Junk Box Jury

Tracks taken from the album “The Walker Brothers Story” on (Philips DBL.002) 1968

A round cheeked, red eyed, 16 year old girl with tears streaming down her face once bashed the back of my seat and screamed a great wailing ‘S .. c . . o . . t . . t’ for ten minutes into my left ear. It was my first introduction to a real Walker Brothers fan. On her sweater she had lovingly embroidered the names John, Scott and Gary. She quite simply loved them. And at the end of the ten minutes, when she could scream no more, she promptly collapsed hysterically into the arms of an equally uncontrollable friend.

This was at Tooting Granada in the autumn of 1966 when the Walker Brothers topped a British tour for the first time.

Multiply this scene by some many thousands and you’ll understand how, if you’d had your ear close enough to the ground in May of this year, you would have heard mass weeping and wailing from Holloway Road to the Solway Firth . . . The reason? The Walker Brothers had decided that their incredibly successful career had come to an end and announced they were splitting up.

In its way this announcement was the end of a pop era. It finally killed off the group with a ‘pop idol’ image. The group that could send girls into storms of emotion simply by flicking a finger and looking tortured. It announced the arrival of psychedelia, moustaches and attention to music rather than personalities.

When the Walker Brothers came to England over two years ago they walked into a dying British pop scene. A scene swiftly losing the darling Beatles and needing the grip of some fully emotional force. They arrived at just the right time to put themselves into the enviable position of being battered and torn, charged at and jumped on, ripped and attacked by every female under 45.

The Walker Brothers established themselves in four months as the second biggest group in Britain. They were money makers of an extra-ordinary variety. They were three separate and varied and uncontrollable personalities. And their death this Spring was almost as forseeable as their appeal had been in 1965.

The Walker Brothers | The Walker Brothers Story |(Philips)

For the thousands of fans who know this album is the Walker Brothers memorial. A great feast of their songs from the beginning. For you new ones who perhaps have never understood why that girl screamed so hard and so long at Tooting, sit back and listen to the Walker Brothers SOUND.

To a very stylised performance on John’s favourite ‘Summertime’ or Scott’s doom-laden ‘Archangel.’ And for you all, dear fans and newcomers everywhere, read on for the amazing facts that brought three young unsuccessful Americans to a dizzy pinnacle of neurosis, fame and adoration.

It all started you see on . . . February 17, 1965: John, Scott and Gary in dirty blue jeans, long straggly hair and dark glasses set foot in winter-laden London. Someone in my office was heard to mutter ‘more nutty Americans’ in tones of despair, and nobody took much notice of them even though they proudly announced that they had so little money they were living on tube trains and in telephone boxes.

That month their first record ‘Pretty Girls Everywhere’ was released. They’d made it in America where they’d only been together a year. It would turn out to be totally unrepresentative of what was to come. It was a disaster. (my copy only had Disc One inside the cover so the liners end here!)

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cost of record: 50 pence
from: Charity Shop