pop*eye...Edwyn Collins is still alives

The Orange Juice front man , My Pop Legend

Edwyn Collins

"I'm Not Following You"

5 Reasons To Go See - Edwyn Collins

1. He’s a legend
   The Scottish troubadour’s career has spanned 30 years, during which time he’s been a relentlessly original and innovative artist, redefining pop music first with his band Orange Juice and then as a solo artist of great renown.
2. And he’s a miracle
   Three years ago Collins suffered a massive stroke, and after extremely risky brain surgery contracted MRSA. His family were told to expect the worst, yet here he is with a new album under his belt and a UK tour to boot. Thanks to intense physical and speech therapy, and driven by an insatiable appetite to keep making music, the fact Collins is here at all is nothing short of a miracle.
3. He brought us Postcard Records
   Probably the most influential Scottish label of all time, Postcard was formed in 1980 by Collins and Alan Horne as a vehicle for Orange Juice, but went on to release era-defining records by Josef K, The Go-Betweens and Aztec Camera.
4. And he’s responsible for pretty much everything else
   Postcard’s influence is huge today, everyone from Teenage Fanclub to Primal Scream to Franz Ferdinand to Bloc Party citing the label as a defining presence in their own musical careers.
5. And he’ll play ‘A Girl Like You’, surely
   We presume. If you’d written a million-selling worldwide smash hit single, you’d play it, wouldn’t you?

Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Mon 21 Apr; Oran Mor, Glasgow, Tue 22 Apr.

Edwyn Collins had a global solo hit with A Girl Like You in 1995

Collins walks after brain surgery

Singer Edwyn Collins has taken his first steps since suffering two brain haemorrhages and will return home later this month, his wife has said.

"Edwyn is doing really well. He is advancing in all areas," said wife and manager Gracie Maxwell on his website. Collins, 45, had two brain haemorrhages in February and contracted the MRSA bug after a surgical scar became infected. The ex-Orange Juice singer was moved from London's Royal Free Hospital to a specialist unit to recover.

Leading figure
"He took his first steps in recent times. Wonderful stuff," his wife said. "And he's a bit cheerier because he gets home for good in three weeks." The London-based singer was admitted to hospital in February after complaining of vertigo and vomiting. Collins was a leading figure on the alternative Scottish scene in the late 1970s and 1980s, forming his first band, Nu-Sonics, aged 17. They became Orange Juice, who were independent favourites and briefly broke into the mainstream with Rip It Up in 1983. He pursued a solo career with mixed results until A Girl Like You, a top 10 hit in seven countries in 1995. Collins had recently turned to producing new bands including Sons and Daughters, The Cribs and Little Barrie.

william collins, son of edwyn

@ MOJO Honours List 2008

Gorgeous George - Setanta, 1994

I'm Not Following You - Epic, 1997

Solo Performer:
Hope and Despair - Demon, 1989
Hellbent on Compromise - Diablo, 1990
Gorgeous George - Setanta, 1994
I'm Not Following You - Epic, 1997
Doctor Syntax - Setanta, 2002
A Casual Introduction 1981/2001 - Setanta, 2002 (collection of Orange Juice and solo work)
Home Again - Heavenly Records, 2007

Still recovering from a massive brain injury,...

...it's amazing that the former Orange Juice front man is still alive, let alone performing. But he's getting by with a little help from his friends.

It’s time again for the quadrennial orgy of pointless nationalism that turns us all into unwilling experts in arcane sports like kayaking, trampolining and wellie throwing. As the Olympics open in Beijing to wild public apathy and a new range of crispy spring rolls at McDonald’s, I can finally ask Edwyn Collins whether Orange Juice’s instrumentals ‘Moscow Olympics’ and its close relative ‘Moscow’, the B-sides of their 1980 debut single ‘Falling and Laughing’, were intended for Olympic use?

“We really did mean it as a possible sports theme tune,” he confesses, “But you have to remember that it was written by James Kirk, who was quite mad.” Kirk, the band’s original guitarist, gave up music for chiropody (possibly apocryphally) before unexpectedly releasing a solo album a few years back. (It sounded like the work of a chiropodist who used to be in Orange Juice, and wasn’t bad at all).

As everyone knows, in February 2005 Collins suffered two brain haemorrhages and very nearly died. (He contracted MRSA while in intensive care, to compound matters). His long recovery has been well-documented, but remarkably he’s performing again and not merely carried by the audience’s affection. Last year’s excellent Home Again was very nearly a posthumous release. But let’s not kid ourselves. Edwyn won’t be running the London Marathon for aphasia charities for a while yet. His speech is still slow and he walks with difficulty, his right side still partialy paralysed (which also prevents him from playing guitar).

But he sings better than ever, sat at the front of his unlikely indie supergroup, including guitarists Roddy Frame of Aztec Camera fame and Andy Hackett, once a Rockingbird, now a Denmark Street legend who’ll sell you an axe anytime.

Collins and Frame go way back. “We met when he was 16 and I was 20,” says Collins, “Roddy really is a fantastic musician, he always was.” “Thank you Edwyn,” blushes Frame. “It’s a pleasure,” says Collins, starting to laugh as the pair begin to resemble a pair of genteel duffers. “I made a demo tape and sent it to everyone,” recalls Frame, “Rough Trade, Factory- they all turned us down. But not to Postcard, because we read an interview with [label boss] Alan Horne and he was a horrible man.” Collins lets loose his famous hyugh-hyugh, a laugh as inimitable as Shame MacGowan’s emphysemic snort. “Then I met Edwyn. Him and Horne came down to see us at the Bungalow Bar in Paisley. The rest is history.”

It’s difficult now to overstate the impact that the wilfully eccentric Orange Juice had on the gloom-ridden post-punk scene. They didn’t wear overcoats, they wore puttees. They didn’t reference the Doors and Bowie, they referenced the Lovin’ Spoonful and Creedence Clearwater Revival and Al Green. They even released a charmingly ineffectual cover of the Reverend’s ‘L.O.V.E.’ as their major label debut, a rather, er, audacious move. “What was I thinking?” says Edwyn, shaking his head “I must have been drunk.” At the time Al Green was seriously undervalued. This was a couple of years before Tina Turner did what Ike used to do to Tina to ‘Let’s Stay Together’.

Even in their home town of Glasgow, they were exotic. “When I first saw a photo of Orange Juice in a local fanzine I thought they were American. They looked like they could be Jonathan Richman’s band. I was definitely influenced by Edwyn and not just in the music,” says Frame, a still wiry figure who vaguely resembles cycling legend Lance Armstrong. “Edwyn, you were the only person I knew who played acoustic or even semi-acoustic guitars, and used augmented and diminished chords and all that,” he continues, “It was weird that I was writing stuff like ‘We Could Send Letters’ and ‘Just Like Gold’- romantic songs before having even heard you.” Collins’s romantic side was always leavened with wildly sardonic humour as opposed to the youthful Frame’s desire to will love into being. From early songs like the bleakly funny ‘Consolation Prize’ to Orange Juice’s biggest single ‘Rip It Up’ and The Hit itself, ‘A Girl Like You’, he often seemed incapable of taking the concept of romantic love seriously. But as long as someone’s buying, who cares. Not only did ‘Rip It Up’ give Simon Reynolds’s history of post-punk music a title, it influenced a more unlikely figure. “And it’s in Tony Blackburn’s autobiography. At one point he says he had to ‘rip it up and start again’,” says Edwyn clearly tickled.

For all their influence, Orange Juice were soon outjangled by the more visceral Smiths (and how often does anyone say that?). Collins launched an erratic solo career and watched others, from the Bluebells to Wet Wet Wet, rework his styles with greater success. (At his first London headline show he was silenced when, after asking the crowd if they had any requests, a sharp heckler yelled ‘Young At Heart’)

It took years for The Hit to come along? Is it really possible to live off The Hit? “Oh yeah, if it sells enough copies. ‘A Girl Like You’ did one, two million copies all round the world,” claims Edwyn. Is it a millstone or a milestone in your career? “I love it. Why wouldn’t I? If only I could write another.” He pauses. “Or several more.” Even now it sounds like all things to all men, and women. Collins might have been acidly prescient when he sang ‘Too many protest singers, not enough protest songs’, but out in the big world babies were conceived to his tune. On YouTube a fan (of both sado-masochism and Edwyn Collins, presumably) has married the tune to clips from the Maggie Gyllenhaal/James Spader spankfest Secretary.

The same year he released the perfectly cynical ‘The Campaign for Real Rock’, with its coda ‘Yes yes yes, it’s the summer festival, the truly detestable summer festival’. I saw you play that in the most packed tent I’ve ever endured (and that includes eight of us in a two man at Glasto) at the barely lamented Phoenix. Do you still have it in for weekends in the countryside? “I do love Glastonbury,” he concedes. Edwyn stormed it this summer. “What’s his name? Michael-” Everyone present waits before yelping ‘Eavis’. “Eavis! Now is he a hippie or a farmer?” A question he surely asks himself every day of his life.

Speaking to Edwyn is not your average Q and A. Although the world deserves to see his extraordinary, and oft overlooked 1997 sitcom West Heath Yard, where a stellar array of talent from Paul Cook to Natalie Imbruglia queued up to lose what dignity the music biz had left them with, it’ll have to make do with the web clip of the heartbreaking faux-soul duet ‘Lasagne Just For One’. Director Martin Perry is apparently the man who holds the key to this lost gem, so painfully accurate in its dissection of the music industry that many took it for a documentary.

Edwyn has other things on his mind, like dealing with his aphasia, “Which means that I just can’t recall things.” For a man so sharp, always having things on the tip of his tongue, so to speak, must be particularly frustrating. Yet there’s an air of ageing gracefully about the whole set-up. Asked how things have changed Andy Hackett sounds wistful. “Well for a start Edwyn doesn’t get so pissed before each show. None of us do anymore.” The gallows humour of musicians is revealed as he continues. “Edwyn always claims that this was the best thing that could have happened to his career.” He looks doubtful. “When you remember the condition he was in only eighteen months or two years ago, it’s unbelievable.”

Later on Collins, Frame and Hackett perform a short set at the 12 Bar. The guitarists are terrific. ‘Falling and Laughing’ has never sounded smoother. ‘What Presence’, even set adrift from the dub moorings of the recorded version, is great. And ‘Home Again’ is the tearjerker it was always intended as, now with added poignancy. His indefatigable wife Grace is writing a book about their experiences (tentatively called Falling and Laughing - and whose idea was that?), so this story remains ongoing. But as music therapy goes, it’s truly enjoyable.

www.ukconnect.org explains the condition of aphasia rather better than I can, and is actively supported by the Collins family and friends.

Collins home after brain surgery

It’s hard to believe that Edwyn Collins first broke onto the music scene over 30 years ago and was one of the first artists to set up a record label North of the border. Years before Creation or Jeepster Edwyn and his partner Alan Horne set up Postcard Records which spanned bands such as his own “Orange Juice”, “Joseph K”, “Go Betweens” and Roddy Frame’s “Aztec Camera”. Although Postcard was short-lived is was highly influential and was regarded as pioneering by many established Glasgow bands including “Franz Ferdinand” , “Belle & Sebastian” and the excellent and hugely underrated “Lloyd Cole & The Commotions”.


Some 10 years after his first major hit, “Rip it up”, Edwyn had a monster smash with “A girl like you”, incredibly this record was released 13 years ago and in the meantime Edwyn has released some fine records however this has been overshadowed by the terrible brain haemorrhages which he suffered three years ago. This hospitalised him for over six months and it took him years to perform again. Despite walking on stage with a walking stick and having to sit down while performing Edwyn had lost none of his style or wit. Dressed in a dapper tailor made suit the first couple of numbers were excellent and his voice was as strong as ever.

Roddy Frame & Edwyn Collins

His last album “Home Again” which was released last year on Heavenly Records was recorded before his illness however mixed and post produced in the middle of last year. The album is a classic and shows that Edwyn has many more years ahead of him as an artist and performer.

Home Again (2007)

Back where he belongs ... Edwyn Collins with his Rickenbacker guitar

Since 2005, Edwyn Collins has endured two brain haemorrhages and a bout of MRSA - but now he's back with a life-affirming new album.

Given the amount of contentious musical comeback announcements being made lately, one that surely no-one would be unhappy to see seems to have slipped by under the radar. According to the MySpace site administered for him by his son Will, Edwyn Collins has found a new home on the Heavenly record label, and will be releasing his latest solo album Home Again in September.

Collins is a legendary figure in certain indie circles, one of the main movers behind seminal Glasgow label Postcard Records in the early eighties, thanks to his leading role in their flagship band Orange Juice. Most might be familiar with his work, however, from the ubiquitous international solo hit A Girl Like You, released in 1994 to airwave-commandeering success.

It's not quite the Spice Girls, but fans of Collins - and there are still many out there, mostly the type who like classic novels and dancing awkwardly to Franz Ferdinand - will breathe a deeper sigh than the followers of any of the other acts that have recently made comebacks.

In 2005, at the age of 46, Collins was struck down by a brain haemorrhage. He finally made it home from hospital six months later, but not before enduring another haemorrhage, cranial surgery, and a bout of MRSA - not to mention speculation about whether he would ever be able to write or record music again. Although his partner and manager Grace Maxwell released upbeat statements throughout, the fear for his life must surely have crossed his family's mind at one point or another.

A slow recuperation has filled the intervening two years. Although the new album was actually largely recorded before he fell ill, its title track (which can be heard at Collins' MySpace site) seems an appropriate comeback, a bittersweet, reflective torch song in a vaguely Scott Walker-ish mould.

And Collins hasn't even started yet, according to a statement he apparently penned for the site in the third person. "There's going to be a single," it reads, "a video, interviews and even some live stuff, if he has his way. All the stuff a working musician does to support a record. Normal life."

Edwyn Collins' Studio, london 2003

Edwyn Collins in Smash Hits, 1983

Glasgow based independent record label founded by Alan Horne in 1979


Orange Juice
Glasgow, United Kingdom (1979 – 1984)

Orange Juice was a Scottish post punk band founded in Glasgow. They were originally formed by Edwyn Collins as the Nu-Sonics in 1976 which became Orange Juice in 1979. The group is perhaps best known for the hit “Rip It Up”, which reached #8 on the UK singles charts in February 1983, the band’s only UK top 40


The band’s first official show was on April 20th, 1979 at the Victoria Cafe at the Glasgow School of Art. The band released their first singles on Postcard Records records, before signing to Polydor for their first album “You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever”. However, internal tensions led to this first version of the band breaking up, and for their subsequent albums.


Musically the band attempted to fuse post-punk guitars with disco and funk rhythms, rather in the manner of the Gang of Four. (Other key influences included Buzzcocks and Subway Sect). Lyrically, however, Orange Juice were always far more commercially minded than the Leeds-based Marxists: Edwyn Collins in particular adopting a fey, camp vocal style. In general, band were known for their love of kitsch, irony, and literate optimism.


By early 1984, Ross and McClymont had left the band leaving a core line-up of Collins and Manyika. Together the duo recorded Orange Juice’s final album, The Orange Juice. They also enlisted several musical friends to help them out on the recording. It was produced by Dennis Bovell.

You Can't Hide Your Love Forever (UK No.21) - March 1982

Rip It Up (UK No.39) - November 1982

Studio albums:
You Can't Hide Your Love Forever (UK No.21) - March 1982
Rip It Up (UK No.39) - November 1982
Texas Fever (UK No.34) - March 1984
The Orange Juice - November 1984

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