‘He just soaked up life. He ate up life’: The maverick genius of cult singer-songwriter Jackie Leven

Jamieson traces Leven's life from a conversation with Deborah Greenwood and links her retrospective with the announcement of the memorial evening “Leventime”. The starting point is Greenwood's view that recognition of Leven could still grow after his death. She estimates his output at more than 300 songs and reports on the plan to compile song lyrics into a volume of poems. The article documents a plan in January 2023, not a publication that had already appeared.

Greenwood recalls her first personal meeting with Leven at London's 12 Bar Club in the mid-1990s. Before that she had sent him a fan letter. She describes a well-read, nature-loving person of very varied temperaments; the text sets admiration and difficult sides side by side. The details are her recollections, not an independently established chronology.

A separate section contains Stuart Maconie's appreciation of Leven's voice and his portrayal of male vulnerability. The announced tribute evening is to take place on 4 February 2023 at Òran Mór, with Ian Rankin, Boo Hewerdine, Jinder, Malcolm Lindsay and Greenwood, among others. The report also explains that the event was postponed from the previous year, when it was cancelled because of the pandemic.