Doll by Doll

Doll By Doll 1981 album inner sleeve photos Rachel Calhoun

Doll by Doll playlist

Contributor: James McCaon

Taking their name from an e e cummings poem ‘the first of all my dreams’ – two tiny selves sleep (doll by doll) motionless under magical foreverfully falling snow – the band were active from around 1977 until 1983.

They were London based comprising Jackie Leven (lead vocals and guitar), Jo Shaw (vocals and guitar), David Macintosh (vocals and percussion) and Robin Spreafico (vocals and bassist) – later replaced by Tony Waite.

Jackie Leven was from the ancient kingdom of Fife in Scotland and he had a previous, more folky, career as Alan Moffatt (his birth name), the duo Saint Judas with Colin Soutar (heard on one CD from around 1969 released in 1998 by Haunted Valley Records), then solo as John St Field (with one excellent album Control released in 1971).

The band’s main lyricist, he was inspired by poetry from the likes of James Wright (Saint Judas), William Blake, Rainer Maria Rilke, Robert Bly and Russian poet Anna Akhmatova (her entire poem ‘When A Man Dies’ is the last track on Gypsy Blood).

But it would be a mistake to write Doll by Doll off as just another 1970s post-punk, art rock or new wave band. They were capable of some heavy tunes especially in their earliest incarnation. The first album Remember (1979) is their least polished and rawest album.

Antonin Artaud’s image (who conceptualised the Theatre of Cruelty) was adopted as the band’s logo and featured on the cover of their debut album because, according to Leven: “The image of the world’s madness is incarnate in a tortured man”.

From Remember, More Than Human is an arresting track showcasing the magnificent baritone voice of Jackie Leven over the rhythmic beat of the drums and bass which dissolves into the snarling, menacing growl of the chorus. It’s best played loud.

In contrast to this The Fountain Is Red, The Fountain Is White is an understated gem of a song with wonderful evocative lyrics, Jackie Leven’s rich warm vocals and a soaring guitar solo. It is perhaps inspired by Baudelaire’s ‘Fountain Of Blood’ poem with its prescient final lines and was released as a B-side to the 1979 single The Palace Of Love and included on the CD reissue of Remember.

I lived for a while in the shadow of Castle Frankenstein, is one of the best opening lines to a song in rock music on Hell Games, conjuring up images of a torch and pitchfork-bearing mob marching on the baron’s stronghold. You’ll find it on Gypsy Blood, the second Doll by Doll album from the same year, which contains some of their greatest work. On Stripshow, Jackie makes full use of his falsetto in this gorgeous ballad evoking the seedy neon nightclubs of Soho and a stripper reconciling her life both with humdrum domesticity and romance.

I know they say love is blind, but if your heart was touching mine.

He was never able to sing these high notes later in his solo career though this song was frequently requested. Latterly he very rarely played any Doll by Doll songs despite the band’s rich repertoire.

Around this era, Leven was living on Formosa Street/Clifton Villas in Maida Vale near Little Venice and the Grand Union Canal. I often used to see him with his friends drinking in The Warwick Castle pub; they were the loud bunch at the bar, sometimes brawling on the floor.

The Human Face title was taken from Artaud in which he describes an empty power, a field of death and the clock lyrics are taken from Louis MacNeice’s 1958 poem ‘The Slow Starter’. It’s another superb track with The Haunted Valley Chorus singing And I know why, Jesus wept.

The fourth song I have chosen from Gypsy Blood is Highland Rain which has another fine guitar solo from Jo Shaw and seems to hark back to Leven’s Scottish upbringing. Perhaps best listened to with a glass of an aged Islay single malt whisky.

Their third eponymous album contains some fine songs including Those In Peril which has all the key elements of melody and a typically sorrowful story.

Interestingly, on this and the subsequent album, we find some of the more cheerful songs such as Up and The Street I Love, both Jo Shaw songs). As Jackie Leven used to acknowledge jokingly, even in his later career he wrote few happy songs!

Main Travelled Roads is their best-known song and magnum opus. Released as a single at the time it even gained airplay on Radio One. The melody is familiar as a variant of traditional ballad The Bonnie Earl O’ Moray (which was released as an unaccompanied track on a solo EP of 1995) but with the imagery of the words it creates a unique whole.

This 1981 German TV recording of Doll by Doll shows Jackie Leven singing and staring at the camera with an almost psychotic look. The song is as perfect, strong and deeply satisfying as a glass of Imperial Extra Double Stout.

By the time of Grand Passion (1982), Jackie Leven was the only one left of the original members (the others having been sacked!), keeping the name but becoming more of a solo project with lots of various musicians including David Gilmour. Most of the singing is shared with vocalist Helen Turner. It seems to be an attempt to gain commercial success with more deliberately catchy songs. I have included two of the songs from this album as they serve to show the breadth of Doll by Doll’s recorded output and diversity of styles.

Chet Baker was one of Jackie Leven’s favourite singers and with Lonely Kind Of Show one could almost imagine it sung by him or a crooner from the golden age of jazz. It deserves to be heard because of the Mel Collins saxophone solo and also the lyrics: There’s a bar that I found. To get there you stumble across stony ground.

The last track on Grand Passion is So Long Kid sung by Helen Turner with a piano accompaniment and which makes a rather lovely understated swan song: So long kid, take a bow.

There was to be a fifth Doll by Doll album, The Last Flick Of The Golden Wrench, but this never saw the light of day. It may well constitute the music heard on The Robberies Of The Rain CD which was released in 2009. It’s almost pop music and suffers from an eighties production but is worth hearing especially for the track My Bonnie Dearie which uses the melody of Robert Burns’ ‘Ca’ The Yowes’ with wonderful new melancholic lyrics: I walk alone down the avenue, the traffic lights are turning blue.

There is also a Live at The Limit, Sheffield 1977 CD, Revenge Of Memory, which includes most of their first album Remember and which was eventually released in 2005.

It is probably fair to say that had Jackie Leven achieved success with Doll by Doll or solo it might well have come at a huge personal cost. As it was there was a long period of musical silence as he struggled with addiction problems. His renaissance in the 1990s is detailed in the Toppermost on his solo career. There was a brief reunion of the band in 1997 playing a very few gigs including a support to Pere Ubu.

Jackie Leven died in 2011 and the following year Doll by Doll’s Jo Shaw and Dave Macintosh, together with other musicians, played a poignant and emotional tribute show as Two Tiny Selves at The Castle pub (which sadly no longer exists). It was quite a night.

Ticket to last Doll by Doll appearance 2012

As an homage to Jackie I have had a memorial bench placed in Soho Square, London which has been visited by appreciative fans (including Ian Rankin one of Jackie’s collaborators). To quote the final line of Main Travelled Roads, a most fitting epitaph to this very unjustly neglected band and man:

Eternal is the warrior who finds beauty in his wounds.

Jackie Leven Memorial Bench in Soho Square

Friend and collaborator Ian Rankin (from his X timeline)

There is no air of distant nostalgia about Jackie Leven’s legacy, from his teenage duo Saint Judas in 1969 to Doll By Doll to his solo work of the 90s to the present there is a timeless edge, vivid insights into the human condition, funny and scary and beautiful all at once … Blessed with a rich unique soulful voice and a dazzling percussive guitar technique between some downright filthy stories and the inevitable triple vodkas would come the songs, ballads full of power rather than power ballads, bruised epics of such incredible quality… Kevin Hewick (click here to read Kevin’s full obituary in Louder Than War)

Jackie Leven (1950-2011)

Doll by Doll Wikipedia

Jackie Leven official website

Doll by Doll & Jackie Leven Complete Discography (Stuart Briers)

Doll by Doll fansite

I don’t know why Jackie Leven isn’t better known – he should be revered
Ian Rankin (The Guardian 2021)

Toppermost #995: Jackie Leven

Doll by Doll biography (AllMusic)

James McCaon lives near Brighton and saw Doll by Doll and Jackie Leven solo many times. He is one of the many few who consider them to be very underrated and reckons Jackie is one of the most prolific and greatest singer songwriters from these isles..

TopperPost #1,137