INTERVIEWS
Ross McGibbon puts some questions to the enigma that is Jackie Leven.
What makes him tick and where is he heading at the moment? What was your thinking in assembling the new album? - I find a bunch of songs that seem like a 'family' of sorts, although I don't really understand where the blood ties between the songs are. Also, I always have a fairly old song and a fairly new one on each record. On GUN CLUB, the song Fareham Confidential is very recent and was written in a bar in the town of Fareham in ten minutes, whilst Gun Club itself was written over ten years. What is the guest track thing you have taken to doing about? - I don't care if people don't like the guest tracks - I do! - on Gun Club there is a magnificent guest track by American David Childers - he's a great underexposed singer - lots of people say it's the best track on the album! That's fine with me - more people should do guest tracks - it's a way of spreading community in music and amongst musicians. You seem to be doing more recorded collaborations. How come? - Collaborations, if done well enough, give you access to writing ideas that otherwise you end up thinking 'well, it's a good song idea but' - in particular spoken word things like Johnny Dowd and David Thomas on SHINING BROTHER SHINING SISTER - I COULD do the voice on these, but these people do it better because of the persona they bring to bear. You can't make albums where all you're doing is worrying about what Dave in Sheffield might think, if you see what I mean! How do you come across poems for the readings you feature on albums? - I have a large collection of poetry at home, almost a library, and I constantly re-read stuff from it, so I have a rolling sense of who says what best, but it's an instinct thing that I don't properly understand. For instance, with the new album, Gun Club, there's a Kenneth Patchen poem on it, and I did a Patchen poem on the last album PHANTOM, so you think 'well that's a mistake because people will think "oh no, another poem by this bastard I already don't like" but for some reason it's the right poem'. If I had a manager he/she would say 'Oi! Leven! No! - not Patchen again! Go on! Back to your books and find summat else!' Are you in contact with Robert Bly any more? - Yes, I am in constant touch with Robert - we work together and we work apart - I am sorry that I shall miss him this September when he's working in this country and I'm out on tour in Europe. He's working at a storytelling festival at Dartington Hall in Devon with an extraordinary storytelling woman called Goia Timpanelli - don't miss it! When do we get The Argyll Cycle Vol 2? - I would love to release Argyll Cycle Vol 2 - there's probably a volume 3 as well, but I just don't know when that will be - I'm already working on an album for 2010 release which won't be an 'Argyll' album, so I just divvent know the answer bonnie lad! If you could dig up a dead musician to work with, who would it be? And what would you call your zombie band? - I would dig up Lightnin' Hopkins and call the band 'Leven and Hopkins (deceased)'. Lightnin' would be an interesting touring companion and I would talk him into going down the huge tubular water slide at my hotel in Hamburg, then take him for a curry wurst over at the station opposite. We'd write surreal songs based round his blues frameworks whilst watching the rain outside the window in downtown Zurich (a fabulous city by the way). Is there a Celtic melancholy particular to men? Why? - Melancholy in men seems to have the same tone everywhere in the world. It's partly a neurosis which comes from somehow knowing that you'll never fathom the levers that run your life and the order in which you would need to pull them to be FREE! My ex used to refer to you as ‘the miserable git’. Was she right? - Your girlfriend was actually talking about her own 'inner miserable git' and is probably right to intuitively dislike much of my output, especially if YOUR relationship to it is unhealthy in some way (and how could it not be!). For myself, I depress my girlfriend by talking constantly about moments of 'interesting' action from football games involving Queens Park Rangers in the early 1980s - 'then Bob Hazell slipped right in front of the Bolton goal'..this is the cultural equivalent of putting on your favourite track from CREATURES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS with a WOMAN in the room. Which of your work would you want to be remembered for? - It would be heartwarming to be rediscovered in the future for GYPSY BLOOD by Doll By Doll. How important is drink to your world view? - We live in a culture which has abandoned formal initiation of young men and women into the mysteries of the adult world, so much so that a lot of people reading that would think 'what the fuck is he talking about?' - in such initiations there may well be a place for consciousness changing agents, of which alcohol could be one. Instead we have teenagers honestly attempting to initiate themselves in high street bars every Saturday night, and a hideous scene it is too. If and when they ever get over the failure of that process, they may continue to use alcohol in a useful way, or just be fucked up by it. A large component of my writing comes from observing the fallout from this process. If I lived in a Muslim country I would probably write lines like - "and I see the young men, sitting in cafes, sober as fuck"... How come whisky, vodka, pastis, brandy, all get people drunk in a different way when its all booze? - Well, you are right - in the end it's all booze - it all starts off in different cultural locations with different ideas attached to it about what's happening. A reflective pastis sitting in the street in warm sunshine in Avignon is not the same as a reflective whisky in the Horseshoe bar in Glasgow on Saturday morning with the rain teeming down outside - or is it? There's an early moment in drinking reflectively when you feel an attic window open and the warm voices of humanity flood in to make you feel properly part of it all - it rarely lasts long. For myself, these small midday moments are the only ones that are worth it - I would never go to the pub with loads of people for a 'night out'- as my good friend Joe Shaw from Doll By Doll likes to say 'you got to time your highs'... What’s your poison? - The German word for poison is 'gift' as in the deathless line from my song 'Hell Games' - 'for my gift is a poison that shall conquer all/ who hear the secret call/ And in the city of triangles every gate shall fall/ when death comes flying sad and sweet/ It is my angel'...except producer John Sinclair wouldn't let me put that first line in - I wonder why not?
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