Edwyn Collins: ‘If I come across awkwardly – so what?’

The former Orange Juice frontman talks to Craig McLean about his new album, the Keir Starmer connection, the aphasia he experiences after his double stroke, and his unfailing optimism. The landscape surrounding Edywn Collins’s Clashnarrow Studio is a winter wonderland. The field sloping down to the road, visible through eyeline-flooding picture windows, is covered in snow, a crisp, sparkling, white blanket reflecting the pure blue brilliance of the January sky.

Beyond the road, the northern edges of the small, east coast town of Helmsdale, a 100-minute drive north of Inverness in the Scottish Highlands and 51 miles south of John O’Groats, the northernmost tip of mainland Britain. And beyond the town’s thin, built-up strip, the North Sea: another kind of sparkler on this sunny day, its horizon marked by the whirring sentries of the Moray windfarms, their turbines turning and glinting 14 miles offshore.

If the world outside Collins’s hillside studio is a glorious place, the space inside gives it a run for its money. It’s stuffed full of instruments and recording equipment, old and new but mainly old: vintage gear hoovered up by the former Orange Juice frontman over the years, firstly via myriad contacts forged over almost five decades in the music industry and more latterly via eBay. The 65-year-old’s faith in the wonder of old-fashioned, non-hi-tech equipment is reflected in the pithy, in-joke name of his record label, AED – it stands for Analogue Enhanced Digital.

Does he still spend a lot of time on the internet looking for gear?. “No – Grace has advised me to stop,” the Edinburgh-born musician replies, referring to his wife (and manager) Grace Maxwell. Was he wasting too much money?. “It’s not about the money,” says Maxwell, 66, as we talk in the residential studio’s adjacent accommodation, 110 steps up the hill from the couple’s home at the bottom of the field, a sturdy stone cottage that’s been in Collins’s family for generations. “It’s the stuff. I’m not perfect, ’cause I’m messy.” The Glaswegian mentions their son William, 34. He’s based in their home in Kilburn, northwest London, but frequently travels north to engineer or produce one of the young artists the family welcome to record, gratis, in Clashnarrow. “Will walks in and goes: ‘No offence, you two, but I think you might be turning into those hoarder folk.’”.

As they often do the couple – their professional and personal relationship 40 years deep – laugh: her a hearty chuckle, him a burbling gurgle. Still, old habits die hard. Hanging over the magic-making clutter of 1970s mixing consoles, mid-century microphones and guitars by the dozen is another eBay find, a 60 quid bargain: a talk-back speaker rescued from a radio studio. On the inlaid wood cover is inscribed “Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation”. It’s the motto of the BBC World Service. It’s also the name of the musician’s new solo album.

The title song is a simple plea for communication in divided times (“If I can’t talk to you and you can’t talk to me/ How shall nation speak unto nation?”). And it’s a poignant reflection on times – and a life – past. “Back when the words came easily/ I had the answer to everything/ Revelling in a smart aleck comeback,” sings Collins in that distinctive voice familiar the world over from his 1995 global smash “A Girl Like You”, a jukebox, airplay and film/TV staple that has made him financially comfortable to this day. “Now I’m alone with my memories/ Far from the place that I want to be…”.

“It’s talking about my stroke,” Collins is telling me as we sit on comfy sofas by a roaring wood burner. He’s tramped up those 110, snow-covered steps from home to studio, walking stick in hand, part of his constant, ongoing, defiant physical and mental therapy. “It’s talking about me, I guess. I think I was an intellectual, let’s say.”. “You were,” I say. I’ve been interviewing Edwyn Collins for as long as he’s been releasing solo albums. There have been 10 of those since he split Orange Juice, his revered Glasgow indie band, after the release of 1984’s self-titled third album, in the wake of their biggest success, 1983’s Top 10 single “Rip It Up”. In our many conversations over the years – which happened across Scotland, in Madrid, in Los Angeles, at the couple’s home in London – he was always whip-smart and caustically funny. And, yes, an intellectual. “And now I’m a moron, haha!” More laughs come in a torrent. “Only kidding!”.

Twenty years ago this week, at home in Kilburn, with Antiques Roadshow on the telly and a pan of potatoes boiling on the cooker, Edwyn Collins suffered a cerebral haemorrhage. Five days later, while in intensive care in the Royal Free Hospital in north London, he suffered another. The two catastrophic bleeds on his brain required the removal of a panel of skull bone – after which he contracted the superbug MRSA.