Interview/Preview: Jackie Leven back in Drammen – “Comeback overtalt av Lady Diana”

Culture page (p. 12 of the issue) with interview before the second “Lyttekonsert” at Buddy on Thursday, 13.11.2008, 8 pm. Andreassen recalls the sold-out concert there the previous year, calls Leven “Scotland's answer to Van Morrison”, refers to Doll by Doll and to the attack in a London side street with a serious neck injury; a subheading claims that Lady Diana persuaded him to make a comeback. The reports from the ongoing Norway tour showed a Leven in rare form, with a new album and new songs; his voice is comparable to Roy Orbison and Aaron Neville, his stock of stories full of irony equally remarkable.

Leven explains (self-report) that it will not be a blueprint of last year's concert: it is about true stories from his life, about accepting and understanding oneself; one cannot die with feelings of guilt. He touches on the US election (a black president is surely not a bad thing). A longer anecdote is set in the 1970s (in the OCR “…castle”, presumably Newcastle): after a falling-out with his business partner, a man named Keith was shot in broad daylight – a “Shannon” had been hired for it – and that same evening a woman in the hotel bar confided her knowledge to him; a strange friendship grew out of it. In Drammen he always feels “magic”; the town reminds him of the working men's clubs of his youth, where people smoked and drank beer – perhaps remnants of the working class; and he likes the women there.