Story of the song: Next by Scott Walker

From The Independent archive: Robert Webb on lost innocence in a Jacques Brel cover

The song appears on Walker’s 1968 album ‘Scott 2’ (Reuters)

In 1961, the playwright and poet Eric Blau heard a concert recording by Jacques Brel. The Belgian singer’s chansons of debauchery were spat out with Gallic passion, and his love songs soared. Blau was captivated and his wife, the singer Elly Stone, urged him to translate some of the songs into English.

In 1966, Blau met the songwriter Mort Shuman. Between penning hits for the likes of Elvis and The Drifters, Shuman had visited Paris and met Brel, who'd allowed Shuman to take his songs to America. In New York, Shuman and Blau collaborated on a musical, Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, debuting in 1968.

In “Next”, translated from Brel’s 1964 song “Au Suivant”, a young man tells how he exchanged his innocence for a dose of gonorrhoea at an army brothel. The boys queue up as the “queer lieutenant” slaps their arses and barks the word that has haunted him ever since: “Next!”

The pop star Scott Walker was already familiar with Brel’s songs. He mentioned the Belgian singer to Andrew Loog Oldham, The Rolling Stones’ manager, who happened to have been sent demos of Blau and Shuman’s translations. “I asked if I could cover them,” Walker said.

His “Next” was held over for his second solo album, 1968’s Scott 2. Marc Almond and Gavin Friday have covered it, and in 1973 Alex Harvey cut his demonic version, dowsed in rock histrionics and Glasgow menace. Harvey’s version may top Walker’s, as he counts in the tango rhythm through clenched teeth: “N.E.X.T...”.