Jackie Leven has gone. He was Britain’s great lost rock star… and now we have lost him forever.
Jackie wasn’t a household name, which is the loss of every household who never heard of him. Whenever successful musicians speak to me about fulfilling their destiny, or the cream always rising to the top, or whatever nonsense they use to justify the amount of luck and chance that governs human affairs, I always say two words: “Jackie Leven”. That usually shuts them up. Jackie was as talented as a man can be, as great as any of the all time greats of our age. He was a passionate, eloquent, brilliant songwriter with incredible musical ability and a fluid, rich and extraordinary singing voice. He was also hugely charismatic, a deep thinker, an inspired and hilarious raconteur, a brave vagabond soul and (in his own estimation, with which I cannot demur) “a ****ing genius” to boot. In a well-ordered universe he would have been a legend.
I first saw his amazing band Doll By Doll in a club in Dublin in the late 70s. Imagine the Beach Boys if they were a Celtic heavy rock band with a metaphysical bent. They were positively scary live, the tenderness of their songs counterbalanced by the toughness of Leven’s persona. My musician friends and I worshipped that band. Their album Gypsy Blood is a masterpiece that still sounds powerfully resonant decades later. For a while awestruck critics seemed certain Doll By Doll would be the next big thing but Leven was a complicated character more interested in creating works of terrible beauty than following sound business principles. Critic Robin Denselow once described him as “Van Morrison crossed with a psychopath” which was a little harsh but captures something of his compelling intensity.
There will be an official obituary in the pages of the Daily Telegraph. But Jackie’s wayward life story is deserving of a book (which he often claimed to be writing – I hope he left those pages somewhere). He was born in 1950 and raised in Kirkcaldy, Scotland. He went to school with future Prime Minister Gordon Brown (of whom he told many an amusing tale). Jackie was the first school boy in Scotland to be busted for drugs (a national outrage at the time). His life as an itinerant musician almost came to an end in the early 80s, when he was brutally mugged in a random attack that damaged his larynx and left him unable to talk or sing for nearly two years.
In pain and despair, he became a heroin addict but cured himself through an effort of will, using acupuncture and meditation, going on to use his experience to found the CORE addiction charity, which was so successful Princess Diana became its patron. He always credits Diana with persuading him to return to music in the early 90s. Extraordinarily prolific, Jackie made over thirty albums of beautiful, heartfelt, funny, wise, rich and mysterious songs. He played thousands of gigs, to the small but devoted audience who recognised his brilliance. I have championed his cause in the pages of the Telegraph on many occasions, and was privileged to get to know him a little bit. Jackie was the patron saint of lost causes. Despite his extraordinary body of work, he admitted to me that he never felt like a success. But he profoundly touched many lives, including mine. And I have a feeling that body of work will grow in stature over the years.
To anyone unfamiliar with Jackie’s work, I recommend starting with Gypsy Blood and Doll By Doll and his solo albums, Fairy Tales For Hard Men, Defending Ancient Springs and Creatures of Light And Darkness and work out from there.
Jackie died on Tuesday, 14 November, aged 61, after a battle with cancer. I can’t believe I won’t see him again. But his ghost is singing on my record player now. I'll let him sing himself out with his most perfect and elegiac song, Main Travelled Roads:
“Main travelled roads behind me
and a white bird in the sky
A secret sign to show me
where the ocean comes to die
I arose and left you
sleeping in your silent room
Eternal is the warrior
who finds beauty in his wounds”
Neil McCormack