Edwyn Collins

'I was dead - and I was resurrected'.

Two years ago, a stroke left Edwyn Collins unable to walk, talk or even play the guitar. Now he's got a new album out. In his first interview since his illness, he tells Simon Goddard how he taught himself to be a musician again

Friday August 17, 2007
The Guardian

There's a noticeable spring in the step of the security guards at Inverness airport on an otherwise gloomy April lunchtime. All becomes clear when Girls Aloud clatter their way out of baggage reclaim to face a few Highland paparazzi, here to snap them as they arrive for a local radio awards ceremony. Amid this excitement, nobody pays attention to a onetime million-selling pop veteran sat mere yards away in departures.

Three of Girls Aloud weren't yet born when Edwyn Collins first reached the British top 10 in February 1983 with Rip It Up, as the frontman of Scottish post-punk pioneers Orange Juice. A decade later, Collins - long since solo - scored his biggest triumph with 1995's irresistible A Girl Like You, mixing femme-fatalism with Wigan Casino soul to create a global hit that changed his life.

Yet those who fail to recognise Edwyn as he awaits his return flight to London can perhaps be forgiven. The sculpted Eddie Cochran quiff of his pop stardom days has gone, replaced by a short, thinning haircut barely concealing a curved scar above his left temple, left by the surgeon's knife. He eats a sandwich with his left hand alone: his right is clawed in a fixed fist. When he stands up to begin boarding his flight, he limps, propelling himself slowly with a walking stick. It's a sight that could seem pitiable, were it not so miraculous that he's even here.

On Sunday, February 20 2005, Collins collapsed at his home in Kilburn, London. After being rushed to hospital, he was diagnosed with a brain haemorrhage. Five days later, after suffering a second, he underwent a high-risk operation. The neurosurgeons succeeded, only for him to then contract MRSA, which meant the titanium plate they'd inserted in his skull had to be first removed then restored. It was six months before he was finally discharged. Barely able to speak or walk, he faced a gruelling rehabilitation programme with no guarantee of recovery. Two years later, his astonishing progress speaks for itself. "I was dead," he says, philosophically, "and I was resurrected."

Weeks after our chance encounter in Inverness, I'm sitting with Collins in his spacious living room, the few stuffed birds in glass cases, a couple of stray guitars and a Bob Dylan Bootleg Series boxset suggesting a bohemian eccentricity. This is his first official interview since his haemorrhage. In that time, he's undergone intensive speech therapy to combat dysphasia - a neurological side-effect hindering his ability to communicate. The Collins of old was a fantastic orator, one of those rare interviewees who spoke in eloquent sentences and whose mastery of language was a dream to transcribe. Cruelly, his dysphasia means he now speaks in fractured bursts, pausing between individual words, sometimes fighting to remember a phrase that's eluding him.

Collins knows this interview isn't going to be easy for him, though we've known each other for more than a decade. In 1995, after seeing a puppet video I'd made at art college dramatising the life of 60s record producer Joe Meek, he invited me to direct the Meek-themed promo for his next single, If You Could Love Me (it flopped, unlike its world conquering million-selling follow-up, A Girl Like You).

Ten years later, in January 2005, I was the last writer to interview him before his brain haemmorhage. We'd spent the afternoon at his West Heath studio in London, where he'd reminisced at length about Postcard records - the legendary Glasgow label he had co-founded in 1979 with Alan Horne, and which set a template for the next decade of bleeding-heart indie jingle-jangling. He also spoke fondly about the album he'd just finished, recording, which he was considering calling Home Again. He looked well, if (in hindsight) a little puffy, and was as gregarious a host as ever. Like everything else that occurred in the months before his hospitalisation, he has absolutely no recollection of that afternoon.

"I can't remember," he smiles. "The first thing I knew was waking up in hospital and, good God!" His voice rises in theatrical disbelief. "I've had a stroke! Not me," he stutters. "It's impossible. Not me!" His voice calms. "First I couldn't talk. First I couldn't laugh. I had to learn to laugh again. I've had to learn to live again. I'm learning to understand this situation."

The cause of Collins' stroke was high blood pressure. He'd been experiencing acute headaches for weeks beforehand, trying to numb the pain with painkillers, though nobody made the connection. "It's mad, I know," he nods. "It's scary for me, my stroke." He becomes emphatic. "This is hard for me. This is so hard. Language is all in my head and I'm having to recognise the words. And, I'm having to talk. And, I'm having to communicate. But I'm getting there."

In spite of his dysphasia, his speech loosens and heartening glimpses of both his humour and his rich vocabulary begin to shine through. Discussing his weekly therapy commitments, he mentions his acupuncturist. I ask if that treatment helps. He arches a quizzical eyebrow. "Hmmm," he grimaces. "Debatable. But I must persist in that matter." His thirst for art and music have sped his ongoing recovery, frequently dumbfounding his support team of speech and physiotherapists.

A skilled draughtsman, like his art lecturer father, after his discharge from hospital he learned to draw again using his left hand, developing a ritual of copying a different illustration each day from nature books. His first effort, of a wigeon duck, was crude and childlike, but over time he recovered his ability. He shows me his most recent sketches, taking particular pride in his guillemot drawing. "I'm getting good," he says, smiling, and he is. I ask to see today's picture. It's of a leaping dolphin, the same animal that graced the cover of Orange Juice's 1982 debut album, You Can't Hide Your Love Forever. I pointing this out to Collins, who chuckles. "So it is."

It was ironic that Collins' hospitalisation during 2005 coincided with a renewed interest in Orange Juice, following Domino records' compilation of their early Postcard recordings, The Glasgow School. Critically lauded, it was a timely reminder of his band's legacy and continued influence on the band's Scottish heirs, such as Belle & Sebastian and Franz Ferdinand. However, Collins' own feelings towards the distant past are surprisingly unsentimental. "Some Orange Juice is OK," he ponders. "Rip It Up is, well, all right. But it's over with," he says firmly. "It's finished. On to the new."

"The new" is Home Again, his sixth solo album, recorded before his stroke but mixed and completed 18 months later with the help of his studio partner, engineer Seb Lewsley. It's a beautiful record, stylistically encompassing the gamut of Edwyn's career, from the white-soul disco of You'll Never Know, with its shades of vintage Orange Juice, to the wistful acoustic title track. Yet it also possesses an at times unnerving undercurrent in the wake of all that's happened. On the opening country-dub One Is a Lonely Number, Collins sings: "If life breaks your heart/ You needn't fall apart/ 'Cos you've still got your mind/ Which will serve you in kind/ If you're true to yourself." Asking him to elaborate on the song's meaning, he merely says: "It is me."

Then he sings the first verse a cappella. Throughout our conversation, he breaks into song often, suddenly delivering note-perfect blasts of A Girl Like You and Orange Juice's gloriously lovelorn debut single, Falling and Laughing. His speech may have changed but, as he is clearly eager to demonstrate, his singing voice, like his distinct gulping laugh ("Hurgh! Hurgh! Hurgh!"), has survived intact.

A handful of Home Again tracks have already been available for the last year on the MySpace site Collins' 17-year-old son, William, set up for him. MySpace continues to provide a vital source of encouragement, allowing Collins to communicate with fans directly through blogs dictated to his partner, Grace. "It's very important," he says, excitably. "It's my life. It's my joy. Blogs are great. It helps me enjoy life again."

Perhaps most surprising, though, is a complete absence of anger or frustration. He speaks of his stroke with pragmatic acceptance and of the future with an unflappable optimism. Rehearsals have already begun for a handful of shows in the autumn to promote Home Again, and he strongly believes that "in a couple of years" he'll regain the use of his right arm so that he can play guitar properly. "I hope so," he says. "Well, I'm praying." In this respect, his spirited determination to overcome all that he's been through is humbling to witness. "The show must go on," he beams.

Before we finish, he wants to play me a brand new song he's written. He shouts for William to fetch his vintage 1949 Gibson acoustic. Collins grasps it by the fretboard, then instructs me to "do this bit". Since he can't use his right hand, it's my role to become his strumming arm. So I lean behind him and start a basic rhythm. A breezy melody emerges as Edwyn changes chords. "I'm searching for the truth," he sings, "searching for the truth/ Some sweet day, we'll get there/ Some sweet day we'll get there/ In the end." He stops, letting out another hiccupping laugh before picking up his beer. Whatever he was searching for, Edwyn Collins smiles like a man who may have already found it.

· Home Again is released by Heavenly on September 17.

Edwyn Collins' blogs are at myspace.com/wwwmyspacecomedwyncollins

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