En musikalsk helt

Long conversation from 2007 in the bar of the former Hotel Viking in Oslo, (re)published on Popklikk. Occasion: the spring album Oh What a Blow That Phantom Dealt Me! (title after Cervantes), Doll by Doll reissues and many concerts in Norway. Leven says he deliberately works with blues ideas in order to become more direct, and keeps around 150 small red notebooks; what goes on an album is decided by intuition. Melancholy is a necessary part of life (he takes up the Greek term “pothos”), music a kind of therapy; Munch's “Scream” runs through as a comparison.

On songs: “Another Man's Rain” goes back to a train journey to Bergen on which he was overwhelmed by memories of youth at a glacier; the same day he saw a defeat of the Norwegian football team in Bergen and heard Bertine Zetlitz in Førde. “The Kings of Infinite Space” was inspired by Bacharach and 70s crime series (Rockford, Columbo), the title by Shakespeare, his hairdresser contributed lines. He praises Judee Sill's Heartfood, wrote a song for a Kevin Coyne tribute and says he discovered Böcklin's “Isle of the Dead” (cover of The Mystery of Love) in New York; because the painting had belonged to Hitler, the album sold unexpectedly well in Germany – a typical Leven punchline. On the voice he names Fontella Bass's “Rescue Me”; he does not see Doll by Doll as punk but alongside Dexys and The Pop Group; Gypsy Blood is the best album, and an album lost by Warner should be released with further material. Norwegian matters: a refused whisky in a pub in Kabelvåg, amazement at Norwegian drinking customs, favourite authors Rolf Jacobsen, Olav Hauge and Hamsun's Sult.