Leven i litteraturen

Major interview on the double album Jackie Leven Said with Ian Rankin, shortly before Leven's next visit to Norway. Rakvaag stresses that the collaboration began, in a way, in Norway: according to the booklet, Leven discovered on a flight from Bergen to Tromsø that he appears in Rankin's novel Resurrection Man (in the paper “Ressurection Man”, Norw. “Botsgang”) as Inspector John Rebus's favourite singer. Leven confirms this (self-report): he was reading it over a few drinks before a difficult landing. Norway is for him the “extreme version of Scotland”; he has played here since 1966, then as guitarist of the blues singer Doris Henderson – his first trip abroad as a professional musician.

Rankin and Leven then exchanged emails and worked out a joint stage show for festivals in Glasgow and Edinburgh in 2004. Rankin's story is about a musician who travels from London to Fife for his mother's funeral. Leven describes the shared theme: men whose lives are becoming blurred and whose inner lives are a mystery to them. He sings old songs that inspired Rankin, and three new ones, including “The Haunting of John Rebus”; the rest of the double album is a retrospective chosen jointly. The title alludes to Van Morrison's “Jackie Wilson Said”; a character quotes “My Spanish Dad”.

On drinking, Leven says he has not been addicted to heroin for 20 years and does not want to go on appearing as an ex-junkie for ever; he believes in good company when drinking, but also spends a lot of time at home sober. He loves the melancholy of travelling alone; as a young man he won a national writing competition with a travel story. Outlook: solo at the Working Class Hero festival in Drammen on 1 May, a week later with David Thomas (Pere Ubu) as UbuDoll at Bergenfest. Fact boxes on Leven (including: the Doll by Doll albums soon to appear on CD for the first time, next album recorded in Beirut with Greek and Lebanese musicians) and on Rankin.