Concert report with interview: Jackie Leven at the Rockefeller, Oslo

Report on the solo concert in the “magical week” at the Rockefeller, Oslo – according to Andreassen Leven's first visit to Norway in over ten years. Only Fremtiden and the rock magazine Beat were on the guest list; a small, enthusiastic audience would not let Leven leave the stage. Alone with a guitar, he had the audience holding their breath with pleasure; pieces from The Mystery of Love (including “Call Mother a Lonely Field”) and from the forthcoming album Forbidden Songs of the Dying West, due out in August, were played.

In conversation after the show Leven says he feels at home in Norway, although his last stay, in a band “with Glen Matlock, among others”, was not a happy time. As chairman of a London centre for people addicted to everything from sex to money, he believes in healing and acupuncture – for himself it is probably too late. On the new album: he asked Van Morrison to read a poem by the Belfast poet Louis MacNeice, Andy White takes part; the album is assembled like a film from speeches, poems, noises and songs, the range greater than before. The title means that in the West there are forbidden things one does not talk about – the West is slowly dying.