Jackie Leven: mourn the passing of Britain's lost rock star

Personal obituary by Neil McCormick, Leven's long-standing advocate at the Telegraph. He calls Leven Britain's great lost rock star and says he used his name as a counter-argument whenever successful musicians claimed that talent always prevails. McCormick saw Doll by Doll in a club in Dublin in the late 1970s and describes them as Celtic heavy-rock Beach Boys with a metaphysical streak, whom he and his musician friends revered; Gypsy Blood, he says, is a masterpiece. He quotes Robin Denselow's early characterisation and sketches Kirkcaldy, Gordon Brown (about whom Leven told many comic stories), the drug expulsion, the assault in the early 1980s with almost two years without a voice, heroin, CORE and Diana, to whom Leven attributed his return to music in the early 1990s. Leven often claimed to be writing a book. Listening recommendations: Gypsy Blood, Doll by Doll, Fairy Tales For Hard Men, Defending Ancient Springs, Creatures of Light And Darkness. An official obituary in the Telegraph, he says, will follow.