Sunday, January 25, 2009

I've never particularly cared about Scott Walker (Mike Daddino put it best with the immortal "He sounds like a horse"), but this remembrance of his BBC show (and then some) by Tom Sutpen is sharp, particularly:
The stories virtually wrote themselves; transforming Scott Walker into the first true emblem of a relatively new cultural cliche: the beloved-but-misunderstood pop star, yearning for transcendence and a less public life (a cliche that would reach a terrible apotheosis of sorts with the 1994 suicide of Kurt Cobain). As a journalistic impulse this was utterly reflexive . . . the only thing journalists love more than a bad loser is a bad winner . . .and they could let no moment of the spectacle, even those they had to make up, go unrecorded.