Walker Brothers

Californians Scott Engel, John Maus, and Gary Leeds briefly became major stars in Britain, and far lesser ones at home, during the height of the British Invasion, even though they held no British roots, shared no family ties, and bore none of the surname Walker. Engel and Maus had already been performing together in Hollywood when Leeds proposed forming a trio and testing their fortunes across the Atlantic, a move that quickly paid off when they reached the summit of the U.K. charts with “Make It Easy on Yourself” in 1965. The following year “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore” achieved the same result, while additional British successes arrived via “My Ship Is Coming In,” “(Baby) You Don’t Have to Tell Me,” “Another Tear Falls,” and several more singles. For a short period they drew frenzied crowds rivaling those for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, yet in the United States—where live appearances remained rare—only the two chart-topping singles crossed into the Top 20.

Despite their mop-top hairstyles that aligned them visually with the invading British acts, the Walkers leaned heavily toward pop rather than rock and seldom played instruments on their recordings. Working with producer Johnny Franz and seasoned arrangers such as Ivor Raymonde, who had also collaborated with Dusty Springfield, and Reg Guest, they specialized in lushly orchestrated ballads deliberately modeled on the sound of another non-fraternal brother duo, the Righteous Brothers. Scott Walker’s lead vocals, less steeped in soul than those of the Righteous Brothers, drew clear influence from non-rock stylists including Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra. Although their biggest successes were interpretations of material by American writing teams like Bacharach-David and Mann-Weil, Scott, and on occasion John Walker, also supplied more introspective original songs that avoided the grandiose approach of their covers.

By the competitive climate of 1967 their particular brand of pop had fallen out of favor, prompting the group’s dissolution amid waning commercial returns and the growing promise of Scott’s solo work. In the late 1960s he issued a run of Top Ten British solo albums whose brooding, inward-looking compositions paired with elaborate orchestral settings later cultivated a devoted following. Gary Walker pursued a harder-edged, guitar-driven direction through a handful of singles and an album with his band the Rain. The original trio reconvened briefly in the mid-1970s, yielding one last British hit, “No Regrets.” Their history receives fuller treatment in the British-only biography Scott Walker: A Deep Shade of Blue.