The New Cue #473 March 10: Edwyn Collins
"We saw Edwyn today, he was sitting on the wall eating a Lion bar…"
Good morning,
You join us today for an entertaining, heart-warming Life & Times interview with Edwyn Collins. The term “rock’n’roll survivor” gets bandied about a fair bit for veteran musicians, used as a salute to those who’ve stuck it out and are still releasing records decades into their career. But Edwyn should really have exclusive rights: it’s two decades now since he stared death in the face, suffering two massive strokes as well as contracting MRSA whilst recovering from brain surgery and spending six months in the hospital recovering. But here is, on the cusp of releasing yet another excellent solo record.
Out this Friday, Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation is his tenth under his own name and his fifth since nearly dying. As the creative lynchpin of pioneering post-punk, jangly guitar dynamos Orange Juice, Collins’ indie legacy was assured before he even embarked on a solo career. It was then cemented by his indelible 1994 hit A Girl Like You. But what he’s done since recovering has added a poignant and remarkable post-script to his musical life.
“After six months in hospital, the possibilities are endless over and over again,” he says, speaking to Niall over Zoom. His wife and manager Grace Maxwell is sat next to him, there to fill in any gaps due to Collins’ stroke-induced aphasia. She’s also there to scold him if she thinks he’s making stuff up. The pair are an absolute hoot, and why shouldn’t they be savouring every moment?
“We’ve packed loads into these 20 years,” reflects Maxwell. “We couldn’t have predicted it because it was take it a day at a time. It’s astonishing what you’ve done since then, and now I’d quite like to rest on our laurels.”
There will be more Edwyn Collins music in the future, but this week he announced his last ever tour, bringing the curtain down on a live career that began with his band The Nu-Sonics in Glasgow, 1977. “This is a great record to go out on,” says Maxwell. “Done and dusted, out on a high.”
Let’s get stuck into our Life & Times questionnaire with Edwyn, Grace on hand to tell him to stop fibbing. Here’s a playlist we’ve made of the great man’s work, starting off with his influential earliest work with Orange Juice and going all the way through to his still-excellent output in 2025:
And here’s the playlist for the Apple Music squad. A reminder that today’s edition is free but if you enjoy it, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. It’s only £5 a month:
Thanks very much, enjoy the edition.
Ted and Niall
The Life & Times Of… Edwyn Collins
What was the first record you loved?
EC: I was born in Edinburgh and moved to Dundee when I was six years old and I got Donovan’s Jennifer Juniper, and on the B-side was Poor Cow. Poor Cow is great!
And the last?
EC: I like The Cribs…
GM: Tell the truth, you don’t listen to a lot of modern music.
EC: No, I don’t. I’m old and dated!
GM: Some people have still got massive enthusiasm for searching out new music. But you were recording a band in January, though.
EC: Oh yeah! They’re called Jeanie And The White Boys. Pure indie! Jake Hutton [Edwyn’s drummer and studio engineer] is engineering it.
GM: They came up and Helmsdale [the Scottish village where Collins and Maxwell live] was under very deep snow. We picked them up in Inverness and drove them in the village bus up to the studio. They were like, ‘Whoa, is it always like this?!’, the snow was up to your knees. We had a brilliant time.
EC: But I can’t stand the snow.
GM: It’s quite hard for you, isn’t it?
What’s your earlier memory?
EC: Grace is not having it. I was two years old…
GM: OK…
EC: …in Glasgow and Grandpa was on the ladder working and I climbed up the ladder behind me and he shouted, ‘Get off Edwyn!’.
GM: He reckons he was only two. You can’t remember things when you were two!
EC: I can.
What’s your daily domestic routine?
EC: I get up at 8 o’clock.
GM: You do not! You get up at 5 o’clock sometimes!
EC: Well, yes, 5 o’clock. And then I’ll get tweeting on my Apple Mac.
GM: He finds his track of the day, and often that’s at half past five in the morning.
EC: Sometimes it’s Northern soul, sometimes it’s indie.
GM: And then he goes back to bed.
EC: Sometimes I’ll do breakfast and coffee and Grace will join me.
GM: Then he potters about and walks in Helmsdale. He’s turned into one of those old men that hang about villages.
EC: Pardon me, Grace?!
GM: People in the village will say, ‘We saw Edwyn today, he was sitting on the wall eating a Lion bar…’.
EC: Haha! The roads are quite steep.
GM: You can’t go for a walk in Helmsdale that doesn’t involve a hill. It’s a quiet life, unless it’s busy at the studio. Between our house and the studio there’s 110 steps, I’ve got asthma so I’m more reluctant to do it as much as Edwyn does. If there’s people recording, he’s in his studio pottering about. If it’s just us, he has a very quiet day. We don’t have a TV in our house.
EC: But we do in the studio house.
GM: What do you often go up to the house to watch in the afternoon?
EC: Oh, Bradley, The Chase!
GM: I’ll say, ‘Are you going up there to watch The Chase again?!’. He loves Bradley Walsh.
EC: Tell me about it!
What’s your worst habit?
EC: Picking my nose.
GM: He has quite a lot of bad habits.
When were you most creatively satisfied?
EC: When I’m at work in my studio. I record my songs on mini-cassettes, singing the parts, sometimes I sing the bass.
GM: He can’t play anymore because his right arm doesn’t work so he’ll sing the parts.
EC: And I form the chords on my left hand. My band, they’ll say, ‘Got you, Edwyn’. I play the acoustic chords and show them.
GM: They’ve been working with him a long time and it’s amazing watching the short-hand, to see how it works.
What’s your desert island disc?
EC: Gimme Little Sign by Brenton Wood. It’s got an organ solo that’s great.
Has anyone you’ve ever met made you feel starstruck?
EC: I was 14 in Dundee and Pilot – “Whoa, it’s magic, you know!” – were supporting Sparks at the Caird Hall in Dundee.
GM: Shall I tell the story?
EC: Yeah… it was in A Girl Like You times…
GM: So years later, we were doing this thing in Luxembourg, some multi-bill thing, and Sparks were on the bill. I bumped into them in the left and I’d had a couple of drinks and I said, ‘I’m here with Edwyn Collins and you were his first ever show at the Caird Hall in Dundee and he loves you’. The next day at breakfast, they came over to where we were sitting and looked at Edwyn and went, ‘Hang on… I know your face - Caird Hall, Dundee, 1974?!’. That was very sweet, wasn’t it.
EC: Oh, and David Bowie.
GM: You never met him!
EC: I did!
GM: Don’t lie!
EC: He was wearing high heels.
GM: At the Brit Awards, but you didn’t meet him!
EC: But I saw him.
GM: That’s not the same as meeting someone!
What’s your pet peeve?
GM: Me.
EC: Yes! But I suppose I’m annoying too, Grace.
GM: I guess it would be trip hazards these days.
EC: Carpets!
GM: Oh, he hates carpets and rugs cos his toe can get caught on them.
EC: ‘I’m going down!’
GM: We live in a rug and carpet-free zone.
If you could go back in time, where would you go?
EC: Victorian times.
GM: You’d need to be middle class or something.
EC: Upper class!
GM: Alright! You wouldn’t want to go back and be a Victorian urchin, would you?
EC: No way. Grace is working class, I’m upper class.
What one book would you recommend our readers read?
EC: The Catcher In The Rye. I read it again after my stroke.
GM: It was part of his reading therapy.
EC: I was 14 in Glasgow and my English teacher gave it to me. It wasn’t on the syllabus but she gave it to me, saying, ‘I think you might like this, Edwyn’.
What’s the best advice you’ve been given?
GM: He’s not a great one for taking advice! I nag rather than advise, and it was really about persevering, about ‘Keep going, keep going…’ and he has done, he’s had an amazing 20 years.
What’s the secret to a happy relationship?
EC: Grace is too cross with me.
GM: We have massive arguments, we always have had and still do. We’ve been together 40 years and we have huge rows all the time.
EC: My son says, ‘Behave yourself dad and mum’.
GM: We have these huge big shouting matches but we get over it very quickly, we don’t drag it out, we don’t go in a huff, we just roar at each other.
EC: I know!
GM: Would you recommend that for a good relationship, not particularly. But it works for us!
What talent would you most like to have?
EC: My right arm working.
GM: You’d like that back again. But in terms of talents, I don’t think he needs anymore talents, he’s been given plenty!
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
EC: My pupils didn’t react in hospital and I was practically braindead. It was a horrible experience.
GM: He was in a coma and his eyes were not reacting.
EC: So, it’s surviving.