The Triste Interview – Jackie Leven

Longest interview in the website archive, conducted before a concert at Jim's Cafe in Colne (Lancashire) on the tour for Creatures of Light and Darkness. Leven describes the Bryn Derwen studio near Bethesda on the edge of Snowdonia (sound engineer David Wrench), which feels to him like the Scottish west coast, and his way of working: intensive pre-production with demos sent several times to the musicians, so that studio time runs “like a military operation”; he always gives a safe brief but hopes for better ideas from the musicians. He calls sound collages “landscaping” and cites the producer John Sinclair (Doll by Doll days). He tells how the shipyard workers' voices in “The Sexual Loneliness of Jesus Christ” came about (a tip from Michael Cosgrave over a beer in Bethesda), of “Billy Ate My Pocket” (a horse eats a note from his pocket) and of the Blackwood song after an encounter on a bridge in Regensburg. Album titles are “stalking horses”; Defending Ancient Springs was meant to be provocatively called “The Total Poetry of Industrial Language”. He distinguishes male “concept” from female “imagination”, sneers at Kevin Rowland, speaks openly about the death of his father (in “My Spanish Dad” and “Rainy Day Bergen Women”), praises Michael Weston King (whose next album he wants to produce at Bryn Derwen in January 2002), explains invented bars in his booklet thank-you lists (Royston Vasey) and admits to having deliberately smuggled the “Small Faeces” joke into the Cooking Vinyl newsletter. To close: merchandising is vital in Germany (up to £1000 per night), and he changed agents three times in three years in order to play away from the usual club circuit.