Song · Radiohead
Jonny's Scott Walker Song
Four words in Ed O'Brien's diary, and a title that rhymes with the most famous joke in the band's history.
9 sep 1999
very short and sweet
It turns up once, at the end of O'Brien's diary for Thursday 9 September 1999, a day spent going through the songs that would become Kid A and Amnesiac: “Knives Out” sounding like the Smiths, “Optimistic” needing to be recorded before it got lost, and “If You Say the Word”, still called the C-minor song. They finished on this one. O'Brien calls it what he used to call the Jonny Scott Walker song, which suggests the nickname was already old and the song had moved on from it.
The only description anyone has of it is his, preserved on the 2003 site: “very short and sweet.”
the name
another scott walker song
The name carries a second echo. In 1992, at Chipping Norton, Yorke introduced “Creep” to the producers as their Scott Walker song, and they assumed it was a cover; one of them said leaving that night, “Too bad their best song's a cover.” Whether this title is a knowing reference to that or a coincidence is not recorded anywhere this site can cite.
the record
unreleased
No recording has been released and no performance appears in this site's setlist archive.
sources1
- Ed O'Brien's online diary, 9 September 1999, as preserved on this site's own 2003 lyrics pages and on Citizen Insane, “Jonny Scott Walker Song”.