Jackie Leven blijft het proberen

Backstage conversation at the Crossing Border festival in The Hague, held on a Friday afternoon (from the context, 12.11.2004, Leven's second Crossing Border appearance), published on 23.11.2004. Dielemans describes a subdued mood: Leven drinks canned beer, stares at the just-released DVD “The Meeting Of Remarkable Men” and lost his mother a few days earlier. The author summarises the biography (Control 1971, Doll by Doll from 1976, attack in a London alley, heroin addiction, comeback in 1994 with the albums up to “Creatures of Light and Darkness”).

Leven says that for “Control” he took a lot of LSD, like everyone at the time; because of trouble with the police the record came out under another name and only in Spain, and he forgot about it for a long time. He describes the 2003 Crossing Border evening at the Koninklijke Schouwburg with Ian Rankin, Ciaran Carson and David Thomas in detail: an invitation from the organiser Louise Behre, no rehearsal, Rankin and Thomas had been on a bender the night before, he himself was very nervous; a scene captured on the DVD in which Thomas urges him to hurry and then apologises. As follow-up projects he mentions an appearance with Rankin and James Yorkston at Celtic Connections, an evening in Fife with an English author, a new album to be recorded in Beirut with a large “gypsy orchestra” and released in summer 2005, and the double CD “Jackie Leven Said” for January. In closing: in the Netherlands he hardly sells any records, but he feels at home in The Hague (narrow streets, dark pubs, rain like in Glasgow) and wants to keep trying. Overall tone: a warm, slightly melancholy portrait.