Karl Wallinger, a Welsh singer-songwriter who helped define college radio in the 1980s and 1990s as a member of the Waterboys and a founder of World Party, died Sunday at his home in Hastings, England. It was 66.
His daughter, Nancy Zammit, confirmed the death but did not give a cause. Mr. Wallinger suffered a brain aneurysm in 2001 that forced him to stop performing for several years.
Following the post-punk, new wave and new romantic movements of the early 1980s, Mr. Wallinger embodied something of a throwback to the classic pop and folk styles of an earlier era, with music and lyrics influenced by the Beatles and Bob Dylan.
Although he rejected the “retro” label, on stage he looked like a stylish hippie, with long stringy hair and tinted round glasses that would have suited Woodstock.
Mr. Wallinger was widely admired for his instrumental abilities. He mainly played keyboards for the Waterboys, an influential folk-rock band founded by Scottish musician Mike Scott, but on his own he usually played a guitar – which, although he was right-handed, he played upside down with his left hand. .
After two albums with the Waterboys, Mr. Wallinger left in 1985 to form World Party, which at first was one man: He wrote all the music and recorded all the parts in the studio. It wasn’t until he started touring that he added members and made it a real band.
His lyrics could be extreme. But his best-known work, such as “Put the Message in the Box,” from his 1990 World Party album, “Goodbye Jumbo,” reveled in a spacey, idealistic view of the world:
And if you listen now
You may hear a new sound coming
As an old one disappears
See the world in a single grain of sand
Many of his songs carried an environmental message, although in interviews Mr. Wallinger insisted that his work was not political or message-driven.
“I always thought it should be about healing or discovering things about the world that are true,” he told the 2022 interview with The Big Takeover magazine. “I am not left or right. I don’t even think about it that way. I just want people to have what they need to live on the planet.”
Karl Edmund De Vere Wallinger was born on October 19, 1957, in Prestatyn, a town in north Wales about 40 miles west of Liverpool, England. His father, Julian, was an architect and his mother, Phyllis (Owens) Wallinger, had various jobs.
He attended Charterhouse, a prestigious private school in England that also produced Peter Gabriel and many of the other early members of Genesis. (Mr. Wallinger lost Mr. Gabriel by a few years.)
Intending to become a musician, he moved to London after graduation and worked for a music publishing company, processing royalty checks. He spent his lunch hours playing a piano in the company’s offices until one day a producer heard him, gave him an audition and signed him to a contract.
In his off hours, Mr. Wallinger played with a number of small, short-lived bands and worked for a few years as musical director for “The Rocky Horror Show” in London.
At Mr. Scott’s invitation, he left the theater to join the Waterboys for their second album, “A Pagan Place” (1984). He also played on the group’s third release, “This Is the Sea”, before leaving the group to pursue a solo career.
World Party’s first album, “Private Revolution” (1986), included his first hit, “Ship of Fools”, which reached No. 27 on the Billboard Top 40 and No. 42 in the UK. Sinead O’Connor contributed vocals to two tracks and in return Mr Wallinger contributed to her own debut album, ‘The Lion and the Cobra’, which was released the following year.
Several well-reviewed albums followed, including “Goodbye Jumbo” (1990), “Bang!” (1993) and “Egyptology” (1997). World Party toured internationally, including opening for 10,000 Maniacs.
Mr. Wallinger also worked in film. He was the musical director for the score of the 1994 film “Reality Bites” and contributed songs to the soundtracks of “Clueless” (1995), “The Matchmaker” (1997) and “Armageddon” (1998).
But as the 1990s progressed, he and the World Party found themselves sidelined by the darker, edgier sounds of grunge in the United States and the power-pop sound of British bands like Oasis and Blur.
Then his manager died and his company went bankrupt. His brain aneurysm left him without his right peripheral vision.
However, Mr. Wallinger had a stroke of luck. In the mid-1990s, he spent 10 minutes writing a song called “She’s the One,” which he recorded for “Egyptology.” Two years later, without his approval, Robbie Williams re-recorded it and his version reached No. 1 in the UK pop charts, generating an unexpected royalty sum for Mr Wallinger.
“So we didn’t have to sell the kids into chemical experiments or anything,” he told the Chicago Sun-Times in 2012. “I think I’m a little lucky.”
Along with his daughter, he is survived by his wife, Susie Zammit. their son, Louis Wallinger; his brother, Tim Wallinger; his sisters, Karen Wallinger and Allyson Wallinger; and two grandchildren.
Mr. Wallinger slowly returned to recording and performing after his aneurysm. In 2006, he embarked on a long-delayed promotional tour for his 2000 album, “Dumbing Up”. He co-produced Peter Gabriel’s 2008 album “Big Blue Ball,” on which Mr. Gabriel collaborated with various artists. Mr. Wallinger also co-wrote and performed on several tracks.
And 2012 saw the release of “Arkeology,” a five-CD, 70-track set featuring demos, live recordings, and alternate versions of many of Mr. World Party’s songs. Wallinger.
As he noted in several interviews, his time away from music had coincided with dramatic changes in the industry, particularly the shift to digital production and distribution, which made his style of rich orchestration and album-centric composition anachronistic.
But he considered himself older and wiser and seemed comfortable with the passage of time.
“I just got lucky in a lot of ways, in a lot of ways,” he told Canadian newspaper The Calgary Herald in 2013. “I just focused on things and listened to things, but I didn’t approach writing with anything else. rather than a happy stony expression on my face, actually. It’s one of those things that happens, thankfully. It’s a strange thing.”