British rock's lost masterpiece

Neil McCormick uses the reissue of all four Doll by Doll albums on Rhino as an occasion to declare “Gypsy Blood” (1979) the lost masterpiece of British rock: sweeping, tipping from the tender to the terrifying, with Leven's voice gliding between baritone and falsetto; he compares the effect with “Dark Side of the Moon”, “Forever Changes” and “The Bends”. The album came out on the small label Automatic to good reviews and dismal sales; the band harmed itself with its belligerent attitude, made many enemies and changed label after the flop. The master tapes were said to be lost, and some reissues were mastered from vinyl. Leven speaks (self-report) about the band as an alliance of traumatised people (Jung quotation on “matching psychic disturbance”), about the aspiration to be the definitive band of its time, and about the self-chosen images that had closed doors. There follow the attack after the band's end (18 months without a voice), heroin, the cure through acupuncture and “psychic healing”, the founding of the Core Trust in 1985 and anecdotes about Princess Diana, who had urged him to sing. Finally: Jo Shaw now builds hi-tech studios (for Mark Knopfler and Paul Allen, among others), David McIntosh is a potter and furniture maker. Verdict: hymnic.