THE PAIN & THE GLORY
Forget The Beatles. By the spring of 1966 it was all about the Walker Brothers. Shrieking fans followed them everywhere. Shows were abandoned right from the start, with hysterical crowds intent on grabbing whatever souvenirs they could. “As soon as the three of us began playing our instruments, the girls ran on to the stage and attacked us, ripping our clothes and hair, knocking us over, pulling out cables and wreaking havoc everywhere,” recalled John Walker. “It was complete chaos and mayhem.”
The price of Walkermania was routinely measured in hard knocks. John passed out after a bunch of teenage girls choked him while ripping off his polo-neck sweater. Another time, while being chased down a flight of stairs he fell and smashed his head open. A desperate Scott Walker, sick of returning home bloodied and torn, and then to have fans pounding on his windows, took to wearing disguises in public. Gary Walker suffered similar intrusion. “The fans were like caged animals,” he said in his and John’s book The Walker Brothers: No Regrets. “They had glazed eyes… like looking into the eyes of predatory lions and tigers.”
At that point, the Walker Brothers’ fan club was reportedly bigger than The
