Profile/review: Sigøyner i blodet – JACKIE LEVEN «The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death»

The Drammen music journalist Johnny Andreassen reviews Leven's solo debut (Amigo) in the local paper Fremtiden under the headline “Sigøyner i blodet”, “gypsy blood”. Like a cat, the former leader of the “legendary” Doll By Doll undoubtedly has more than one life: overdoses and attacks in London's streets, with attempted strangulation, should long ago have sent him to his grave, yet he has clawed his way back to life unnoticed after returning to the Scotland of his childhood, where he has blossomed with a pearl of an album. In the late seventies he was the hottest thing on the London club scene, with a charisma that hardly lags behind a Jim Morrison, and has one of the most beautiful and charismatic voices in the world.

A section under the subhead “Avvenning” (withdrawal) says that in 1985 Leven founded the drug-rehabilitation institution CORE, which, thanks to new treatment methods, has very good results to show and, according to the article, is supported by the Prince of Wales, Genesis, Eric Clapton and Mike Scott of the Waterboys. It helps people out of a squeeze that almost killed Leven himself some years earlier.

On the music: Leven has gypsy blood in his veins, and that restlessness has shaped his music all along; strong feelings swirl around his lyrics and melodies. His friend, the American poet Robert Bly, reads poems on the album, and towards the end Leven's melody takes over and strengthens the mood to rarely effective ends. Mike Scott and the jazz saxophonist Ed Jones contribute. The music reflects Scottish folk and a distinctive troubadour pop sound; Leven's voice alone is worth the price, especially in “Call mother a lonely field” (presumably “Cold Mother of Lonely Fields”). The album is better than a good film, and Andreassen is sure that it will be one of the three or four records he will hold closest to his chest at the end of 1994.