'Strong on the outside, brittle on the inside': the life, death and genius of Jackie Leven

The major retrospective for the tenth anniversary of Leven's death, published in the week of the tribute album The Wanderer. Graeme Thomson notes that Leven's death in 2011 went almost unnoticed but that his reputation has been rising since (the compilation Straight Outta Caledonia, a tribute album with Rankin, Kathryn Williams, Tom Robinson, James Yorkston, Eliza Carthy, Ralph McTell). Michael Weston King explains his initiative for the album. Kathryn Williams, who supported Leven in Aberdeen in 2000, stresses his love of experimentation. Biography: Alan Moffatt, father London-Irish, mother from north-east England, Kirkcaldy High School in Gordon Brown's time, left home married at 16, Control 1971, Doll by Doll at Automatic/Warner, thrown off a Hawkwind tour. Tom Robinson describes Leven at the Reading Festival in 1979, staring down the booing crowd and draining a can of beer. Mick Houghton tells how Nick Kent disappeared into a squat in Maida Vale for an NME cover story. After the split, a contract with Virgin, the 1984 attack after a night session, heroin, withdrawal in 1985, the Core Trust with Carol Wolf in Victorian cottages in Marylebone, now part of the Westminster Drug Project and recipient of half the proceeds of The Wanderer. Diana, as patron, urged Leven to sing at a charity lunch; he sang “The Bonnie Earl of Moray”. Over 30 albums from 1994. Rankin reads the songs as a dissection of Scottish machismo; anecdotes about raw haggis as Rankin's rider and kalimotxo as Leven's drink. Verdict: a decade on, Leven's music seems more urgent than ever.