Jackie Leven RIP

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Diane

Jackie Leven RIP

Post by Diane »

Last night I heard from an LC friend that Jackie Leven has been taken seriously ill. This is very sad news. May some miracle sustain him.
from his website http://www.jackieleven.co.uk/:

Please excuse this rather impersonal note. Sometimes, you have to tell people about the Bad, as well as the Good. It is with a heavy heart, therefore, that I have to relate the sad news that the great Scottish singer-songwriter JACKIE LEVEN is gravely ill, suffering from cancer, and, in all candour, has only a few days to live.

In a career stretching over forty years, Jackie Leven has carved an impressive reputation as a uniquely gifted singer-songwriter. From his emergence as leader of the underrated DOLL BY DOLL in the seventies, through well documented addiction problems which Leven overcame with remarkable strength of will, culminating in a solo resurgence through the 1980s to the here and now, Jackie has amassed an amazing body of work – the composer of over four hundred songs, including arguably his greatest song – ‘Call Mother’, from the album ‘Mystery of Love’ (ranked by Q magazine as one of ‘100 Best Albums of All Time’.

If sales didn’t always reflect the overwhelmingly positive critical reception his albums received, he nonetheless remained a perceptive writer and performer. Jackie was imbued with a restless creativity, and always searching for new settings for his ruminative lyrical forays, laced with humour and melodic grace. As a performer, Jackie could enthral and entrance the audience with picaresque tales taken from first-hand experience. Those that have worked with Jackie will know of his mordant wit and very idiosyncratic world view. His latest release, Wayside Shrines and The Code of the Travelling Man, recorded with multi-instrumentalist Michael Cosgrave was yet more proof of Leven’s enduring talent and inexhaustible creative energies.

Live, Ancient Misty Morning and Working Alone:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLkJ-8BuKdQ


The Sexual Loneliness of Jesus Christ:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuMcwfZjQGY

Call Mother a Lonely Field:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhI1uXNFfCc

Like young Irishmen in English bars
the song of home betrays us
Call Mother a Lonely Field
Call Mother a Lonely Field

Like truthful glances we exchange
the song of home betrays us

Like letters written in despair
never to be opened
Call Mother a Lonely Field
Call Mother a Lonely Field

I took her picture from the wall
I poured her scent away
Call Mother a Lonely Field
Call Mother a Lonely Field

I wished her well among the stars
I sheltered from the day

And now the places that I love
Allow me no returning

The shining dreams of winter skies
the sadness and the burning
Call Mother a Lonely Field
Call Mother a Lonely Field

the ferries vanish in the snow
we telephone our children

I'll never love like this again
I couldn't lift the burden
Call Mother a Lonely Field
Call Mother a Lonely Field

and like young Irishmen in English bars
the song of home betrays us

what does that mean?
what does that mean?

It means a fallow field in winter
When frost is on the land
when the fox is on the run
down by the riverside
where the furrow meets the sun
where the furrow hugs the riverbank
and nothing can be done
Diane

Re: Jackie Leven RIP

Post by Diane »

Has, in fact, died. Rest in Peace.

Image

Jackie Leven, who has died of cancer aged 61, was a brilliant outsider, a remarkably prolific Scottish singer-songwriter who built up a devoted cult following during his lengthy, wildly varied and often turbulent career, but never achieved the level of success that he deserved. An intense, passionate giant of a man, he first came to attention in the late 1970s and early 80s, as leader of the highly praised but commercially unsuccessful band Doll By Doll. He went on to found a successful charity, the Core Trust, which treats "addicts of any sort", before continuing his musical career as a soloist – still acquiring devoted fans, but never selling many albums.

Born in Kirkcaldy, Fife, of Romany descent, he began singing his own, blues-based songs in local folk clubs, but said he was forced to leave the area because he was picked on by a local gang. He was first married at 16, but began travelling, sometimes working as a labourer, although still performing, now sporting orange hair and using the name John St Field.

His friend Joe Shaw, the guitarist with Doll By Doll, remembers meeting him in a folk club in Bridport, Dorset, and finding that their common interest was "not folk songs about young maidens, but Hendrix and Van Morrison". He says that Leven was "very intense. He could make you feel uncomfortable or the best ever – and he made me feel the best ever. He was the best friend I ever had."

They shared a squat in a farmhouse in Dorset, and met up again in Hamburg "and spent all our time jamming on guitars". Later, when Leven moved to another squat, in Maida Vale, London, he suggested they bring in a bass player and percussionist to form a band, and they started rehearsing "with mattresses around the walls to deaden the sound, but still annoying the neighbours".

The result was Doll By Doll, dominated by Leven, whom I described at the time as "a mixture of Van Morrison and a psychopath", but who could mix edgy, brooding rock songs, such as Butcher Boy, with stirring, lyrical Celtic soul, including the exquisite Main Travelled Roads.

The band recorded four albums between 1979 and 1982, including Gypsy Blood, which would later be hailed as a forgotten rock classic. At one memorable show at the London Venue, they were supported by the young U2. Shaw says: "It's a mystery why we didn't make it, when all our contemporaries did well. And our live shows were something else."

In 1984, Leven's musical career was brutally interrupted when he was mugged as he walked home at night in north London. His ribs were broken, and his larynx was "almost destroyed". With his career apparently wrecked, he turned to heroin, and told me later: "I was spending £150 a day, and found I had no money." He beat the heroin habit using acupuncture and reflexology, and with Carol Wolf founded the Core Trust to help addicts by using alternative medicine. He and Wolf recruited other counsellors offering free treatment, and was helped by Pete Townshend and Westminster city council. When I met him in 1988 he seemed far keener to discuss Core than Concrete Bulletproof Invisible, the short-lived band that he and Shaw had then started with the former Sex Pistol Glen Matlock.

For the last 17 years, Leven worked as a solo artist, recording for the independent label Cooking Vinyl. "It took me two years to sign him," according to Martin Goldschmidt, who runs the company, "and since then we have released 26 of his albums. I kept telling him there were too many, but he kept coming up with scams to get another album out." Some of his albums were credited to Sir Vincent Lone.

His remarkable solo output also included the 1994 album The Mystery of Love is Greater than the Mystery of Death, which included contributions from the poet Robert Bly and musician Mike Scott, along with one of his most thoughtful, lyrical songs, Call Mother a Lonely Field. It was ranked by Q Magazine one of the "best 100 albums of all time". On other albums he was backed by former members of Doll By Doll, by his partner Deborah Greenwood, and by David Thomas of Pere Ubu. After finding that he was mentioned in one of Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus novels, he contacted Rankin, and the result was the stage show and 2005 album Jackie Leven Said (a parody of a Van Morrison song) in which a Rankin story is matched against Leven's music.

Leven was himself a great story-teller, and delighted in teasing his followers. According to Goldschmidt, his much-publicised whisky brand Leven's Lament was "a complete scam – new labels on old bottles", and so was Leven's claim to have written a song with Bob Dylan on a train to Moscow. He was a hugely likeable, larger-than-life figure, with a legacy of more than 400 songs, and I suspect his music will reach a wider audience still.

Leven was married twice, and is survived by Deborah; his son Simon, from an earlier relationship; and his sister, Wendy.

• Jackie Leven , singer-songwriter, born 18 June 1950; died 14 November 2011

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/no ... sfeed=true
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Mabeanie1
Posts: 2782
Joined: Mon Mar 17, 2008 12:03 am
Location: UK

Re: Jackie Leven RIP

Post by Mabeanie1 »

Sad news. Another one bites the dust .....

The reference to his whisky brand made me smile. Scam or not, he was remarkably generous in promoting the brand. I remember one evening at the Celtic Connections festival club in Glasgow he made not-so-wee drams available so each and every member of the club audience could try his product.

Wendy
Diane

Re: Jackie Leven RIP

Post by Diane »

Hi Wendy. Nice story. A few years back in Bournemouth (the one time I saw him) he was thirsty and asked the audience for some water and I gave him my bottle of water. I didn't get any Leven's Lament though.

What I loved about him was the effortless way he was soulful and poetic, and simultaneously down to earth and very blokeish (and funny!). I have yet to get into his last but one (?) album, Oh What A Blow That Phantom Dealt Me*, and don't yet have his latest official album, but the handful of albums I do enjoy had an airing recently and I was considering going to see him again soon, so was rather shocked at this news. He seems to have many bootleg albums which I'm thinking I should investigate. I don't think "official" was a word that meant very much to Mr Leven.

A nice live clip of Empty in Soho Square:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvijQ1dZ0Nw

Elegy for Johnny Cash, (from the album of the same name) seems appropriate:

http://www.myspace.com/thejackieleven/m ... h-24563227

That's a great song in its entirety but I like it most for the simple, "I'm already rich". Easy to forget.

*edit ... making up for that now.
crackedbell
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Dec 06, 2011 11:46 pm

Re: Jackie Leven RIP

Post by crackedbell »

At Jackie's funeral in Hampshire, I noticed that someone giving one of the eulogies pronounced his name as Leven (rhymes with heaven). Just for the record, It's actually pronouncd Leven - rhymes with grievin'. It's taken from the name of the river that ran close to his childhood home in Fife, and also the name of a seaside town there.
Diane

Re: Jackie Leven RIP

Post by Diane »

Lately I heard the relatively recent One Long Cold Morning, title track: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEd-t7jrJJU

and am inspired to return again to the wealth in Jackie's older albums. A new old fave is The Wanderer, from Forbidden Songs of the Dying West: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuH5d_HvPdA

Came across this nice piece by Paul Du Noyer:

http://www.pauldunoyer.com/pages/journa ... lismID=337

Worth reading the whole thing, but some snippets:
Main Travelled Roads, ends with the line “Eternal is the warrior who finds beauty in his wounds” – words so freighted with meaning for Jackie that he once broke down and sobbed when I asked him to explain.
Among the many notebooks that Leven has left behind, Deborah (his long-term partner) found this:-

And my job is to listen
then I hear
then I write
then I sing
and I sing to those I heard
when I was listening
because those are your songs
not mine

I know you have to buy the songs
Just remember one thing
I too have paid the price
And it was worth it
A few months ago, in what may have been the final message he ever posted online, Leven wrote: “I have been a troubled soul most of my life although I have learned to be at peace with much of the troubles – a sort of Belfast Of The Mind in which the old conflicts remain raw in the imagination, but there is no real appetite for returning to the death ground.”

A Belfast of the Mind… It’s a Levenesque irony that his spirit was finding peace, just when his body decided to go to war. No musician I ever met has left so deep an impression as Jackie Leven. He was a man who looked into his own soul and found there all the things that everyone shares in common. And he made them sound beautiful. Leven was a singer and player of rare distinction, a world-class story-teller, and one of those elite songwriters who merits the name of poet. He was my friend for 32 years and I’ll never forget him.
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