bottom of the bill was the Jimi Hendrix Experience, who were incendiary in every sense of the word (Jimi's guitar burst into flames). It was a bizarre line-up!

However, I've discovered that my memories are faulty. Thanks to the internet, I now know that the concert was at the Odeon Cinema, Leeds, and not the Grand Theatre. And it didn’t feature The Flowerpot Men, but another bunch of kooks called the Californians. Apparently Cat Stevens and Englebert Humperdinck were on the bill too (though I have no memory of seeing them). And the date was April 5, 1967, according to the poster below, so I was just 16 years old. My memories of Jimi Hendrix are clear and bright. Hey Joe had topped the charts, and Purple Haze had just been released.

Dissatisfied with the peculiar demands of being a teenage heartthrob, Scott Walker broke up the band and went on to make a series of idiosyncratic solo albums (managing to lose most of his teenage fans along the way). And he died today, aged 76…