Jackie Leven: Musician whose songs were peopled by loners and lost lovers

Obituary by the music journalist Nick Hasted, who had interviewed Leven in 2007 and quotes from that interview. He describes Leven's songs as the inner lives of “disappointed hard men” (Rankin's formula), often set in the rough landscapes of his childhood, and as partial self-portraits of a life marked by addiction and exile. Biography: Kirkcaldy, father from London-Irish stock, mother from Northumberland, both Roma according to the text; his mother's blues records, folk clubs at 16, a brief first marriage, prize-winning pupil in the same year as Gordon Brown and allegedly the first Scottish schoolboy expelled for drugs, driven out by a gang. He met the Doll by Doll members in squatted farmhouses in Dorset; in 1975 the band came together in a squat in Bristol Gardens (west London); Leven describes the street full of damaged but funny Scots. The second album, he said, gave him a place in the world. In 1983 he was throttled and cut on the neck, voiceless for over a year, dropped by the label, spending weeks in silence at Marylebone station. 1985 recovery, CORE Trust, meeting with Diana, retreat to the Scottish west coast among fishermen, 1994 fresh start with 24 albums at Cooking Vinyl, Bly's influence, concerts with tall tales (Sting's alleged death on the commuter train to Kirkcaldy), The Haunted Year in 2009 as the best overview of his work.