They weren’t Walkers and they weren’t brothers, but hey, that’s showbiz!

Scott was very familiar with showbiz. As a child actor, he’d appeared twice in Broadway musicals, made regular appearances on TV, and released a dozen singles in the late 50’s and early 60’s as record companies attempted to sell him as a teen idol. Despite the fact that he was miscast in this role, he would later become one anyway.

John also had a few bit parts on TV as a kid and later formed a duo with his sister, releasing half a dozen singles on different indie labels. He’d adopted the last name Walker and procured a fake ID with the name so he could play music in clubs he wasn’t old enough to enter. In 1963, he met Scott on the L.A. music scene when they were hired to go out on the road as The Surfaris (of “Wipe Out” fame), despite nobody in the touring group having played on the hit singles.

Upon returning to California, they drafted Gary and, ten years before The Ramones, all adopted Walker as their last name (and each other as “siblings”) and became The Walker Brothers.

The newly formed trio did the usual L.A. band circuit things, gigging at clubs on the Sunset Strip, appearing on a couple of popular music TV shows, and even playing a band in a B-movie. That all sounds pretty successful, but their singles went nowhere. Luckily, they had a plan to fix that.

Before joining the group, Gary had been playing with PJ Proby, an American who found success after moving to the UK, and the guys decided London was the place to swing. Upon arrival they changed two things: firstly, they modded out their clothes and hair; and secondly, though John had previously handled lead vocal duties, they switched to Scott’s soaring baritone on lead, and suddenly it was Walkermania in England as thousands of screaming teens found themselves drawn to the blonde Californians and their crooning, dramatic songs. (In one instance, those thousands of screaming teens, in their out of control enthusiasm, overturned a van containing the trio. The guys took to wearing motorcycle helmets to gigs.)

The group’s third single hit #1, but their fifth single, “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore,” released in February of 1966, not only topped the UK charts, but also became their biggest hit across Europe and in the US. Written by Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio for a failed Frankie Valli 1965 solo single, the song wasn’t a hit until the The Walker Brothers made it sound like Roy Orbison meets The Righteous Brothers.

The teens still swooned a year later, but the hits weren’t as high and the trio broke up due to differences of opinion on where their music should go. Scott would eventually take it into realms never heard before, about as far away from showbiz as you can get.

So don’t let the tears cloud your eyes … when you’re with The Walker Brothers.

The trio reunited for three albums during the second half of the 70’s, and although they had little impact commercially, artistically the reverberations hit hard. From 1978: