Friday 14 May 2010

When Britain's lost Rock Star met his old schoolmate, the Prime Minister

Jackie Leven & Gordon Brown, alumni of Kircaldy High School
Jackie Leven & Gordon Brown, alumni of Kircaldy High

Despite his clunky name-dropping of Arctic Monkeys early in his premiership, its hard to think of Gordon Brown as a rock and roll man. It was amusing then to learn at a gig last night that Brown is an exact contemporary of Jackie Leven, a great musical maverick who I often think of as Britain’s lost rock star. Leven is probably the most talented singer-songwriter never to have become a household name, producing neglected masterpieces since 1971, while leading a dramatic and colourful life.
Both Leven and Brown are 59 years old and hail from Kircaldy in Fife, where they attended Kircaldy High School. One of the pair became the first schoolboy in Scotland to be busted for drugs, formed cult band Doll By Doll, was nearly murdered in a vicious mugging which left him unable to talk or sing for a year, became a heroin addict, lost his girlfriend to the Dalai Llama’s bodyguard, self-cured and established an addiction charity of which Princess Diana became patron and has released over thirty albums rich with poetry, melody and the metaphysics and mysteries of life. The other became Prime Minister.
At an intimate gig at the Slaughtered Lamb in London to launch his latest wonderful album, ‘Gothic Road’, Leven (one of the great raconteurs, though not always the most reliable of narrators) described a recent encounter with his old school mate (who, it must be stressed, Leven considers a “political hero”).
On his new album, Leven collaborates with that great English troubadour, Ralph McTell. In October, 2009, McTell was honoured by the UK Parliament’s All Party Folk Music Group at a special award ceremony in the House of Commons, to celebrate his lifetime’s contribution to folk music. Leven was invited as McTell’s guest. It was, according to Leven, an extraordinary event, in which grown MPs started to sniffle and blubber during McTell’s iconic Streets Of London, until a wave of weeping swept through the room and reached the stage, causing McTell himself to break down in tears.
Afterwards, Leven claims he was standing with McTell when the Prime Minister approached to be introduced to McTell. Obviously he needed no introduction to Leven, who was greeted (to judge by Leven’s comedic performance) with a slightly suspicious “Oh, hello Jackie.” “Hello Gordon.”
Brown had a question about McTell’s classic ballad. “I have heard that when you originally wrote Streets Of London it was actually Streets Of Paris. I suppose you changed it to London for sound economic reasons?”
“No Prime Minister,” responded McTell. “I was living in Paris at the time I wrote it, but half way through I realised that I was really writing about London.”
Brown was not to be dissuaded from his theory, however. “All the same, I am sure that sound economic reasons must have played a part in the change.”
Despite the status of his interrogator, McTell was getting politely annoyed with this suggestion. “No, Prime Minister,” he insisted. “I was a young man and I wasn’t thinking about things like money, I was just trying to write the best song I could, and express my feelings about London.”
Brown was, apparently, not entirely satisfied with this version of the song’s creation. “That’s as may be,” he said. “But, of course, I assume you are aware that many of the conditions you describe in that song have been alleviated under New Labour.”
Where some hear poetry, others hear only statistics …
‘Gothic Road’, which will be released by Cooking Vinyl on April 4th. It contains a beautiful duet with McTell on ‘Cornelius Whalen’, a tribute to the last of the Jarrow marchers.
If you haven’t yet heard Leven’s work, despite my many entreaties in the Telegraph, then I urge you to put that right. You could start with ‘Gypsy Blood’, his lost masterpiece with his band Doll By Doll, and then catch up with some of his remarkable solo work, perhaps ‘The Mystery of Love Is Greater Than Death’ (1994), Fairytales For Hardmen (1997), Defending Ancient Springs (2000) or ‘Troubadour Years’ (under his alter ego Sir Vincent Lone) (2009).
Neil McCormick @'The Telegraph' 
(Thanx Tony!)

1 comment: