DESCRIPTION:
"The Electrician" is a track from the 1978 album "Night Flights" by The Walker Brothers. This album is one of the most underrated records of all time.
On this last album the trio recorded as a group, although the structure of the album effectively split into 3 sections in which each member writes and sings, has led to both critics and band members describing it as more akin to 3 miniature solo albums than a true group album.
"The Electrician" is described by Brain Eno as "Pop Music at his outer border", never reached again.....

Lyrics:
Baby it's slow - When the lights go low - There's no help no
He's drilling thru the Spiritus Sanctus tonight
Through the dark hip falls screaming, Oh you mambos
Kill me and kill me and kill me
If I jerk the handle you'll die in your dreams
If I jerk the handle jerk the handle, jerk the handle
You'll thrill me and thrill me and thrill me
Baby it's slow when the lights go low there's no help no

Original release:
Nite Flights 1978 vinyl LP (GTO records GTLP 0033)
Released as a single backed with "Den Haague", but did not chart.
Currently available:
Singles Plus compilation CD
Super Hits compilation CD; If You Could Hear Me Now compilation CD; Five Easy Pieces box set compilation; Nite Flights CD (out of print)
Everything Under The Sun - 5CD Set (2006)

Meaning of the Song:
In general, the new Scott Walker post-Nite Flights has been extremely reluctant to discuss the meaning of his lyrics, but The Electrician is one song with which he did acquiesce. In the above-mentioned 1984 radio interview, Scott described it as follows: a political song . . . having to do with . . . the Americans sending in these people, trained torturers in South America . . . I imagined these lovers in a conversation . . . if you listen the words of The Electrician it really explains itself after Ive started. So what meaning does one get from The Electrician? The answers are not pleasant, nor are they intended to be: The eponymous electrician is a professional torturer. He uses electricity to break and to kill his subjects (if I jerk the handle youll die). He drills into their souls, and possibly literally drills into their bodies. The line, hes drilling through the Spiritus Sanctus tonight is one of the most horrific in the song, carrying a number of possible connotations. Spiritus Sanctus literally means holy spirit, thus the line could mean the electrician is breaking the spirit of the person he is torturing. But it has also been used as a name for God, so the line might be taken to mean that the electrician is defiling God with his activities. We are left in no doubt that the electrician enjoys his work (youll thrill me, and thrill me, and thrill me). From Scotts comments, the electrician is not to be taken as a fantasy figure but a real person, the like of whom genuinely exists because the government of the United States (supposedly the land of the free) sponsors his activities. The electrician is also a human being who, like any other, has a lover, though it seems his sadism has overtaken him to the point where it dominates his relationships. Perhaps the most disturbingly brilliant thing about The Electrician is that, just after the repeated thrill me line, the otherwise morose backing breaks into one of the most beautiful passages of music to grace any of Scott Walkers records all swirling strings and Spanish guitar, the aural equivalent of the sun breaking through the clouds. Scott would not record another track this disturbing or this brilliant for another seventeen years.
taken from: http://www.myspace.com/rhymesofgoodbye/blog/158763558

see also: http://alive-wolfgangfm.blogspot.com/