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Edwyn Collins - jeez


charlie clown

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a couple of years back when Edwyn had his brain haemorrhage and then contracted MRSA I knew from what I was reading that he was lucky to still be alive but I've just read this article (from The Scotsman on 9th Match - no link though) and it sounds like it was even worse then was first reported. Horrendous stuff. A long article but worth reading if you've any interest in Edwyn, Orange Juice or Postcard....

 

Never met a guy like you before

MIKE GILSON

 

LET'S face it, most men of a certain age live their lives through rock music. The other day work almost came to a halt in my office as arguments raged on the best ever song to come out of Manchester. Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now took on Temptation took on She Bangs the Drums. It was pretty sad stuff, but for those taking part, their

choices defined them. It said they knew more than the others, got them a little one-upmanship if they could date the remix and who produced it.

 

I'm no different, except I've got the real deal on my side. No macho chords, no black-and-white backstreet chic for me, no baggy white man dance and no crossover success to tarnish the genius. I've got the man who in the early 1980s summed up a hopeless optimism that endures to this day, defined how feckless yet fiercely intelligent young lads could really be. He couldn't really sing, played the odd duff note, wore shorts, had swagger and beauty and - a necessary ingredient - seemed faintly doomed to the periphery right from the start.

 

His music always lurched between hope and despair (a fact recognised by his first solo album after the inevitable split with his cohorts) hurtling downhill like a patched-together go-kart, a different, more battered thing at the end than it was at the start. Step forward the contagious but contrary magic piper of pop: Edwyn Collins.

 

Just the name you see puts me where I want to be. There will be enough people scratching their heads, so I can revel in the obscurity necessary to be a real aficionado - but also enough who, somewhere inside, will recall the jangling guitars, the bittersweet lyrics, maybe even the Roger McGuinn fringes, and be able to give the

previous paragraph a supportive nod.

 

In 1982 Edinburgh-born Collins and his band Orange Juice released a debut album called You Can't Hide Your Love Forever. It remains one of the stunning debuts of all time. A stand-out-among- the-dross thing of Scottish beauty, impishness and spirit-lifting riffs. A collection of ramshackle songs thrown together, yet somehow managing to be simply exquisite. A record to make your heart soar, to remember that

falling and laughing and loving are what we are here for. There, I've done it. I've been wanting to come over all NME-like about this album for 20 years.

 

Formed in Glasgow as the Nu-sonics, they later became the gloriously titled Orange Juice (Collins thought its wholesomeness would annoy the post-punk sensibilities of the time). The band's string of crisp pop songs - Blue Boy, Simply Thrilled Honey - shone through iffy production on Alan Horne's legendary Postcard label in 1979, leading to a deal with Polydor. This was Velvet Underground meets Chic, refracted through a Glaswegian experience.

 

The trick was to be noticed - hence shorts and Davy Crockett hats made appearances. At a time of hardcore punk sensibilities it was important to be fey with a capital F.

 

"It comes from being perverse; contrary for the sake of it," said Collins a few years back. "To us that was really important. When we started, we used to get the hardcore punks spitting at us. There was a group we used to play with a bit and they would stand at the side of the stage while we were on and rhythmically chant in time with

us, 'poofs, poofs, poofs'. We really thought we were on to something because we were getting that kind of reaction."

 

In a theme to emerge from much of Collins's subsequent career, creative differences, stubbornness, perfectionism was to mean that You Can't... would be the only album from the original line-up of Collins, James Kirk, David McClymont and Steven Daly.

 

But cherish Collins and his fellow songwriter Kirk for their moment in pop history. When the gods smiled down and allowed them to record songs such as Consolation Prize, there was simply nothing else around like it. On Three Cheers for Our Side, floppy-fringed Collins and Kirk duetted (rather charmingly, but of course flatly) on a raggle-taggle song that veers joyfully out of control. Upwards and Onwards is another life-affirming gem, Collins a pop craftsman at the top of his game so unbelievably early in his career, aged just 22. Such confidence, such lyrical brilliance! But it was time for Collins and the boys to end it all. The reasons are lost in time, although the

addition of the professionalism brought by new band-member Malcolm Ross (of Josef K), clashing with the laidback ethos of the hugely talented but diffident Kirk, maybe had something to do with it. Whatever, the chief songwriter sided with Ross and a shocked Kirk was out, causing Collins years of soul searching.

 

Later that year a new line-up, with Zeke Manyika on drums (do yourself a favour and skip his songwriting contributions) released Rip It Up, with the eponymous single going top ten in the UK. Free from the creative differences with Kirk, Collins could polish the sound. Polydor threw some money in for production, bringing in the

horns to gorgeous effect on such songs as I Can't Help Myself and Flesh of My Flesh. The caustic lyrics were still in evidence -"Here's some mud in your pretty eye, but please drop dead if you're passing by" - but, for some Postcard hardcorers, it wasn't the same.

 

The amateurism had gone, the Television and Velvet Underground-inspired chaos had been buffed away. This has always struck me as unfair, even if I agree that the band never really hit those stunning early heights again. The truth was, how could they match breakthrough perfection? Collins knew he had to keep evolving, and later Orange Juice albums saw the pop genius becoming harder-edged, with his guitar working with him rather than against. A musician of staggering talent was emerging, but that did not mean the humour, the sarcasm and the intelligence had gone.

 

Take the underrated 1984 album Texas Fever, which combines, in Bridge, some of the best Lou Reed-inspired guitar work around. A Place in My Heart is a beautiful lament that would not have been out of place on the debut.

 

At this time, though, it was becoming clear that Collins's talents were too singular for a British audience indulging in some of the most truly awful pop music since the genre was invented. While Collins was honing the 1984 album The Orange Juice - with its self-referencing first track Lean Period - Howard Jones, Tears for Fears,

Go West and even Russ Abbott were cluttering up the charts.

 

Contrary, headstrong, uncompromising, Collins was not going to be detracted from the soul, punk, country guitar-pop path. Orange Juice were dead and Collins embarked on a solo career that had more times in the wilderness than the limelight.

 

Typically with Collins, the quality of his output was amazing, his voice moving from the boyish fuzzy mouth-full-of- gobstoppers delight of You Can't... to the honey dripped and drawling sound of often bitter experience. Just as typically, a mass audience refused to bite until in 1995 when, by way of a Belgian DJ, A Girl Like You from the Gorgeous George album became a worldwide hit, introducing him to a

new audience - particularly in the US, where they'd never heard of him and certainly didn't get his acerbic Scottish humour.

 

For those of us who selfishly wanted Collins as a secret these were worrying days, but true to form we were to be handed him back with his 1997 follow-up album I'm Not Following You. By some way his best -with its towering opener It's a Steal, and the fantastic Seventies Night with Mark E Smith on vocals - the album fell foul of a record company barcode error, meaning that it only charted at 55 instead of its rightful place in the top 15, and thus was deprived of airplay. Collins was said to be "philosophical" about it.

 

That was pretty much how it was for me and Edwyn. We would carry on, not caring about an unappreciative world, trapped in a timeless place where love could be messy but uplifting and our luck would usually be down. A brief return to the charts in 1997 with chintzy retro number Magic Piper of Love - chosen to play over the credits for the Austin Powers soundtrack - threatened our bliss. A self-penned sitcom, West

Heath Yard, did not, and is probably best filed along with the Manyika solo material in terms of artistic merit. And Edwyn Collins, purveyor of pop pearls, too intelligent for your time, that should have been about it.

 

Tragedy Strikes

IN February 2005 a friend rang. "Have you heard about yer man?" he asked. Collins had been struck down with two major cerebral haemorrhages at his London home, a stroke leaving him paralysed down the right side. Days earlier he had told the BBC of feeling "a horrible sense of vertigo, the room started spinning around and I started puking up". Putting it down to food poisoning, he reckoned: "I'm two days into recuperation and I should be fine."

 

Except he wasn't. He was rushed to hospital, where doctors struggled to save his life. Suddenly a man whose sharp mind was the driving force of his art was under attack at the centre of his being. Whatever had caused the haemorrhages wasn't prepared to let him go. Emergency brain surgery followed again a month later and then again, in April, a piece of his cranium was removed after he contracted the MRSA bug.

 

Months of care in the London Royal Free Hospital were underway. He didn't take his first steps until August. During this time something wonderful happened. From around the world people who felt the same way as me about him started posting good luck messages on his website. It had taken a terrible tragedy to activate the sleepers.

For Collins's wife and manager Grace Maxwell, it was unbelievable. Those messages helped both her and her husband (always keen to be adored) in their darkest days.

 

And they were dark. For Collins had - has - aphasia, a neurological disorder causing damage to the parts of the brain concerned with language. In a nutshell, he could not speak, understand speech, read or write. He lost his thought processes. In addition most of his memory had gone. He had no feeling in the right side of his body, his

right arm useless. A cruel fate for anyone to suffer, but for a man who lived on his wit, who never had to search for the words he needed, it must be unbearable. Collins would have to start again. A long road lay ahead. "Edwyn is making progress, although it is still early days. He is very tough," Grace wrote on the website. She said

she had told him about the "truly lovely outpouring of good wishes" from fans. "It raises a smile," she wrote. "Keep thinking of him." I posted and told them something I hadn't even told my eldest son. He'd been named Edwin (I couldn't make it too obvious and include the y) after the pop star who so moved me all those years ago.

 

The Interview

I'M AS nervous as hell. Can't pick the phone up. I've spoken to many powerful people in my time, asked them some tough questions. But this is different. I've arranged to ring Grace and Edwyn at 5:30pm. I don't know how it'll be. Grace has had to put up with so much I wouldn't blame her for being short with a prying journalist. And as

for Edwyn, what would I find? He hasn't done any interviews, refuses to pose on the sofa with Grace for a human interest story in the tabloids. Definitely not his style.

 

Grace picks up the phone. She's great, a broad Scottish accent booming up the line from London to Edinburgh. In truth it's a hopeless interview. I'm too much of a fan, a well-wisher, to ask any forensic questions. We talk about the times I saw Collins and Orange Juice, most memorably at Cardiff student union, when he was too pissed to play a proper note but still had the packed, sweaty hall bopping away on his charm and lyrics. Grace the manager is having none of it.

 

"Aye but there were times when they went on like that, that I just had to say, 'Edwyn, that was bad, but not in a good way,'" she says. If anyone could make headstrong, opinionated Edwyn listen you imagine it would be a wife and manager like Grace. She gives me an update on how her husband is: "He is doing well, Mike, he's a fighter, he's doing fantastically well. He was six months in hospital but he's

walking now. He walks without his stick except when he's out in a crowd. It's just sheer hard work for him and lots of therapy to get things back."

 

Then she lets slip, with a laugh, that the cynical scourge of muddled middle-class thinking is now into yoga and pilates. "I know it's hard to think of Edwyn searching for his lotus position," she says. "You can't hide what he has. He lost all speech, all language, all his thought processes. He had to fight inch by inch to get pieces of his

concentration back. He is having to learn to read and write again from scratch. He had to learn to talk again. Sometimes he will say he can't remember anything, but he has got most of his memory back. There was a lot missing at first but he's found a way to retrieve it."

 

I'm getting there. I'm grateful for all the support that I've had. I've had a lot of therapy. I'm OK.- Edwyn Collins

He has learned to write again, too. She calls aphasia an "unimaginable thing, a strange hidden world". While people understand many other disorders, more needs to be done to research aphasia, she says. I get the feeling that she will eventually put her considerable skills to campaigning on this issue. Then she gives a clue as to the remarkable strength she has given her husband. With his right arm useless, playing the guitar by himself has become impossible. But that hasn't stopped him trying. Now, when the urge comes, Grace and Edwyn sit of the sofa; she strums and he plays the

chords. "We're like the new Peters and Lee," she says.

 

The other source of strength is their 16-year-old son William, "the real Alpha male of the house" as Grace describes him. He has introduced dad to computer skills by way of MySpace, Collins allowing for the fact that it's owned by one of his capitalist target figures, Rupert Murdoch. William has also been known to pick up the guitar, but not always with the backing of his dad.

 

"It's great when William brings his mates around," says Grace, "although they were making a racket the other night, playing the guitars when we were in bed. Edwyn started moaning and told me to sort them out. But I just sat on the top of the stairs listening to them having fun while he moaned. I couldn't stop them having fun." If

ever you wanted proof that we all get older, it's the thought of the forever-boyish Edwyn Collins barking at his son to turn the music down.

 

While I've been talking to Grace there's been a constant kerfuffle in the background. Collins is frustrated and wants to get on the line to speak. Now I'm really nervous and a little afraid. What if I don't understand him? What if he really is very ill?

 

Then he is on the line and something incredible has occurred. It's as if the brain damage he's suffered has stripped away the years.

 

He sounds very young, just like he did singing about Felicity all those years ago. He laughs, and I swear it's like the chuckle he makes just before that great guitar riff he plays on Consolation Prize.

 

"Helloo Mike," he says, and, before I ask, "I'm getting there," he answers. "I'm grateful for all the support I've had. I've had a lot of therapy. I'm OK."

 

He's keen to point out that, although Grace does indeed strum the guitar, his chords are perfect. He remembers the barcode c**k-up that deprived him of deserved solo success and chuckles again. He praises Grace and the efforts she's made for him. His sentences are short and he repeats a lot, can't really instigate much. But he's clearly

fighting hard to get it all back and I feel privileged to be speaking to him. Our conversation falters, so I bluster about his genius. He thanks me, and our time has come to an end.

 

The Comeback

JUST before disaster struck in early 2005 the man who did more than most to put Scotland at the forefront of indie pop in the 1980s was recording a new album to follow up 2002's Dr Syntax. He'd finished the full set and was looking for a record deal when the problems in his brain intervened.

 

At the back end of 2005, still frustrated by the hideous limitations his condition was imposing on him, he nevertheless felt able to go back into his own West Heath recording studio, his pride and joy, to listen to those tunes again. He went back in with his close friend and producer Seb Lewsley.

 

Musically, Edwyn and Seb have been virtually joined at the hip for the last 14 years. "It was a bit too soon," says Seb, "My right hand man wasn't really there. The man who I relied on who always knew what he wanted wasn't really there. It was difficult. I realised he had more important things to worry about."

 

However, last autumn, when they tried again, it was a different story. "He'd been listening to a lot of his stuff at home and had begun to pick it up again. Almost the instinctive nature of the music was kicking in. He wanted this louder, that different. He was excited. It was fantastic."

 

Seb describes Home Again as more "acoustic and live", with plenty of weird sounds in the brew from instruments and keyboards, which Edwyn continually picks up along the way.

 

"The usual eclectic mix," he says. "In a way, Edwyn was always a bit too intelligent for many people to get, his musical references were so wide and his lyrics so sharp."

 

Last month they began mastering the tapes. The search for a record deal will begin again, and a summer release is pencilled in. Grace feels listeners will think he wrote some of the more caustic songs after his attack, such is the powerful observation of the human condition contained with-in them.

 

She doesn't want to tempt fate about what the future for this master musician will be, about whether he will be ever able to make such achingly beautiful music again. We'll see what happens in the future," is all she will say.

 

Collins, meanwhile, is getting into the swing. He may complain he can't remember things from the past, but he hasn't forgotten a musician's need to plug his product at every opportunity. Throughout our conversation he returns again and again to the new recording, regardless of the question I ask. "It's called Home Again and it's my

favourite," he tells me, "It's some of the best stuff I've done."

 

And, until the summer, that is it on the Edwyn Collins story. Collins goes back to the daily grind of learning the basics of life, his new life, and I go back to shuffling forward my MP3 on the way to work until Intuition Told Me or Blue Boy comes on.

 

And you, the reader? Perhaps you can familiarise or reacquaint yourself with the work of the man who brought hope and joy to Scottish pop, and prepare for the second coming

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