Jackie Leven – Das Leben ist ein langer dunkler Whisky

Interview on “Creatures of Light and Darkness” (2001). To begin with: Leven has his own whisky brand, “Leven's Lament”; he says a company called MacDuff produces it, and the label shows a Scottish and an English soldier from the last war as an image of a changing Scotland. Maurer mentions that Leven worked in the Haig distillery in his youth. Leven describes himself as a “counterpart to the clown”: happy in private, committed to dark undertones in his work. The album's central theme is the relationship with his recently deceased father, from “My Spanish Dad” to “Bergen Girls” (with David Thomas); his father was unmusical but in old age found a way into music and into Leven's work through his enthusiasm for Spain (he learned Spanish) (his own account). Leven interprets “The Sexual Loneliness of Jesus Christ” as a question of where Jesus had to take his human feelings, linked with Scottish shipyard workers. On the writing process: some songs arrive finished, others he works on for months; he only recognises an album's guiding motif afterwards, and his greatest worry is losing the ability to write. Outlook: an autumn tour, possibly with the trumpeter David Diagram.