Whiskyen på hyllen

Interview on the release of Night Lilies (mistakenly “Night Lines” in the standfirst), which Leven describes as emotional songs in a rocky wrapping. He wanted to trace how a particular smell, sound or movement triggers intense memories of very specific episodes. The album is less melancholy than Fairy Tales: the colours still dark, but clearer; the aim is a sad record that at the same time lifts you up. Nothing does him as much good as walking the streets and watching people – in the past he did not do that.

Guitarist Joe Shaw from the Doll by Doll days plays on the album. Leven: Joe has always been a good friend, but the band years were traumatic in many respects; nobody liked them, they themselves were convinced of their class and sometimes took a perverse pleasure in flattening the audience with an overwhelmingly heavy live show until the hostility became palpable. Today he can laugh about it and is proud of the records. Releasing the climax of a song is like wrestling with an angel.

On the whisky Leven's Lament he says that, ironically, he no longer likes whisky: after a bout of nausea he has to turn away at the mere smell – bad advertising, as the “workers” pointed out to him. Halleraker recalls that at earlier Bergen gigs Leven talked more than he played; Leven: friends call him a lying bastard, but he likes inventing little stories that put the big things in perspective. Announcement: Garage, 30 October 1998, “one of his hardest rock concerts in a long time”.