Walk Out to Winter
A bittersweet goodbye to punk, built on a chord sequence borrowed from Motown.
Aztec Camera, from High Land, Hard Rain (1983)
- Written by
- Roddy Frame
- Released
- 1983
- Length
- 3:23
- Album
- High Land, Hard Rain
Its intro borrows from Ain't No Mountain High Enough. Asked about it in 1984, Frame said the chords were a tip of the hat to the writer rather than a theft on the quiet. Pitchfork, drawing on a 2013 BBC interview, reported that it was his favourite song on the album and called it a bitterly cheery song about the death of punk. The lyric pictures faces of Strummer falling from a wall, a line Sounds said you could hear Frame laughing through.
The single, released by Rough Trade in spring 1983 with Set the Killing Free, was a different recording produced by Tony Mansfield of New Musik. It reached 64 in the UK and three on the independent chart. Mansfield's 7-inch and 12-inch versions, a Kid Jensen radio session and an unused John Brand single mix were all added to the 2014 Domino edition.
Aztec Camera's third most played song on setlist.fm, it was in the 1983 Whistle Test broadcast from Aston University, and Frame played it again in album order at the Glasgow anniversary show in 2013. The upload in the hypersongs web is the album version, not the Mansfield single.
More songs by Aztec Camera
Sources
- Aztec Camera: High Land, Hard Rain, Pitchfork (2014-02-04)
- Aztec Camera interview, Jamming!, via Killermont Street (1984-10)
- Walk Out to Winter (RT 132), Discogs
- Aztec Camera, Domino
- Walk Out to Winter: song statistics, setlist.fm