http://www.nme.com/news/edwyn-collins/29236
The former Orange Juice singer's comeback follows, two cerebral brain haemorrhages in early 2005.
Collins began working on this album in late 2004 and continued working on it following a long period of rehabilitation after his illness.
The tracklisting is:
'One Is A Lonely Number'
'Home Again'
'You'll Never Know'
'7th Son'
'Leviathan'
'In Your Heart'
'Superstar Talking Blues'
'Liberteenage Rag'
'A Heavy Sigh'
'Written In Stone'
'One Track Mind'
'Then I Cried'
Collins' last studio album was 2002's 'Doctor Syntax'.
The Return of Edwyn Collins
The Return of Edwyn Collins
echos myron like a siren
with endurance like the liberty bell
and he tells you of the dreamers
but he's cracked up like the road
and he'd like to lift us up, but we're a very heavy load
with endurance like the liberty bell
and he tells you of the dreamers
but he's cracked up like the road
and he'd like to lift us up, but we're a very heavy load
-
Mechanical Grace
- Posts: 878
- Joined: Thu Sep 18, 2003 12:40 pm
-
Otis Westinghouse
- Posts: 8856
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:32 pm
- Location: The theatre of dreams
http://news.independent.co.uk/health/article2831095.ece
The Edwyn Collins story: Rip it up... and start again
When Edwyn Collins had a brain haemorrhage - and then another - the pop star's life seemed to be as good as over. Then he found an amazing route to recovery. Ian Herbert tells his story
Published: 03 August 2007
"How do you like my drawings? More to come. I'm very pleased with the album and songs and I'm getting there..."
So ran the latest post yesterday on the website of a singer who, much like any other, wanted his followers to know that he is releasing a sixth album in September and hopes they will respond to it. But Edwyn Collins, the artist best known for his hits with the 1980s post-punk group Orange Juice and his solo success, "A Girl Like You", a decade later, could hardly have anticipated how gratefully his words would be received.
The drawings he spoke of - rough sketches of a lion, a wildebeest, baboons and birds - were a source of unmitigated delight to all who saw them. "Never could draw, hands are too big, my excuse for never learning to play the guitar as well," writes one. "Amazing", "lovely, 'great stuff", others add.
They are responding in this way because the website, a place where they have enjoyed a candid engagement with Collins for more than three years, was also the place where they read the shattering message which his wife posted on 24 February 2005. "Edwin suffered a cerebral haemorrhage on Sunday night," it read. "When there is more come I'll let you know. Grace."
Collins was 45 and in full creative flight when, shortly after his website postings had mysteriously started to dry up, he was struck down at home by what proved to be two brain haemorrhages. Projects in the pipeline back then included a new album, a tour with full band, some re-releases from his Orange Juice days and a TV documentary. But throughout the spring and summer of 2005, his fans could only cling on to postings from his wife, Grace Maxwell, for an insight into his struggle for life. Her report of the emergency operation on 1 March was succinct. He had come through it "as well as could be hoped", she said. Five days later, she offered thanks for all the flowers received at a time when Collins was "making progress". (He was actually being fed intravenously at the time, was unable to talk and communicating only by squeezing his wife's hand.)
Some information was simply too awful to disclose. "Without going into details which are personal to Edwyn, I have to tell you it will be a long time before he surfaces as the effects of this terrible thing are complex and hard to conquer," said Collins' wife. And then, just when it seemed that her husband was rallying, there was to be yet more devastation. Collins developed an MRSA infection at the site of an operation on his skull and returned to London's Royal Free Hospital. "This should be straightforward but I wouldn't mind you sending him your positive vibrations or whatever it is you've been doing so far just to help on the way," his wife wrote. Once again, the gravity of the situation again belied her message.
But Collins pulled through and over the past 18 months he has been slowly inching back to music. And though the recuperation is nowhere near complete - speech has not been completely restored to him and he has no use in his right hand because of paralysis caused by the haemorrhages - the singer announced this week that a single, "You'll Never Know", is to be released on 10 September, along with an album, Home Again, which Collins was working on when he fell ill.
One entirely unanticipated effect of the horror which has befallen Collins and his family in the past two years is a widening appreciation of his talent. Amid some of his darkest days in the Royal Free, a collection of early Orange Juice tracks, called The Glasgow School, was released to critical acclaim. If Collins had been well enough to dwell on the response, he might have allowed himself some rueful reflection on what might have been back in the 1980s.
Orange Juice was the second incarnation of a group he set up with friends in mid-1970s Glasgow - where he moved from Dundee with his mother after his parents split. The group had been known initially as Nu-Sonics, a punk outfit, but they relaunched as Orange Juice in 1978 in an attempt to move beyond punk and rehearsed in a flat at West Princes Street in the city's West End - which became the home of Collins' Postcard Records and the focal point for the new sound of Glasgow. They were foppishly dressed and their music was jangly: a neo-pop sound which was more accessible than punk. Orange juice was what they drank.
In the early 1980s, when the single, "Rip It Up," climbed to number three, and the boys were on the cover of New Musical Express, they were the musicians of the moment. Collins tells how even his grandfather, a "compulsive churchgoer", had provided a sense of how far their success had reached by informing him one Sunday: "Mr Traill was taking the collection and he said: 'I see 'Rip It Up''s at number 8 this week, Stewart." It might have been anathema to the likes of Ian Curtis and John Lydon but Orange Juice's influence has stood the test of time. The band has been cited as a major influence on Franz Ferdinand, Primal Scream and Belle and Sebastian, which is more than can be said of Ultravox, Visage and other of their contemporaries.
Collins has also recalled the band's producer's attempts to collar John Peel at BBC's Broadcasting House to persuade him to play their Laughing and Falling tape on the radio. "He said: 'Wid ye stop playing all those bands from Liverpool like Echo and the Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes. That's so yesterday. Orange Juice are the future," he said.
But they weren't. The band found little success and within a year or so of the "Rip It Up" hit, they had split. Then, despite his trademark soulful baritone, Collins found himself in relative obscurity, dropped by Polydor and struggling to shift two solo albums. He had spent much of the 1990s at a mixing desk before he recorded the 1995 single, "A Girl Like You", with his last £10,000 and watched it propel him back into the big time.
The insanely catchy tale of lovelorn angst, taken from the Gorgeous George album, reached the top 10 in seven countries; became the most played song that year; won Collins a best newcomer award from the Italians; and introduced him to a new generation of admirers. It also provided him with financial security, though somehow it seemed to fuel an instinctive distrust of the vagaries of a music industry which had dropped him for so long before picking him up again. Collins surfaced only intermittently in the decade which followed, concentrating more on producing bands such as The Divine Comedy and The Proclaimers than on his own releases.
While his status as a fiercely independent mover in the music industry was also maintained with the release of the album, I'm Not Following You, and the slicker soul-sounding Doctor Syntax, he was resolutely determined to maintain contact with his fans. It's certainly hard to conjure the name of many stars who had quite such a presence in their own website chatroom as Collins and if evidence were really needed of the modesty which has characterised his career then it is to be found in the title he selected for the album which covered 20 years of his work. All the greats - "Rip It Up", "Falling and Laughing" and "A Girl Like You" were on that album and yet, as one critic put it, he "sidled up to the record-buying public" with the title, A Casual Introduction.
If illness had not intervened, Collins would have released the album he had promised in 2005.
Initially, those songs could not be attended to amid his gruelling regime of speech and language therapy, acupunture and palliates. His rehabilitation has also included walking in his beloved Caithness, in east Scotland where Collins bought a cottage and restored it before his illness. Making halfway up the 350 Whaligoe Steps in Caithness this spring was a significant landmark. The art seems to have been helping him too, albeit with frustrations. "I'm right-handed. I had to learn again with my left," he said. "I'm happy with my progess. I draw almost every day."
But a few months ago the website - where images also show the strength provided by his young son, William - revealed that a return to the recording studio and the microphone had taken place. The news was tinged with a sense of struggle but it was certainly a start. "General excitement. Singing songs again. No so good but I'm getting there," he wrote.
The songs, all recorded at Collins' West Heath studios, in London, in the six months before his illness, have been mixed with the engineer Seb Lewsley. Their themes are self discovery and rediscovering roots. But the album is also an assertion of the vitality of life, according to Collins, who aims to return to live performance this autumn after releasing the album. "My outlook on life has not changed. I was dead and I was resurrected again," he said. "I'm chirpy and quite contented. I sing every day and I'm getting better and better. This is hard for me. I'm learning to live again but I'm happy. I'm pleased with thee albums and the songs."
The website is packed with evidence of Collins' determination. "The show must go on," he told his fans. But the unmistakably prophetic lyrics of the album's songs, composed before his illness, seem to say most about the strength which has seen him through the past few years. "If life breaks your heart you needn't fall apart," runs the first track, "One is Lonely Number". "You've still got your mind, which will serve you in kind, if you're true to yourself."
The Edwyn Collins story: Rip it up... and start again
When Edwyn Collins had a brain haemorrhage - and then another - the pop star's life seemed to be as good as over. Then he found an amazing route to recovery. Ian Herbert tells his story
Published: 03 August 2007
"How do you like my drawings? More to come. I'm very pleased with the album and songs and I'm getting there..."
So ran the latest post yesterday on the website of a singer who, much like any other, wanted his followers to know that he is releasing a sixth album in September and hopes they will respond to it. But Edwyn Collins, the artist best known for his hits with the 1980s post-punk group Orange Juice and his solo success, "A Girl Like You", a decade later, could hardly have anticipated how gratefully his words would be received.
The drawings he spoke of - rough sketches of a lion, a wildebeest, baboons and birds - were a source of unmitigated delight to all who saw them. "Never could draw, hands are too big, my excuse for never learning to play the guitar as well," writes one. "Amazing", "lovely, 'great stuff", others add.
They are responding in this way because the website, a place where they have enjoyed a candid engagement with Collins for more than three years, was also the place where they read the shattering message which his wife posted on 24 February 2005. "Edwin suffered a cerebral haemorrhage on Sunday night," it read. "When there is more come I'll let you know. Grace."
Collins was 45 and in full creative flight when, shortly after his website postings had mysteriously started to dry up, he was struck down at home by what proved to be two brain haemorrhages. Projects in the pipeline back then included a new album, a tour with full band, some re-releases from his Orange Juice days and a TV documentary. But throughout the spring and summer of 2005, his fans could only cling on to postings from his wife, Grace Maxwell, for an insight into his struggle for life. Her report of the emergency operation on 1 March was succinct. He had come through it "as well as could be hoped", she said. Five days later, she offered thanks for all the flowers received at a time when Collins was "making progress". (He was actually being fed intravenously at the time, was unable to talk and communicating only by squeezing his wife's hand.)
Some information was simply too awful to disclose. "Without going into details which are personal to Edwyn, I have to tell you it will be a long time before he surfaces as the effects of this terrible thing are complex and hard to conquer," said Collins' wife. And then, just when it seemed that her husband was rallying, there was to be yet more devastation. Collins developed an MRSA infection at the site of an operation on his skull and returned to London's Royal Free Hospital. "This should be straightforward but I wouldn't mind you sending him your positive vibrations or whatever it is you've been doing so far just to help on the way," his wife wrote. Once again, the gravity of the situation again belied her message.
But Collins pulled through and over the past 18 months he has been slowly inching back to music. And though the recuperation is nowhere near complete - speech has not been completely restored to him and he has no use in his right hand because of paralysis caused by the haemorrhages - the singer announced this week that a single, "You'll Never Know", is to be released on 10 September, along with an album, Home Again, which Collins was working on when he fell ill.
One entirely unanticipated effect of the horror which has befallen Collins and his family in the past two years is a widening appreciation of his talent. Amid some of his darkest days in the Royal Free, a collection of early Orange Juice tracks, called The Glasgow School, was released to critical acclaim. If Collins had been well enough to dwell on the response, he might have allowed himself some rueful reflection on what might have been back in the 1980s.
Orange Juice was the second incarnation of a group he set up with friends in mid-1970s Glasgow - where he moved from Dundee with his mother after his parents split. The group had been known initially as Nu-Sonics, a punk outfit, but they relaunched as Orange Juice in 1978 in an attempt to move beyond punk and rehearsed in a flat at West Princes Street in the city's West End - which became the home of Collins' Postcard Records and the focal point for the new sound of Glasgow. They were foppishly dressed and their music was jangly: a neo-pop sound which was more accessible than punk. Orange juice was what they drank.
In the early 1980s, when the single, "Rip It Up," climbed to number three, and the boys were on the cover of New Musical Express, they were the musicians of the moment. Collins tells how even his grandfather, a "compulsive churchgoer", had provided a sense of how far their success had reached by informing him one Sunday: "Mr Traill was taking the collection and he said: 'I see 'Rip It Up''s at number 8 this week, Stewart." It might have been anathema to the likes of Ian Curtis and John Lydon but Orange Juice's influence has stood the test of time. The band has been cited as a major influence on Franz Ferdinand, Primal Scream and Belle and Sebastian, which is more than can be said of Ultravox, Visage and other of their contemporaries.
Collins has also recalled the band's producer's attempts to collar John Peel at BBC's Broadcasting House to persuade him to play their Laughing and Falling tape on the radio. "He said: 'Wid ye stop playing all those bands from Liverpool like Echo and the Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes. That's so yesterday. Orange Juice are the future," he said.
But they weren't. The band found little success and within a year or so of the "Rip It Up" hit, they had split. Then, despite his trademark soulful baritone, Collins found himself in relative obscurity, dropped by Polydor and struggling to shift two solo albums. He had spent much of the 1990s at a mixing desk before he recorded the 1995 single, "A Girl Like You", with his last £10,000 and watched it propel him back into the big time.
The insanely catchy tale of lovelorn angst, taken from the Gorgeous George album, reached the top 10 in seven countries; became the most played song that year; won Collins a best newcomer award from the Italians; and introduced him to a new generation of admirers. It also provided him with financial security, though somehow it seemed to fuel an instinctive distrust of the vagaries of a music industry which had dropped him for so long before picking him up again. Collins surfaced only intermittently in the decade which followed, concentrating more on producing bands such as The Divine Comedy and The Proclaimers than on his own releases.
While his status as a fiercely independent mover in the music industry was also maintained with the release of the album, I'm Not Following You, and the slicker soul-sounding Doctor Syntax, he was resolutely determined to maintain contact with his fans. It's certainly hard to conjure the name of many stars who had quite such a presence in their own website chatroom as Collins and if evidence were really needed of the modesty which has characterised his career then it is to be found in the title he selected for the album which covered 20 years of his work. All the greats - "Rip It Up", "Falling and Laughing" and "A Girl Like You" were on that album and yet, as one critic put it, he "sidled up to the record-buying public" with the title, A Casual Introduction.
If illness had not intervened, Collins would have released the album he had promised in 2005.
Initially, those songs could not be attended to amid his gruelling regime of speech and language therapy, acupunture and palliates. His rehabilitation has also included walking in his beloved Caithness, in east Scotland where Collins bought a cottage and restored it before his illness. Making halfway up the 350 Whaligoe Steps in Caithness this spring was a significant landmark. The art seems to have been helping him too, albeit with frustrations. "I'm right-handed. I had to learn again with my left," he said. "I'm happy with my progess. I draw almost every day."
But a few months ago the website - where images also show the strength provided by his young son, William - revealed that a return to the recording studio and the microphone had taken place. The news was tinged with a sense of struggle but it was certainly a start. "General excitement. Singing songs again. No so good but I'm getting there," he wrote.
The songs, all recorded at Collins' West Heath studios, in London, in the six months before his illness, have been mixed with the engineer Seb Lewsley. Their themes are self discovery and rediscovering roots. But the album is also an assertion of the vitality of life, according to Collins, who aims to return to live performance this autumn after releasing the album. "My outlook on life has not changed. I was dead and I was resurrected again," he said. "I'm chirpy and quite contented. I sing every day and I'm getting better and better. This is hard for me. I'm learning to live again but I'm happy. I'm pleased with thee albums and the songs."
The website is packed with evidence of Collins' determination. "The show must go on," he told his fans. But the unmistakably prophetic lyrics of the album's songs, composed before his illness, seem to say most about the strength which has seen him through the past few years. "If life breaks your heart you needn't fall apart," runs the first track, "One is Lonely Number". "You've still got your mind, which will serve you in kind, if you're true to yourself."
-
invisible Pole
- Posts: 2228
- Joined: Tue Jun 29, 2004 2:20 pm
- Location: Poland
Re: The Return of Edwyn Collins
And he's now going to tour again !!
04-20 Birmingham, England - Glee Club
04-21 Edinburgh, Scotland - The Queens Hall
04-22 Glasgow, Scotland - Oran Mor
04-24 Newcastle, England - Northumbria University
04-25 Manchester, England - Manchester University
04-26 Leeds, England - The Cockpit
04-29 London, England - Shepherds Bush Empire
04-20 Birmingham, England - Glee Club
04-21 Edinburgh, Scotland - The Queens Hall
04-22 Glasgow, Scotland - Oran Mor
04-24 Newcastle, England - Northumbria University
04-25 Manchester, England - Manchester University
04-26 Leeds, England - The Cockpit
04-29 London, England - Shepherds Bush Empire
If you don't know what is wrong with me
Then you don't know what you've missed
Then you don't know what you've missed
-
Otis Westinghouse
- Posts: 8856
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:32 pm
- Location: The theatre of dreams
Re: The Return of Edwyn Collins
Would love to see him. Might need to get me down to London for that one (and Neil Young is playing there tonight, and I'm not there! What's wrong with me?).
There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more
-
Otis Westinghouse
- Posts: 8856
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:32 pm
- Location: The theatre of dreams
Re: The Return of Edwyn Collins
Well I am going to London for that one. How lovely. Big thanks IP for the heads up. Friend I'm going with saw him last autumn at his second London gig since coming back. Roddy Frame on guitar. Says it was brill and the sight of him being helped on and off the stage brought tears to his eyes. Setlists there were a nice mix of OJ classics, his most famous solo hits and a decent selection from the wonderful Home Again. I can't wait. Lloyd Cole one week and Edwyn the next.
There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more
-
invisible Pole
- Posts: 2228
- Joined: Tue Jun 29, 2004 2:20 pm
- Location: Poland
Re: The Return of Edwyn Collins
Two great shows ahead of you, no doubt about it.
Is Roddy a "regular" in Edwyn's backing band ?
Is Roddy a "regular" in Edwyn's backing band ?
If you don't know what is wrong with me
Then you don't know what you've missed
Then you don't know what you've missed
Re: The Return of Edwyn Collins
I remember seeing Siouxsie And The Banshees in the mid-80s with Robert Smith of the Cure touring as the Banshees guitarist, but Edwyn Collins with Roddy Frame helping out is a far more exciting pairing!
Well worth the trip to London Otis!
I remember seeing Edwyn when he was touring for A Girl Like You, but don't recall if he played any of the Postcard sigles. I hope you get to hear some!
Well worth the trip to London Otis!
I remember seeing Edwyn when he was touring for A Girl Like You, but don't recall if he played any of the Postcard sigles. I hope you get to hear some!
-
Otis Westinghouse
- Posts: 8856
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:32 pm
- Location: The theatre of dreams
Re: The Return of Edwyn Collins
I've just downloaded (though not yet listened to) his first comeback London gig:
Edwyn Collins
Live at Dingwalls, Camden Town,
London, Great Britain
28th October 2007
(as part of the BBC ELECTRIC PROMS 2007 concert series)
1. Bernard Butler intro & crowd welcome Edwyn
2. Falling and Laughing
3. Poor Old Soul
4. What Presence
5. Home Again
6. Make Me Feel Again
7. One Is A Lonely Number
8. You'll Never Know (My Love)
9. Hope And Despair
10. One Track Mind
11. Rip It Up
12. Then I Cried
13. A Girl Like You
ENCORE:
14. Blue Boy
15. Searching For The Truth
Four OJ songs, three of them Postcard classics. Great setlist. Blue Boy is one of my favourite singles ever, so give me that and I'll be ecstatic. Or Lovesick. Or Simply Thrilled Honey...
Don't know if Roddy will be playing this time, but hope so! I saw him in the Aztec Camera days, once in Birmingham in '84 or '85, in High Hall, where Joy Division played their last gig, and then in Barcelona in '87 or early '88. Both very good. For me, although he has done great stuff beyond those days, like Edwin his real gems are the Postcard singles.
Edwyn Collins
Live at Dingwalls, Camden Town,
London, Great Britain
28th October 2007
(as part of the BBC ELECTRIC PROMS 2007 concert series)
1. Bernard Butler intro & crowd welcome Edwyn
2. Falling and Laughing
3. Poor Old Soul
4. What Presence
5. Home Again
6. Make Me Feel Again
7. One Is A Lonely Number
8. You'll Never Know (My Love)
9. Hope And Despair
10. One Track Mind
11. Rip It Up
12. Then I Cried
13. A Girl Like You
ENCORE:
14. Blue Boy
15. Searching For The Truth
Four OJ songs, three of them Postcard classics. Great setlist. Blue Boy is one of my favourite singles ever, so give me that and I'll be ecstatic. Or Lovesick. Or Simply Thrilled Honey...
Don't know if Roddy will be playing this time, but hope so! I saw him in the Aztec Camera days, once in Birmingham in '84 or '85, in High Hall, where Joy Division played their last gig, and then in Barcelona in '87 or early '88. Both very good. For me, although he has done great stuff beyond those days, like Edwin his real gems are the Postcard singles.
There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more
Re: The Return of Edwyn Collins
Great setlist. I hope yours is as compelling. Blue Boy is superb, perhaps only bettered by Simply Thrilled Honey.