I don't know why Jackie Leven isn't better known – he should be revered

On the occasion of the compilation Straight Outta Caledonia, Ian Rankin (as told to Robin Denselow) recounts his relationship with Leven. He says he was a late discoverer: Doll by Doll passed him by, and only a review about a songwriter “from Fife” made him curious. While working on a Rebus novel he listened to Shining Brother Shining Sister and had Rebus listen to Leven in the next book. Leven read the mention on a plane over Scandinavia and got in touch via the publisher; Rankin then attended a midnight concert at the Edinburgh Fringe in a converted church and at first took the shuffling Leven for the roadie – until he heard the voice.

Rankin sums up Leven's life as a series of reinventions (folk troubadour, Doll by Doll, assault in Camden, heroin, founding an addiction-aid charity, solo career) and describes his themes: fragile masculinity, the ballad tradition, estrangement on tour, provocation (The Sexual Loneliness of Jesus Christ). Leven was a “magpie” who played with African, Arab and jazz musicians, and a great Johnny Cash fan.

On the stage show: Leven proposed a joint reading with songs for Celtic Connections; Rankin proposed writing a story specially on Leven themes, to which Leven would respond with new songs – this is how Jackie Leven Said came about, performed and recorded several times; Leven wrote The Haunting of John Rebus specially for it. The rider anecdote: the first tour stop was the Southbank in London, and Leven ordered “one uncooked haggis for every venue” for Rankin. After Leven's death Rankin named Standing in Another Man's Grave after a misheard Leven title and Saints of the Shadow Bible after a Leven line. Further collaboration would certainly have come. Rankin laments the ignorance of the British media; in Norway Leven is revered.