Jackie Leven RIP

A short personal obituary on a private blog from Bournemouth. The author, who interviewed Leven several times, describes him as always friendly and talkative in conversation, as generous in listening as in telling stories. He remembers a tiny concert that Leven let himself be talked into: in the skittle alley of his village pub in Dorset, not far from the farmland where Leven is said to have lived once, in front of 30 people at most. Leven played the full emotional range there and told stories – from life on the road to the claim that Bob Dylan had spat in his Guinness, and about a Great Dane from the neighbouring pub that stole his pie. The post closes with a farewell and links five of his own pieces in the Bournemouth Echo: interviews in 2006 (“Leven it up”, about Dorset and Doll by Doll), 2008 (about Amy Winehouse and Lovers at the Gun Club) and 2010 (about Gordon Brown and Gothic Road), as well as 2009 reviews of Sir Vincent Lone (Troubadour Heart) and of the Haunted Year – Summer double CD.