Biography

Essay by the Scottish music journalist Graeme Thomson, dated “Edinburgh, May 2021”, as the official biography of the revived website. Thomson begins with his first meeting: Leven came back from Norway, shaken by the homeless people and addicts at Oslo bus station, and said he was “too connected to the pain of other people”. He characterises Leven's music as a journey between consolation and despair, and his themes (angry, damaged men, loneliness, violence, but also tenderness, humour, political anger). Life: born Alan Moffat on 18.06.1950, father a London Irishman, mother from north-east England, Kirkcaldy High School like Gordon Brown, feeling of being branded because of Romany background, left home at 16, Control in 1971 (he chose the pseudonym, by his own account, to evade the authorities), from 1975 in London, Doll by Doll with Joe Shaw and Dave MacIntosh in the squat in Maida Vale, thrown off a Hawkwind tour, Leven's later admission that he had been episodically “genuinely mentally ill” at the time; split in 1983, Virgin contract, assault in 1984 (colleagues looked for him and rescued him), two years with barely a voice, lost his falsetto, several years of heroin, CORE Trust; from 1994 over 30 albums including fan-club CDs and Sir Vincent Lone. Thomson describes the stage presence (Johnny Dowd: “Jackie was real”) and his own last concert experience at the Cabaret Voltaire in Edinburgh on 11.08.2011; Leven died three months and three days later of pancreatic cancer. Ending with Ian Rankin and the line from “Main Travelled Roads”.