Jackie Leven

“Song of the Week” piece by the writer David Belbin for Leven's 60th birthday. He recounts how he saw Doll by Doll around 1979 at the Ad Lib Club in Nottingham after buying the debut Remember: the DJ had played the ballad Janice five times before the performance, so the band out of spite did not play it; the concert was harder than any punk band (“Joy Division? Pah.”). Twenty years later he experienced Leven solo in the upstairs room of The Gladstone pub in Nottingham – with his falsetto lost, but a brilliant, earthy and self-mocking storyteller; afterwards Leven confirmed to him that the 1979 concert had been one of Doll by Doll's few good ones.

Since then he has been a big fan, attends every tour (including Summer Sundae, Derby in June 2010 with stories about Diz Disley, The Flowerpot) and praises the way the albums keep getting better. He repeats Leven's stories about the mugging, heroin, CORE and Princess Diana and remarks that Leven seems to have known an astonishing range of people, from Laurence Olivier to Ralph McTell (a guest on Gothic Road). In Derby, Leven spontaneously sang Strip Show in the style of Matt Monro. As a listening example he links Poortoun in the version from Men in Prison (one of the four live double albums of 2009).