At the time of his stroke Edwyn Collins was a singer-songwriter with an international reputation, a founder of Glaswegian band Orange Juice, and with the hit ‘A Girl like You’ to his name. In February 2005 he had two haemorrhagic strokes, followed by neurosurgery, a period of hospital isolation due to MRSA, a time of hospital rehabilitation, and eventually return home in August in time for his 46th birthday. The strokes left him confused, aphasic, unable to read or sing, and with severe weakness and loss of sensation in the right side. Over the next eighteen months of hard work Edwyn recovered to the extent of returning to the stage to sing and write songs. The story of the disaster and his recovery has been told in several ways. Edwyn Collins, Home Again is one of two documentaries, this one from BBC Scotland in 2007. (The other was for FilmFour in 2014.) And his wife Grace Maxwell has written a book, Falling and Laughing. Each of these have their strengths, and complement the other versions of his story.
Eerily, when Edwyn had his stroke, ‘Home Again’ was a song already in the can but not yet released, and it was one of the first things Edwyn and Grace listened to when he got home from hospital.
‘I’m home again
Hardly certain of my role and then
I started searching for my soul again’
The film’s sound track is made up this song, with many of Edwyn’s other songs. The film has a dramatic momentum that focusses on Edwyn the singer, and accelerates towards Edwyn’s return to the stage at the Electric Prom in October 2007, two and half years after his stroke. The finale, with Edwyn’s limping return to the stage, his hesitant aphasic start, and then the return of his stage patter as well as the songs is a wonderfully moving sequence that never fails to draw my tears.
Rehabilitation rarely has a momentum with a finite goal, or a sense of acceleration, and the fuzzy sense of working without knowing the outcome is better represented in the later more self-conscious film for FilmFour, The Possibilities are Endless.
Before the Electric Prom climax, the documentary from 2007 gives glimpses of Edwyn and his supporters during his months of rehabilitation. Edwyn and Grace are filmed doing a double act with the guitar, Edwyn fingering with his left hand, while Grace attempts to strum to make up for his missing right hand. And you get an idea of the sense of humour needed for rehabilitation. There are clips of Edwyn trying to communicate and get out words with varying levels of success, including practice with the speech therapist at particular sounds, and manipulating scrabble tiles in early simple(!) spelling tasks that are beyond him. Edwyn talks through his sketch book of animals, sketches drawn with his left hand after years of being right-handed. This section shows Edwyn’s state of hesitant, but effective aphasic speech, while also giving a real insight into his high standards and persistence. Edwyn’s first attempts at singing can hardly be called singing, and the film captures the sense of doubt in the band members who are present.
The physical progress is seen. There are clips of Edwyn demonstrating the tightness in his right hand, and the difficulty of holding a guitar. Shots in the studio of Australian private physiotherapist Ellen McDonald, reveal some of the effort that Edwyn is making in his recovery, although the comments after that clip show how dependent people can become on a good physiotherapist – with little faith that others might have equivalent skills. There is a clip of Edwyn and Grace tackling the irregular steep stone Whalligoe Steps near their house in Scotland, which gives the impression that he managed all of them. (In the book Falling and Laughing Grace tells of a windy half-way-down-and-back attempt, which was a triumph in itself at that stage of recovery.)
The finale, at the Electric Prom in 2007, is two and a half years after his stroke, and he is still improving. He walks with a high stick, climbing stairs one at a time, and with hesitation and effort audible as he talks. The progress is remarkable – but the continuing achievements are visible in the later (2014) documentary for FilmFour, The Possibilities are Endless.
Edwyn Collins, Home Again (2007) Documentary, BBC Scotland, Dir. Paul Tucker, available from:
https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/0079759F?bcast=29357682
Extract available on vimeo, https://vimeo.com/16397988
The Possibilities are Endless (2014) Documentary, Dir. James Hall
Shown Tuesday, 15 Dec 2015, 23:25 105 mins FilmFour, available as
https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/0B997C14
Or streamable via imdb https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3512066/
Grace Maxwell (2009) Falling and Laughing: The Restoration of Edwyn Collins, London, Ebury Press