Jackie Leven - Green Note, London 28/5/2008

Ben Howarth opens with a rant about London – the rudeness on the tube, the prices, the miserable people – before saying that there are odd times when he is glad he came. Tonight was one. Leven, approaching sixty, sits there with “acoustic hair” and sleeves rolled up and does not look like a rock star, but “by any measure” has lived: heroin addiction, mental health problems, homelessness, a violent and potentially life-threatening assault and four albums with the punk band Doll By Doll.

Howarth reckons Doll By Doll were one of those unlucky bands John Peel did not like, though he lays most of the blame for their failure to reach a mass audience on their label boss, “the man who later funded New Labour and now goes by the name Lord Levy”. Leven has since made a string of albums for Cooking Vinyl, and his live performances have secured a small but devoted following. His work as founder and patron of a mental health charity, Howarth adds, saw him hobnobbing with Princess Diana in the 1990s.

The evening at the Green Note in Camden – a café serving strictly vegetarian food, at most ten metres from the stage – is intimate even by Leven’s standards. He watches the support act, then opens with ‘Another Man’s Rain’ from his latest album, which Howarth thinks might become his favourite of the songs. Leven has consistently stressed that he wants to be seen as a good storyteller, and detailed lyrics are at the heart of even his most melodic songs; yet his music has the passion of Van Morrison, whose lyrics were never more than vague. Fans of one are likely to be fans of the other, says Paul Du Noyer, the former Mojo editor and one of Leven’s best-known fans; Howarth agrees.

The most enjoyable aspect for him is the stories between the songs, among them an account of Leven’s doomed attempts to use his existing ticket after missing a train home from London, insisting he had been hounded off by rowdy Portsmouth supporters. The conclusion: passers-by outside the café can hardly realise that inside “one of Britain’s most gifted songwriters” is giving an outstanding performance to fewer than thirty people. “But I got to see it, so I win.”