Jackie Leven

Jackie Leven

Jackie Leven, 1950–2011
Background information
Also known as John St. Field
Sir Vincent Lone
Born (1950-06-18)18 June 1950
Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland
Died 14 November 2011(2011-11-14) (aged 61)
Genres Folk, Rock, Celtic Blues
Instruments Guitar
Years active Late 1960s – 2011
Labels Cooking Vinyl
Associated acts

Doll by Doll

Show of Hands
Website jackieleven.co.uk

Jackie Leven (18 June 1950 – 14 November 2011) was a Scottish songwriter and folk musician. After starting his career as a folk musician in the late 1960s, he first found success with new wave band Doll by Doll. He later recorded as a solo artist, releasing more than twenty albums under his own name or under the pseudonym Sir Vincent Lone.

Biography

Leven started his musical career in the late 1960s under the pseudonym "John St Field", and recorded one album, Control, in 1971 which was released only in Spain in 1973.[1]

He formed the band Doll by Doll in 1977.[1] They released four albums between 1979–82. After Doll by Doll disbanded in 1983, Leven began a solo career. He suffered a street assault and near strangulation during the recording of his first solo album in 1984, which left him unable to speak for nearly two years.[1] During this time he became addicted to heroin.[1] He also collaborated with fellow ex-Doll by Doll members Joe Shaw and David Macintosh, plus ex-Sex Pistol Glen Matlock to release the single "Big Tears" under the band name Concrete Bulletproof Invisible.[1] The record was a Melody Maker single of the week in 1988.

Leven eventually cured himself of his addiction with the help of his wife Carol,[1] through a combination of acupuncture and psychic healing. This led him to form The Core Trust organisation, which favours a holistic approach to the treatment of heroin addiction.[1]

In 1994, Leven's solo career restarted with the release of the mini-album Songs from the Argyll Cycle and the full-length album The Mystery of Love is Greater than the Mystery of Death, now signed to Cooking Vinyl and recording in the folk rock style.[1] After that he released fifteen albums, including a joint album with crime writer Ian Rankin, Jackie Leven Said, with multi-instrumentalist Michael Cosgrave. In addition to his broader commercial releases, he released a number of limited edition, fanclub-only live albums through the Haunted Valley fanzine and website.

In 2006 Leven released the album Songs For Lonely Americans using the pseudonym "Sir Vincent Lone". A second Sir Vincent Lone CD, When The Bridegroom Comes (Songs For Women), was recorded a year later. Initially sold only at live shows, it proved so successful that it eventually saw commercial release by Cooking Vinyl.

Leven wrote about the "Sir Vincent" pseudonym:

Some years ago I noticed that I was writing a lot more songs than I was ever going to record and get released, especially in these times where you can only release one studio album every eighteen months. As I am a writer of genius, this began to worry me more and more. So I went to see my Cooking Vinyl boss, Martin Goldschmidt, to ask him if I could make more records. He said no. I said to him 'look, The Beatles once released four albums in one year, and nobody said to them, hey that's too many records in one year'. Martin said 'Jackie, this is not 1967 and you are not The Beatles'. We talked some more and we agreed that I could make records under a different name – that name is Sir Vincent Lone.

Leven's next album, Lovers at the Gun Club was released in 2008; followed in 2009 by a third Sir Vincent Lone record (Troubadour Heart) plus four installments of The Haunted Year under his own name: twofers of eight albums previously released through The Haunted Valley. Gothic Road was released in 2010, followed in September 2011, two months before his death, by Leven's final studio album, Wayside Shrines and the Code of the Travelling Man, a collaboration with Michael Cosgrave.

Death

Leven died on 14 November 2011, aged 61, of cancer.[2]

Discography

As John St Field

As a member of Doll by Doll

As a solo artist

Commercial releases

Fanclub-only releases

Other releases

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Strong, Martin C. (2003) The Great Indie Discography, Canongate, ISBN 1-84195-335-0, pp. 57–58
  2. ↑ Donna Bowater (15 November 2011). "Singer-songwriter Jackie Leven dies aged 61". The Daily Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group. Retrieved 2011-11-16.
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