How Edwyn Collins survived two strokes, returned to music and is now retiring with honors
The Scottish singer and founder of Orange Juice suffers from aphasia and partial paralysis, and is bidding farewell to the stage with a long tour of Spain
Edwyn Collins’ retirement from the stage at age 66 has come two decades later than anyone could have imagined. In 2005, the Scottish musician survived two cerebral haemorrhages. He was left with aphasia, a disorder that affected his communication abilities, both in expressing himself and understanding information. He also suffered paralysis on the right side of his body, which disabled one arm, although he was able to walk again with the aid of a cane. According to doctors, the prospects for improvement were slim. Founder of Orange Juice, an emblematic post-punk band that was more influential than popular (their career, which began in the late 1970s, barely spanned five years), Collins later had a respectable solo career that peaked in 1994 with the success of his song “A Girl Like You.”
Returning to music wasn’t even among the most optimistic goals of his recovery plan, but this week the artist kicked off a 10-date tour of Spain called The Testimonial Tour. A Last Lap Around Spain, after completing his farewell shows in the UK this fall. “Music is my life. Both after the stroke and before, it’s critical to me,” Collins explains via video call. Grace Maxwell, his wife and manager for over 40 years, who accompanies him in interviews to help him formulate his answers, agrees: “I don’t think Edwyn could have returned to life as he has without this wonderful gift.”
Just two years after his strokes, Collins was performing again. He can’t play the guitar, but he retains his baritone voice and sings effortlessly, aided by a music stand with the lyrics, which he rehearses and recites incessantly. His retirement isn’t due to a decline in his health. “She’s the boss, and she said it was time to retire,” Collins says, pointing at his wife. Maxwell, taken aback by the remark, clarifies that it was a mutual decision. “If we continued, we’d both be over 70 by the next tour. Edwyn is brilliant and strong and copes with it all, but it’s pretty tiring.”
Collins and Maxwell are one of those couples so in sync that they seem like a comedy duo. Although he can’t deliver a sophisticated speech, he makes a virtue of necessity with a succinct brand of humor that often surprises his wife. “Recently, I was complaining about something and he blurted out, ‘Oh, shut up, woman! You have a great life!’ It made me laugh; it’s one of those things that brings you back to reality.” This obligation to communicate in a simple and direct way, as he himself describes it, has led to an interesting process of stylistic refinement. Last year, Collins released his 10th solo album, Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation, his fourth since his illness. Everything, even the title, based on an old BBC slogan, relates to what has been the theme of his life since 2005: communication.
“Before my stroke, I was a clever show-off. I used fancy words,” says the former Orange Juice frontman. Maxwell picks up the thread: “On the long journey to regaining language and communicating effectively, as Edwyn definitely does, you learn a lot about the nature of communication and that it can be more than fancy words, more than fluency, and can boil down to some strong, simple things that connect. Perhaps we need more of that in this world right now.” Does a change in communication change a person? The musician doesn’t feel he’s a different person, but rather that his process has changed his perspective. “I think I was a bit clever and a show-off. Fuck that! I’m happy with my life,” exclaims Collins, who on his comeback album, Losing Sleep (2010), dedicated a song to his learning process: Humble.
The possibilities are endless
One of the phrases Edwyn Collins repeated endlessly in the hospital, as a result of his aphasia, was “the possibilities are endless.” He doesn’t know what he meant by it, but his wife admits that the mantra lost its power to evoke memories after hearing it “about 100,000 times.” The phrase gave its title to the documentary about his life, The Possibilities Are Endless (2014), which Collins, a lover of all things analog, appreciates was filmed on 35mm. “Not digital!” he exclaims. “Another thing he tried was to pin his thoughts down on band names and members. For example, The Who. He would start: ‘Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey…’ It was his brain trying to find to fix itself,” says Grace Maxwell. Once again, music found its way in.
The couple had spent their entire lives navigating limitations. In the Orange Juice era, Collins traveled by car with Alan Horne, co-founder of Postcard Records, to manually distribute his records and clumsily pursue figures like John Peel, the most famous DJ of the time. Maxwell, in the poignant book Falling and Laughing: The Restoration of Edwyn Collins (2009), confessed that the phenomenal success of A Girl Like You was their financial security. Now, unable to play, the musician uses a cassette recorder—“No digital!” he adds again—to create songs by making the sound of the saxophone with his mouth. Then, an engineer in his studio translates it into musical notation.
“The other day I saw a guy from an AI company saying that people find it really difficult to make music. But real musicians enjoy it. Edwyn finds it very easy to compose, even though the lyrics are a challenge,” his wife asserts. They have a son, William, 35, who helps run the family business. Regarding the son’s musical tastes, Collins speaks with amusement of the “glam days” the young man experienced before coming of age: “He liked Marc Bolan and, get this, Gary Glitter.” “Don’t tell people that!” Maxwell scolds him, to which he responds by mockingly singing “I Love You Love Me Love,” one of the compositions by the disgraced singer and convicted sex offender.
Among Orange Juice’s supporters is the UK Prime Minister, Keir Starmer. Collins was invited to meet him at 10 Downing Street. “He’s a good man and has a good heart. He’s in a difficult position right now, but there are far worse leaders on the planet,” his wife concludes. “Starmer thinks Orange Juice and Edwyn Collins are brilliant. That gives you a pretty good idea of his character.”
Regarding his retirement plans, the musician hopes to record more albums after leaving the stage. Settled in Helmsdale, a coastal town in the Scottish Highlands where they also have their studio, the couple enjoys fresh air and a pleasant environment for daily walks. “He’ll be pottering there with our son, our friends, and other people, really focusing on quality of life at this stage in the game,” explains Grace. The concept confuses Edwyn: “Quality of life? What is that?”
– “Well, just enjoying ourselves,” Maxwell replies.
– “OK, I see.”
Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition
