Jackie Leven, circa 1983 · Illustration1983
North London
He wrote nothing about this time.
Walking home to Maida Vale, just off the Caledonian Road, Leven was attacked and his throat was injured. For a long time afterwards he could not sing, for a while he could not speak, and the heroin years followed. The evening does not appear once in the 76 surviving texts he wrote himself, although he wrote publicly about his life for nine years. The sources disagree on whether it was 1983 or 1984.