Edwyn Collins
The first the world heard of Edwyn Collins was in February 1980 with the release of Falling And Laughing. The debut single by his band, Orange Juice, it was also the first offering from Postcard Records, the independent label Edwyn co-founded with Alan Horne, run from the latter’s sock drawer in a former Red Light district in Glasgow’s West End. As a record, Falling And Laughing was a hopeless cacophony of shrill guitars and an inexplicably loud bass drum pedal. But as a song, it was a sublime celebration of unfulfilled ardour to a tune that aimed to bridge the chasm between The Velvet Underground and Chic. In the age of New Romantics, Edwyn arrived as a Real Romantic, one unafraid to simultaneously embrace “the pleasure with the pain”.
After ten more records, including three increasingly inventive Orange Juice singles, Postcard closed its sock drawer in late 1981. It would be another two decades before Edwyn and Horne’s endeavours would be belatedly recognised as a key foundation stone for indie music, particularly in Scotland where Primal Scream, Belle And Sebastian and Franz Ferdinand would all follow, and acknowledge, Orange Juice’s trailblazing example.
In the interim, Edwyn took Orange Juice into the Top 10 with 1983’s "Rip It Up", perhaps the epitome of their Velvets/Chic punk-funk hybrid, complete with Buzzcocks-homage guitar solo. Alas, the pleasure of performing the song on Top Of The Pops was neutered by the pain of Legs & Co ripping up tissue paper whilst dancing on an adjoining stage. Jinxed thereafter, Orange Juice would later close their proverbial sock drawer in 1985.
Edwyn immediately embarked on a solo career, though it would be ten years before he found himself back on Top Of The Pops with 1995’s "A Girl Like You". Luckily, this time Legs & Co were nowhere to be seen. Better still, the song’s northern soul groove and Isley Brothers guitar frills rewarded Edwyn with a genuine “worldwide smash” and enough royalties to fill a thousand sock drawers. Life, suddenly, was all pleasure.
Fast forward another decade to February 2005, when Edwyn had just finished recording songs for his sixth solo album. Among the rough mixes in the can was a track called "One Is A Lonely Number". Exactly 25 years after "Falling And Laughing", it saw the Old Romantic still embracing life’s pleasure with its pain: “If life breaks your heart, you needn’t fall apart.” Little could he have realised how profoundly prophetic these words would become in the months that followed.
On Sunday, February 20, 2005, Edwyn was admitted to hospital after collapsing at home. He was later diagnosed with having suffered two cerebral haemorrhages and underwent a precarious neurological operation. Incredibly, through a combination of surgical brilliance, the heroic support of his family and his own seemingly invincible will power, Edwyn pulled through. Six months after his stroke, he was back at home. But more phenomenal still was his determination to overcome the physical after-effects hindering his movement and speech so he could return to the studio and finish the album he’d already begun.
The result is "Home Again", a testament not only to Edwyn Collins the songwriter, but Edwyn the man and his resolute spirit. “This is hard for me,” admits Edwyn. “I’m learning to live again after my stroke. But I am happy and contented also. I’m very pleased with the album and with the songs. I’m getting there and I feel grateful at last.”
Recorded at Edwyn’s West Heath Studios in the six months prior to his illness, "Home Again" was mixed after his discharge from hospital with the help of engineer Seb Lewsley. “I said, Righto, Seb! Let’s start the mix,” smiles Edwyn. “Bass up! Drums up! Let’s see how the thing develops. Like that, back and forth and back and forth and so on.” Three years in the making, "Home Again" is by far the most remarkable solo album of Edwyn’s career, as much for its depth of content as the exceptional circumstances surrounding its creation. “You think so?” laughs Edwyn. “I’m just happy to get it finished!”
The poignant sentiment of the aforementioned "One Is A Lonely Number" makes for a perfect opener, its soundtrack a wonderfully eclectic fusion of dub bass and hillbilly banjo. “It is scary,” says Edwyn of the song’s eerie lyrical resonance with his own recent trauma (“‘Cos you’ve still got your mind/Which will serve you in kind/If you’re true to yourself.”) “But it’s a great song,” he adds. “When I hear it now, the lovely chords. I have sadness in my voice, but joy in my heart.”
Much of "Home Again" is concerned with themes of self-discovery and retracing one’s roots. The beautiful title track, a wistful acoustic ballad where Edwyn reflects on his life’s back pages, is among his personal favourites. When he first awoke in hospital, he says it’s the tune he wanted to hear most. “At first, I needed quiet. But then, Where’s my music? My guitar? Where’s Home Again?,” he laughs. “I am very proud of that song.”
Home for Edwyn is North London, where he lives with his partner Grace and their son, William. But home is also Helmsdale, a coastal village in Caithness in the East Highlands of Scotland where Edwyn’s family originate. A place that’s “lonely and relaxing at the same time” says Edwyn, it inspired the album’s brooding folk epic, Leviathan. Its lyrics mention local landmark, The Whaligoe Steps: a staircase cut into a cliff face with 365 steps, “[one] for each day of the year.” Says Edwyn, “I enjoy it up there immensely. The peacefulness and tranquillity. It’s a solitary life, but I find it liberating.”
The same Caithness landscape reappears in "Liberteenage Rag", Edwyn promising to return “way up north where they know my name” over a nimbly-plucked campfire-guitar vamp with echoes of early T. Rex. Escaping the hubbub of the Big Smoke also informs "A Heavy Sigh", while the equally sanguine "Written In Stone" sees Edwyn once again striving “to find my way home.” Between the introspective soul-searching, there’s also romance (the delicate "In Your Heart" and the bittersweet "One Track Mind"), religion (blues rocker "7th Son") and satire, with the Dylan-ish "Superstar Talking Blues" showing Edwyn’s not lost his gift for a witty rhyming couplet: “Now it’s Hello Motorola/Goodbye rock ‘n’ rollers.” Meanwhile, the gorgeous, lovelorn "You’ll Never Know" is a return to roots of a different kind, namely the Philly-via-Bearsden white soul of classic Orange Juice.
Fittingly, "Home Again" ends with Edwyn falling in love and breaking his heart on "Then I Cried", thus returning full circle to the agony and the ecstasy of "Falling And Laughing". “It’s just one of those little songs about tears and sadness,” says Edwyn modestly. “It happened quickly in the studio one day. A nice little ending.”
Finishing "Home Again" has been a Herculean struggle, but Edwyn’s perseverance has more than paid off. Asked to rate it against his entire body of work, Orange Juice included, Edwyn ponders for a few seconds. “Home Again,” he finally says, “It’s perfect. These songs are me. This is who I am.”
"Home Again" is the end of an incredible journey, but also the beginning of another. Edwyn is currently rehearsing with his band and hopes to make his return to live performance this autumn. “I sing every day,” he says. “I’m getting better and better. It’s important for me. Music, it’s everything to me.”
Despite all that he’s been through, in 2007 the Edwyn Collins of "Home Again" is not falling, but laughing. “My outlook on life has not changed. I’m chirpy and quite contented. I was dead, and I was resurrected again,” he says, suddenly chuckling to himself.
“So, the show must go on!”
Edwyn Collins. Welcome home.
After ten more records, including three increasingly inventive Orange Juice singles, Postcard closed its sock drawer in late 1981. It would be another two decades before Edwyn and Horne’s endeavours would be belatedly recognised as a key foundation stone for indie music, particularly in Scotland where Primal Scream, Belle And Sebastian and Franz Ferdinand would all follow, and acknowledge, Orange Juice’s trailblazing example.
In the interim, Edwyn took Orange Juice into the Top 10 with 1983’s "Rip It Up", perhaps the epitome of their Velvets/Chic punk-funk hybrid, complete with Buzzcocks-homage guitar solo. Alas, the pleasure of performing the song on Top Of The Pops was neutered by the pain of Legs & Co ripping up tissue paper whilst dancing on an adjoining stage. Jinxed thereafter, Orange Juice would later close their proverbial sock drawer in 1985.
Edwyn immediately embarked on a solo career, though it would be ten years before he found himself back on Top Of The Pops with 1995’s "A Girl Like You". Luckily, this time Legs & Co were nowhere to be seen. Better still, the song’s northern soul groove and Isley Brothers guitar frills rewarded Edwyn with a genuine “worldwide smash” and enough royalties to fill a thousand sock drawers. Life, suddenly, was all pleasure.
Fast forward another decade to February 2005, when Edwyn had just finished recording songs for his sixth solo album. Among the rough mixes in the can was a track called "One Is A Lonely Number". Exactly 25 years after "Falling And Laughing", it saw the Old Romantic still embracing life’s pleasure with its pain: “If life breaks your heart, you needn’t fall apart.” Little could he have realised how profoundly prophetic these words would become in the months that followed.
On Sunday, February 20, 2005, Edwyn was admitted to hospital after collapsing at home. He was later diagnosed with having suffered two cerebral haemorrhages and underwent a precarious neurological operation. Incredibly, through a combination of surgical brilliance, the heroic support of his family and his own seemingly invincible will power, Edwyn pulled through. Six months after his stroke, he was back at home. But more phenomenal still was his determination to overcome the physical after-effects hindering his movement and speech so he could return to the studio and finish the album he’d already begun.
The result is "Home Again", a testament not only to Edwyn Collins the songwriter, but Edwyn the man and his resolute spirit. “This is hard for me,” admits Edwyn. “I’m learning to live again after my stroke. But I am happy and contented also. I’m very pleased with the album and with the songs. I’m getting there and I feel grateful at last.”
Recorded at Edwyn’s West Heath Studios in the six months prior to his illness, "Home Again" was mixed after his discharge from hospital with the help of engineer Seb Lewsley. “I said, Righto, Seb! Let’s start the mix,” smiles Edwyn. “Bass up! Drums up! Let’s see how the thing develops. Like that, back and forth and back and forth and so on.” Three years in the making, "Home Again" is by far the most remarkable solo album of Edwyn’s career, as much for its depth of content as the exceptional circumstances surrounding its creation. “You think so?” laughs Edwyn. “I’m just happy to get it finished!”
The poignant sentiment of the aforementioned "One Is A Lonely Number" makes for a perfect opener, its soundtrack a wonderfully eclectic fusion of dub bass and hillbilly banjo. “It is scary,” says Edwyn of the song’s eerie lyrical resonance with his own recent trauma (“‘Cos you’ve still got your mind/Which will serve you in kind/If you’re true to yourself.”) “But it’s a great song,” he adds. “When I hear it now, the lovely chords. I have sadness in my voice, but joy in my heart.”
Much of "Home Again" is concerned with themes of self-discovery and retracing one’s roots. The beautiful title track, a wistful acoustic ballad where Edwyn reflects on his life’s back pages, is among his personal favourites. When he first awoke in hospital, he says it’s the tune he wanted to hear most. “At first, I needed quiet. But then, Where’s my music? My guitar? Where’s Home Again?,” he laughs. “I am very proud of that song.”
Home for Edwyn is North London, where he lives with his partner Grace and their son, William. But home is also Helmsdale, a coastal village in Caithness in the East Highlands of Scotland where Edwyn’s family originate. A place that’s “lonely and relaxing at the same time” says Edwyn, it inspired the album’s brooding folk epic, Leviathan. Its lyrics mention local landmark, The Whaligoe Steps: a staircase cut into a cliff face with 365 steps, “[one] for each day of the year.” Says Edwyn, “I enjoy it up there immensely. The peacefulness and tranquillity. It’s a solitary life, but I find it liberating.”
The same Caithness landscape reappears in "Liberteenage Rag", Edwyn promising to return “way up north where they know my name” over a nimbly-plucked campfire-guitar vamp with echoes of early T. Rex. Escaping the hubbub of the Big Smoke also informs "A Heavy Sigh", while the equally sanguine "Written In Stone" sees Edwyn once again striving “to find my way home.” Between the introspective soul-searching, there’s also romance (the delicate "In Your Heart" and the bittersweet "One Track Mind"), religion (blues rocker "7th Son") and satire, with the Dylan-ish "Superstar Talking Blues" showing Edwyn’s not lost his gift for a witty rhyming couplet: “Now it’s Hello Motorola/Goodbye rock ‘n’ rollers.” Meanwhile, the gorgeous, lovelorn "You’ll Never Know" is a return to roots of a different kind, namely the Philly-via-Bearsden white soul of classic Orange Juice.
Fittingly, "Home Again" ends with Edwyn falling in love and breaking his heart on "Then I Cried", thus returning full circle to the agony and the ecstasy of "Falling And Laughing". “It’s just one of those little songs about tears and sadness,” says Edwyn modestly. “It happened quickly in the studio one day. A nice little ending.”
Finishing "Home Again" has been a Herculean struggle, but Edwyn’s perseverance has more than paid off. Asked to rate it against his entire body of work, Orange Juice included, Edwyn ponders for a few seconds. “Home Again,” he finally says, “It’s perfect. These songs are me. This is who I am.”
"Home Again" is the end of an incredible journey, but also the beginning of another. Edwyn is currently rehearsing with his band and hopes to make his return to live performance this autumn. “I sing every day,” he says. “I’m getting better and better. It’s important for me. Music, it’s everything to me.”
Despite all that he’s been through, in 2007 the Edwyn Collins of "Home Again" is not falling, but laughing. “My outlook on life has not changed. I’m chirpy and quite contented. I was dead, and I was resurrected again,” he says, suddenly chuckling to himself.
“So, the show must go on!”
Edwyn Collins. Welcome home.
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