"Nite Flights" was released in 1978 to poor sales figures but warm critical opinion, especially Scott's contributions. In the period after the album Walker was without a record deal, and remarked in an interview with the journalist Alan Bangs that he had lived on "not a lot" between "Nite Flights" and "Climate of Hunter". Walker compared himself to Orson Welles, a great man everyone wants to meet, but for whom nobody will finance their next project. Out of his now good critical standing a trio of compilations was released in the early 1980s and a long-term deal with Virgin Records was made. Ardent fan Julian Cope assembled a collection of Walker originals titled "" in 1981, quickly followed by "Scott Walker Sings Jacques Brel" and "The Best of Scott Walker". In spite of signing a new deal, Walker was slow to begin writing his first album for the label.