Life

Radio review: Eavesdropping on Scott Walker and Jarvis Cocker

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann is an Irish News columnist and writes a weekly radio review.

Jarvis Cocker’s Sunday Service BBC Radio 6 Music

It was a holy kind of an unholy Sunday - Jarvis Cocker’s Sunday Service with Scott Walker, the sixties singer songwriter of Walker Brothers fame.

Cocker has a lovely relaxed delivery, matched only by Scott Walker – it was clear they were singing from the same song sheet or make that a hymn book.

Imagine a sumptuous red velvet seat, in a box maybe at the Royal Albert Hall, with some chilled fizziness somewhere and you’re flicking through the programme, said Cocker, weaving pictures in the air ahead of the special Scott Walker BBC prom.

We rolled off with “Such a small love,” from Walker’s first album and that distinctive deep honey voice.

“It doesn’t sound like a small love, sounds like an epic love,” sighed Cocker.

Of course The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine was in there, still delivering such an emotional punch a half century later.

Walker looked back to those early years when he came from sunny Hollywood to England – he was in love with Europe and European film. Not even a London pea souper could bring him down.

“I was happy running around in the fog in those days ... we had really dense fog.” It was, he agreed, kind of exotic.

His early songs were all written on guitar as he didn’t own a keyboard, he said. He does now.

Cocker told a story about someone from a record company playing him an old recording and congratulating him and Walker telling him: “I’m glad you enjoyed it because I’m not going to listen to it ever again.”

He explained that, like Don Quixote confronted by the Knight of Mirrors: “All I ever do is hear the faults.”

Cocker noted lots of rented accommodation in certain songs - being trapped in rooms, solitude.

They talked about making the ordinary of the every day extraordinary.

There was a Russian poem, there was the Seventh Seal, there was his friendship with the late David Bowie.

It was like listening to two friends who are musicians, who love music and live for music, just chatting.

It was a kind of a magical eavesdropping.