Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Said Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Jim Kerr of Simple Minds. Jim,
Speaker 1: so great to have you on the podcast. A reel
Speaker 1: thrill the Pleasure's main, Bob. I've been a follower for
Speaker 1: a long time, as you may well know, the ratings
Speaker 1: and then eventually the podcast. So I'm really looking forward
Speaker 1: to the chat and thrilled that you invited me. So
Speaker 1: how do you end up living in Sicily? It's a
Speaker 1: heck of a long story. Well, but it's really a
Speaker 1: love affair that began with Italy. I was very fortunate
Speaker 1: in the sense that my parents sent me on a
Speaker 1: school trip to Italy when I was thirteen, and even then,
Speaker 1: I mean compared to Glasgow, the city that I'm from,
Speaker 1: growing up there in the sixties early seventies, I think
Speaker 1: the best way to describe it is to see that
Speaker 1: it was a monochrome existence. And as soon as I
Speaker 1: got off on the plane in Italy, I discovered the
Speaker 1: world was in color, and I said, well, you know what,
Speaker 1: when I'm an old geezer, I'm gonna come and live
Speaker 1: here in one day. I always had it in my mind. Um, however,
Speaker 1: at the age of about twenty. We're very fortunate not
Speaker 1: only to be in a band, but in a band
Speaker 1: it was already getting quite a lot of traction throughout Europe.
Speaker 1: Italy was one of the first places that embraced my band,
Speaker 1: and I got to another country very well, north and south. Now,
Speaker 1: the south is a different deal from the rest of
Speaker 1: the country. Back then, everyone says, you don't want to
Speaker 1: go be going down there. You don't want to be
Speaker 1: playing down there. The Marfael steal your guitars and Marfa
Speaker 1: will steal this. You live a horrible time. Well, we
Speaker 1: went down at the time of our lives. And how
Speaker 1: many years now, well, oh my gosh, thirty years more.
Speaker 1: Um So, still he has been a part of my
Speaker 1: life lately. I mean I am now fully Italian resident.
Speaker 1: Brexit was a final straw for me there. I thought, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not being dragged out of Europe by some buffoon,
Speaker 1: and so um I am. You could say I'm almost
Speaker 1: Italian national, which not many people emigrate to Sicily. It's
Speaker 1: usually a history of immigrating from Sicily. But I'm very
Speaker 1: fortunate to people they had accepted me and the stories
Speaker 1: within stories within stories, Okay, why Sicily as opposed to
Speaker 1: shall we say the mainland? I think the best way
Speaker 1: to say this. I mean it's a bit, a bit
Speaker 1: of a vague word, but Sicily is cosmic. The history
Speaker 1: of Sicily. I mean, that's what it all kicked off.
Speaker 1: That's going back to, you know, way before the Romans,
Speaker 1: It's the Greeks. It's an It's an amazing place. I mean,
Speaker 1: where I am in Sicily, you could say that Africa's
Speaker 1: probably nearer than Rome. So you've got that continental drift,
Speaker 1: you've got all that history. I mean, it's mind boggling
Speaker 1: and right in the middle of the island. And there's
Speaker 1: a story there as well. Um, there's a huge volcano,
Speaker 1: Mount Etna, that I see every day. Um my grandfather
Speaker 1: used to talk about it. He was in the Highland Infantry.
Speaker 1: He was insicially during the war and I think he
Speaker 1: had the time of his life. Yeah, I think he
Speaker 1: had a story there as well, because every time he
Speaker 1: had a couple of whiskeys, he would go on about
Speaker 1: how beautiful the Italian women were and how great the
Speaker 1: Italian people. When I would say you were there in
Speaker 1: the war, what about the fighting? He said? He said,
Speaker 1: I didn't fight with anyone. Um, it's the greatest place.
Speaker 1: And he kind of planted the seed, you know when
Speaker 1: your kids and people are talking about volcanoes and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. I think he planted the seed. And all
Speaker 1: these well, all these years later, Um, if only he
Speaker 1: would know, if only he could have known how things
Speaker 1: have ended up. So Um, there's a lot of thoughts
Speaker 1: that I haven't quite joined them up. But that's only
Speaker 1: the short answer. Now you own a hotel there, Well,
Speaker 1: that's right, Um, I think let me see a run
Speaker 1: about where am I? Twenty years ago? Um, things weren't
Speaker 1: looking too great for simple minds. I mean, the wheels
Speaker 1: had come off, A new generation had come along. Um,
Speaker 1: it's the expression you use. A lot or cheese had
Speaker 1: been well and truly stolen. And to my songwriting partner Charlie,
Speaker 1: he says, I only I only felt this way for
Speaker 1: about two days, but I definitely felt plan bes needed now.
Speaker 1: As I already said to you, Sis, Italy was in
Speaker 1: my heart and I thought it was the time when
Speaker 1: the career was going down the tubes, divorces and all
Speaker 1: that it happened. I thought I'm going to go down
Speaker 1: there for a year. Get the language see what evolves,
Speaker 1: you know, And I thought, you know, we've been doing
Speaker 1: this for ten twelve years. Even the Beatles couldn't make
Speaker 1: it last more than ten years. I didn't want it
Speaker 1: to the last moment. Ten years. I mean the other
Speaker 1: thing we also felt, We didn't feel. We weren't embittered
Speaker 1: or anything like. We felt no one knows is anything?
Speaker 1: What a great time? Maybe that's it? So um all
Speaker 1: that sounds very practical, but there is the other sage
Speaker 1: you think, well, who am I? What am I going
Speaker 1: to do? How do you be ex? Gim care? How
Speaker 1: do you be how do you be ex simple? How
Speaker 1: do you be an ex rock star? There's not really
Speaker 1: a guidebook for that. But I thought, I'll go down
Speaker 1: and I'll just maybe I was in my hemmingway face,
Speaker 1: I'll go down and I'll be I'll fish for tuna,
Speaker 1: I'll get the language, I'll fall in love. Well I
Speaker 1: didn't fish for tuna. I did get the language, and
Speaker 1: inevitably I felt in love. Was all as a woman involved,
Speaker 1: as I'm not, um so, there's always a lover involved.
Speaker 1: Um So, all of that came to be and I
Speaker 1: was loving it. I was staying in this Uh, friends,
Speaker 1: apartment the basement of his place, and I felt so
Speaker 1: full of vitality and I thought this, this is the
Speaker 1: place for me. And just as I was thinking that,
Speaker 1: a piece of land became available next to us, and
Speaker 1: I thought, hmm, bed and breakfast. Maybe I could make
Speaker 1: that work because it had a planning permission now, and
Speaker 1: from a family of builders as well, back in Glasgow.
Speaker 1: And I spent a few years in building sites just
Speaker 1: before getting into music. And you can imagine when I
Speaker 1: told the bank manager back in Scotland, and when I
Speaker 1: told our accountant that I was going to buy land
Speaker 1: in Sicily and I was going to build what has
Speaker 1: become a hotel. They said I was crazy. They said
Speaker 1: it is the worst place. Italy was the worst place
Speaker 1: in Europe to invest. Sicily was the worst place in
Speaker 1: um Italy to invest. And I said, okay, I hear you,
Speaker 1: I hear you, I hear you. I won't do it.
Speaker 1: I got up pretty much the next day and signed
Speaker 1: the papers and we haven't looked back. Okay, so why
Speaker 1: build as opposed to just buy something? Well, the old
Speaker 1: hotels they come with all these planning permisss. Sorry you
Speaker 1: you can't get planning permissions you know, when you go
Speaker 1: in those those old, ancient places, I mean, it's very
Speaker 1: hard to make it work in terms of well, unless
Speaker 1: you've got gazillions. This place was available with a certain
Speaker 1: kind of planning permission for a certain kind of building.
Speaker 1: Is not the most beautiful building, but it has the
Speaker 1: most beautiful views. And that was a big, big part
Speaker 1: of it. And obviously I had friends there as well,
Speaker 1: a partner who shall we say, had all the right contacts,
Speaker 1: and you know, I mean there's a whole book in
Speaker 1: in that. But it wasn't all plane sailing. I mean
Speaker 1: some nights I woke up in the middle of the
Speaker 1: night in the colts were thinking what the heck have
Speaker 1: I done here? But as soon as the place opened,
Speaker 1: it's been open now twenty years. People go there with
Speaker 1: people who content fifteen years on the trot. They love
Speaker 1: it as much as I do. And it goes without saying.
Speaker 1: I'm not involved in the running of it. Thank God
Speaker 1: for that. It would be more like faulty Towers if
Speaker 1: I was involved in the running of it. Um it's
Speaker 1: run by professionals, and and we keep adding to it
Speaker 1: as well. I have to say. During the two years
Speaker 1: of pandemic. Obviously it was closed, and we keep adding
Speaker 1: to it. I mean the futures calling though, I'll have
Speaker 1: to decide the years to come. Just cause it's my
Speaker 1: passion doesn't mean I says my kids passion, And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be here forever, so there are
Speaker 1: decisions to be made. But but it's been great for
Speaker 1: me um as much as it's great at the end
Speaker 1: of the night when people come to a concert and
Speaker 1: you send them home, happy, revitalized, you can imagine that equally.
Speaker 1: So perhaps even more so the people that come on
Speaker 1: holiday to a place and you you know, they came
Speaker 1: in from London, or they come in from Stockholm, or
Speaker 1: they came in from whatever, and you know they look
Speaker 1: a bit gray and their shoulders are down, and a
Speaker 1: week later they're full of color and revitalized. And uh,
Speaker 1: to be of service is a great thing. So how
Speaker 1: many rooms does it have and how many people can
Speaker 1: stay at one time? Well, we when we started it
Speaker 1: was fourteen that was the original planning. We're up to
Speaker 1: just just under fifty now, so yeah, mostly double rooms.
Speaker 1: And where do you live? I live nearby. I mean
Speaker 1: it's that thing I don't go in every day because
Speaker 1: you go in every day you just see things that
Speaker 1: are wrong. People are having a whale of a time,
Speaker 1: but you justly see things that are wrong, and you
Speaker 1: think I told you to fix this last week or
Speaker 1: you know, or haven't we got that together yet? I
Speaker 1: mean that makes me sound like I'm a perfectionist. I'm not.
Speaker 1: And then I look around and actually see people chilled
Speaker 1: and having a great, great time, and I think, well,
Speaker 1: maybe it's not so bad. I mean it's not. I've
Speaker 1: gotta see. It's not some rock star seehy hotel. It's
Speaker 1: a nice place. It's got sold. Um, people feel good
Speaker 1: sitting there and um. So you know, sometimes I do
Speaker 1: a blitz. I go in when they're at least expecting me.
Speaker 1: I don't tell them when I'm going in. Let's go
Speaker 1: back to your inspiration for building it at the moment
Speaker 1: you thought Simple Minds was reaching the end of its life.
Speaker 1: If Simple Minds had reached the end of its line,
Speaker 1: how are you doing financially? Obviously need something to occupy
Speaker 1: your time. But if you were, you set for life
Speaker 1: when Simple Minds was, you know, up in the air. Well,
Speaker 1: we were very fortunate because we've been looked after I
Speaker 1: have to see. I mean, um, we've done well, particularly
Speaker 1: the last say that was twelve years up until that
Speaker 1: time of thinking maybe the game's up here behalf of that.
Speaker 1: It was very lucrative. Um but as you know, a
Speaker 1: divorce here and a divorce there on a tax bell here,
Speaker 1: an attax bill there. But since I was young, I'd
Speaker 1: always made pretty good investments as well and properties, and um,
Speaker 1: we really had been looked after well. Good accountant. A
Speaker 1: woman called Sandra Dodds who was probably more like miss
Speaker 1: Jean Brodies you more like a headmistress to us, who
Speaker 1: kept us on a straight and narrow you know. She
Speaker 1: would tell you, what do you need two cars for?
Speaker 1: Are you crazy? What are you talking about? A boat?
Speaker 1: What's this? What's that? And she would basically kick her ass.
Speaker 1: And at the time she would talk about pensions. When
Speaker 1: we were you know, we would only twenty two and
Speaker 1: you think, penchion, I'll never be sixty five, Well I'll
Speaker 1: be sixty three next month. Um. So um yeah, if
Speaker 1: we would have been we would have been okay, had
Speaker 1: we remained sensible. So we're in an era where people
Speaker 1: are selling their rights. Do you still own all your rights?
Speaker 1: Just recently up until just recently above UM, but no,
Speaker 1: we have now sold their rights very recently. So what
Speaker 1: happened recently? It was time there was an offer there.
Speaker 1: It was time we looked at what the publishing had
Speaker 1: been bringing in. We looked at the offer, We looked
Speaker 1: at how we could be intelligent. UM. The way we
Speaker 1: set that up over about a period of two years.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of back and forth. We thought
Speaker 1: about our kids, We thought about investments that we have
Speaker 1: and how we could possibly do better. We considered everything.
Speaker 1: It was time as basically the answer, and who did
Speaker 1: you sell to? B MG? And did you sell a
Speaker 1: hundred percent? Or do you still retain anything we sold?
Speaker 1: And that's the publishing. What about the record royalties? The
Speaker 1: records now they're they're still there, But of course we
Speaker 1: don't own our records. We get the royalties, as you say,
Speaker 1: but I don't own them. So what do you do
Speaker 1: with the money. I haven't done anything yet, Bob. You
Speaker 1: know about some training shoes last week. I guess what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is, when you have publishing, they pay you
Speaker 1: every six months. Probably your deal with be even though
Speaker 1: they can not to pay of what your rode and
Speaker 1: then then you get a check, you pay the taxes
Speaker 1: and then you can put it in the stock market.
Speaker 1: You can leave it in cash. So you know, have
Speaker 1: you just left it in cash waiting to see or
Speaker 1: you invested it. It's so recent and we have conversations
Speaker 1: about it every week about what's the next move. But
Speaker 1: guarantee we won't be going and spending it on post cars,
Speaker 1: that's for sure. What Scotsman. So why does Scots have
Speaker 1: the reputation of being cheap? Is that real? No, it's not.
Speaker 1: That's something to do with Walt Disney. I think one
Speaker 1: of those cartoon things where you and um, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but uh and my experience that is not. But we
Speaker 1: like to play up to it. We like to have
Speaker 1: fun with with that. Um. But it's certainly not real. Okay. So,
Speaker 1: prior to Brexit, Scotland was constantly talking about seceding from
Speaker 1: the UK. Now subsequent to Brexit they're talking again. What's
Speaker 1: your take on that? I mean, it is a strange thing.
Speaker 1: We grew up to tell you, it was really we
Speaker 1: grew up in a place industrial Britain and everyone in
Speaker 1: Glasgow really there was only one party for us. It
Speaker 1: was the Labor Party. But that was the industrial age,
Speaker 1: and of course you could see the political figure who
Speaker 1: presided over most of her my generation's career was none
Speaker 1: other than Margaret Thatcher, who a lot of the working
Speaker 1: class would say was a nemesis. I mean, my take
Speaker 1: on it was that a lot of those old industries
Speaker 1: people had stolen their cheese as well. Globalization came, shipbuilding
Speaker 1: could be done elsewhere, iron could be done elsewhere, and
Speaker 1: a lot of these places didn't move with the times.
Speaker 1: And then they were left the industries needing constant subsidies.
Speaker 1: Margaret Thatcher comes along and said, no, no, no, those
Speaker 1: days are gone. We're going to close all of this now. Again,
Speaker 1: in a practical sense, comes to business, you would say, well,
Speaker 1: that's the way it goes. But there were communities left overnight.
Speaker 1: Not even any empathy. I mean, I know you have
Speaker 1: that in the States as well. Just nothing. Um so
Speaker 1: she everyone I grew up with in Glasgow. I don't
Speaker 1: think hate is too strong a work to you. They
Speaker 1: hated her and they couldn't wait for the dawning of
Speaker 1: new labor. A new labor finally came with Tony Blair,
Speaker 1: Gordon Brown and people in my generation thought okay, we'll
Speaker 1: see a much more sympathetic, we'll see a much more
Speaker 1: intelligent But I have to see from my perspective the
Speaker 1: time they came in within weeks it looked like that
Speaker 1: was a fallacy as well. Basically the right and left
Speaker 1: they had all come into the center, into the middle,
Speaker 1: and in the case of Scotland, in the case of Glasgow,
Speaker 1: most of the population of Scotland's in the central belt.
Speaker 1: They turned their back on labor the war as well,
Speaker 1: and this idea that Blair was bushes puddle didn't go
Speaker 1: down well and the Scottish Nationals started to play a
Speaker 1: card then and everyone almost as a protest vote, because
Speaker 1: you know, no one was really thinking about what's the
Speaker 1: currency going to be as the oil going to run out.
Speaker 1: Everyone was just saying, we want nothing to do with
Speaker 1: these people in ten Downing Street anymore. And to a
Speaker 1: degree that's still the case. I mean, the true nationalists
Speaker 1: will tell you that Scotland can exists in the same
Speaker 1: way Denmark and Norway in Finland do. But let's be honest, Norway,
Speaker 1: Denmark and Finland have had a long time to practice
Speaker 1: at in Norway, Denmark, in Finland, you can't just turn
Speaker 1: it over night. I there would be a general look
Speaker 1: at the upheaval with Brexit. I mean there would be
Speaker 1: another colossal upheaval. Um. People would really have to think
Speaker 1: about that. I don't know if they do. I mean
Speaker 1: what we really wouldn't need. I think with respect to
Speaker 1: the people that's in charge, they're just now you would
Speaker 1: need a supervisionary to pull that off with some applume.
Speaker 1: I don't see that supervisionary from where I'm standing. But
Speaker 1: you've got to remember I'm not there anymore. I'm in Italy.
Speaker 1: So you talk about living in Italy. You know, we've
Speaker 1: been exposed for a long time of people who are
Speaker 1: tax exiles from the UK. The stones other acts are
Speaker 1: their tax advantages? Do you live in Italy? I mean
Speaker 1: a lot of the European countries now have incentives, but
Speaker 1: but I would still pay a lot more tax in
Speaker 1: itly than most Italian people. Okay, And just to be
Speaker 1: very specific, irrelevant of Scotland's place in this, what do
Speaker 1: you think of Brexit? Oh? Horrendous? I mean, no one
Speaker 1: really took it serious. That's the problem. No one took
Speaker 1: it serious. Um, And we woke up that day I mean,
Speaker 1: I think I think I'm rating seeing this. The biggest
Speaker 1: disappointment I believe i'm rating seeing is the demograph young
Speaker 1: kids didn't turn out to vote, ironically, and it was
Speaker 1: their future that was a stake why they didn't turn
Speaker 1: out to vote. Um, the anti Brexit movements they put together.
Speaker 1: There was no campaign that she thought this is a joke,
Speaker 1: it'll go away. And and I think we heard that
Speaker 1: about Trump as well, did we not leading up to it?
Speaker 1: This is a joke, This isn't gonna happen, This is
Speaker 1: not gonna be um. I mean, everyone seemed to be
Speaker 1: against him, the media, tech, you name it. Everyone was
Speaker 1: against him. It seemed apart from a lot of people
Speaker 1: on the ground who wanted to kick out at something.
Speaker 1: That's what it looks like Brexit. And I would imagine
Speaker 1: there'll be some parallels with the Trump voughte. Okay, now
Speaker 1: you know there's all kinds of issues with visas and equipment.
Speaker 1: Now in terms of your being members and equipment, are
Speaker 1: you sourcing that all from Europe? Or do you have
Speaker 1: VC issues? Are you caught up in the Brexit world.
Speaker 1: They tell me it's been a nightmare. They tell me
Speaker 1: everything is ten times harder. Um, that's coming from you know,
Speaker 1: our production guys. I mean even today I have to say,
Speaker 1: it's like a whole catalog and stuff you've got to
Speaker 1: deal with. Um. I came off a bus today, fourteen
Speaker 1: hour drive from Luzanne. Now you said, well do you
Speaker 1: have to take the bus? No, normally we wouldn't with
Speaker 1: that kind of drive. But traveling just now anywhere between
Speaker 1: just as chaos. Some air travel and airports trying to
Speaker 1: get their act together after the pandemic. But also I
Speaker 1: mean even getting on a plane two weeks ago to Oslow.
Speaker 1: When we turned up in Oslo, people were UK passports.
Speaker 1: We were in a queue with everyone else for about
Speaker 1: fifty minutes just trying to get into Oslow on on
Speaker 1: an otherwise quiet Wednesday afternoon. Whereas for the last well,
Speaker 1: all my entire life you just walked through. Um, so
Speaker 1: it's it's still um. It just seems a real message.
Speaker 1: It seemed like, um, well, as you know, the slogan
Speaker 1: for Brexit was just get it done, and it sounds
Speaker 1: like as though that was all that was going to count.
Speaker 1: There was no thought about and what's next, and what's
Speaker 1: next and what's next? So um, everyone's left, everyone who
Speaker 1: was traveling, everyone who does business internationally with Europe um
Speaker 1: as paying the cost right now, you know, and something, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it'll get sorted, it'll get sorted. But I don't see
Speaker 1: any rush towards that. I don't even know what it means. Um,
Speaker 1: I have to see I spend my time in Europe.
Speaker 1: Of course I live in Europe, most of our friends.
Speaker 1: I find the whole thing embarrassing. So you talk about
Speaker 1: this moment approximately twenty years ago we said, hey, is
Speaker 1: there a future for simple minds? What turned you around? Said?
Speaker 1: There is a future? Well, funny enough, probably probably about
Speaker 1: two years after turning up in Sicily and thinking those thoughts, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, nothing seemed to be on our side with
Speaker 1: without a record deal, we're without a publishing deal, without management. Um.
Speaker 1: I really felt this is this is going to be
Speaker 1: a tough one. No one in the media was interested.
Speaker 1: But there was a couple of things came along. An
Speaker 1: amazing thing social network where if you were a band
Speaker 1: and you would fans still in the world, you could
Speaker 1: talk to them direct, so you could say there was
Speaker 1: a glimmer of hope there. But actually what happened was
Speaker 1: the phone started to ring if you're a good band,
Speaker 1: if you're a great band, and I would like to
Speaker 1: think we're certainly the former, and we challenged to be
Speaker 1: the latter. Every night it seemed the phone would ring,
Speaker 1: people started asking us to play. Now. The thing was, yeah,
Speaker 1: but how are we going to play what kind of things?
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want to be disparaging, but we
Speaker 1: didn't want to do those eighties kind of sad you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, all these eighties acts bundled together.
Speaker 1: We definitely didn't want to do that. Um, So we
Speaker 1: turned a lot of things down. But what we did
Speaker 1: do was we started to write songs again. I mean,
Speaker 1: the big, the real big thing was at that point
Speaker 1: you find out who you really are. And I'll say
Speaker 1: to you like this, if you're in the back of
Speaker 1: a van or mini boss driving past the stadium that
Speaker 1: you once sold out, on route to a club that
Speaker 1: is not sold out, you really find out a lot
Speaker 1: about yourself. First thing you find out if you've got
Speaker 1: the stomach to continue, you ask why you do it?
Speaker 1: And he said, well, what's the answer to that. I
Speaker 1: remember when I was a kid looking at the old
Speaker 1: blues guys. I think, you know, I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: those guys didn't even get paid initially for the longest time.
Speaker 1: John Ley Hooker and Chuck Berry and those guys didn't
Speaker 1: eventually be be king. But you looked at them and
Speaker 1: they were the only old guys then, and it was
Speaker 1: written on their face why they did it. It's who
Speaker 1: they are. Well, we found out then that that's also
Speaker 1: who we were. We were by that time, twenty were
Speaker 1: by that time fifteen years in. How do you stop
Speaker 1: writing songs when that's what you've done since you were thirteen?
Speaker 1: You somehow have to silence the voices that are telling
Speaker 1: you this is pointless. It's never gonna be the same,
Speaker 1: It's never gonna be what it was. And you have
Speaker 1: to decide what are we gonna do here? Are we
Speaker 1: gonna go around like just punch drunk boxers because we
Speaker 1: don't know what else to do, or are we gonna
Speaker 1: recome it like we did when we were kids. Now,
Speaker 1: when you're a kid and there's nothing else in your life,
Speaker 1: you're eighteen, you're seventeen, you commit everything that nothing else
Speaker 1: in your life. You can't believe you're getting the chance
Speaker 1: to make music night. Indeed, that's all we ever wanted
Speaker 1: to do we've got a record deal. Finally that was possible.
Speaker 1: But then you know, you get older and you've got
Speaker 1: a room in your life or other kids, success comes along,
Speaker 1: you've got some money. You you know, you're living a
Speaker 1: much softer um. Are you gonna You've gotta turn your
Speaker 1: back and all that and going to a crappy old
Speaker 1: rehearsal room again and re engage and going there Monday,
Speaker 1: if Friday and work through. Back to the songs, back
Speaker 1: to try and make the band great again, back to
Speaker 1: finding a great manager, back to finding a great age
Speaker 1: And are you really going to engage when you don't
Speaker 1: have to because you've got enough pastor you've got enough
Speaker 1: of I mean, you know there's billionaires out there, but
Speaker 1: I'm very fortunate as much that at the time in
Speaker 1: my life. I've always felt rich because I always felt
Speaker 1: I had enough. And when I say I had enough,
Speaker 1: it's more than people I want to school. So the
Speaker 1: thing was, can we engage? Can we really try and
Speaker 1: draw something out of ourselves here? And that's what we
Speaker 1: decided to do. We were flat lining. We had to
Speaker 1: get up, we had to get off the table. We
Speaker 1: had to we had to get the ignition going again.
Speaker 1: We had to we had to turn the cat around,
Speaker 1: get it going in the right direction, and then we
Speaker 1: had to find out how many miles we could take
Speaker 1: it down the road. And well, here we are whatever
Speaker 1: fifteen eighteen years later, and it's gone down the road
Speaker 1: and it's gone great. Okay, Simple Minds has been through
Speaker 1: many personnel changes and the two continuusing members of yourself
Speaker 1: and Charlie Burchill. When you said you got an inspiration
Speaker 1: to write songs, was that something individually? Did you call
Speaker 1: up Charlie? Did Charlie get ahold of you first? What
Speaker 1: actually happened? Well, I've known Charlie since we're eight years old.
Speaker 1: We're both from Glasgow, we're both from southside of Glasgow. Um.
Speaker 1: At the age of it, we moved into this new
Speaker 1: housing ski well you call them housing projects, but as
Speaker 1: a housing scheme, a high rise, high rise apartment which
Speaker 1: they just started building in the major cities and the
Speaker 1: UK and particularly Glasgow. I mean those buildings quite soon
Speaker 1: got a bad raw, but we loved them anyway. The
Speaker 1: first day literally moving in, my mother said, you know,
Speaker 1: as you did at that time, only want one brother,
Speaker 1: she said, get out and play, going out and discover
Speaker 1: the neighborhood. Now they were still building this housing project
Speaker 1: cement sand bricks, and we went down the street and
Speaker 1: there was these kids playing on this huge sand castle
Speaker 1: and the kids sitting at the top. I later discovered
Speaker 1: his name was Charlie Burchell, and we said, um, you know,
Speaker 1: can we play? Yeah, you can play, let's play. So
Speaker 1: that was the first time I met Charlie. But the
Speaker 1: real key moment with Charlie was, and I remember this
Speaker 1: clearer than he does apparently, was but three years after that,
Speaker 1: at the age of eleven. Um, you remember this because
Speaker 1: they I think it was an idea that came from
Speaker 1: the States. Do you remember, Um remember with cigarette packs
Speaker 1: you got coupons and if you if you saved them up,
Speaker 1: you could there was a g catalog. Well, Charlie's mom
Speaker 1: saved up a ton of Embassy coupons and she got
Speaker 1: charlie six string Spanish guitar. And I still say to
Speaker 1: this day, if Mrs Burshell hadn't done that, you know,
Speaker 1: I'd be driving a taxi. But I remember Charlie getting
Speaker 1: because he was the first kid I knew that had
Speaker 1: a guitar, and it was a summer's night he was
Speaker 1: in the street with that. Everyone was looking around um
Speaker 1: and it seemed like within a few months he could
Speaker 1: play t Rex songs, she could play boys songs. He
Speaker 1: could and you know, to me, it was just it
Speaker 1: was magical. And that's really how we how we started
Speaker 1: to hang out. I mean we were in the same
Speaker 1: class at school. There was a few of it. Everyone
Speaker 1: was starting to get into music, but there was a
Speaker 1: few of us who were really into it at that time,
Speaker 1: the same time, age or twelve ago. My first job disgusting, really,
Speaker 1: but my mother got me a job cleaning the back
Speaker 1: store of a butcher's shop, amongst all the blood and crap.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. The first week I got paid
Speaker 1: five pounds, well five pounds. Then to give you, they
Speaker 1: give you some perspective. I bought my first concert ticket
Speaker 1: sixty pence and it was for the matenee of David Bowie.
Speaker 1: Ziggy started us tour. Now sixty pence had five pounds.
Speaker 1: I was Frank Sinatra. I could take you an album
Speaker 1: cost one twenty and pretty soon I had this huge
Speaker 1: album collection that matched Charlie's Elder Brothers collection, and him
Speaker 1: and I would swap and we would be everything from
Speaker 1: Bowie to Roxy Lou Read, all the prog rock stuff, Um,
Speaker 1: Alice Cooper, the Doors just we're told a lot of
Speaker 1: people you've had on the show, Todd Rungren Sparks, Um,
Speaker 1: on and on, and there was a few other guys
Speaker 1: in class as well that had that same overwhelming passion
Speaker 1: and really simple minds grew out of that. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: go back to the beginning. So what were the circuits dances?
Speaker 1: Financially if you growing up, what did your parents do
Speaker 1: for a living? How many kids in the family. Well,
Speaker 1: my parents were my dad was he worked in construction.
Speaker 1: My dad or my uncles there were some of them
Speaker 1: were tradesmen, some of them laborers. So it was building sites,
Speaker 1: cement and sometimes a Saturday if he was building a
Speaker 1: garage for someone or we would go and help and
Speaker 1: would get some extra pocket money. But we grew up
Speaker 1: with those kind of physical guys. Um and Mom on
Speaker 1: the other hand, she was from a family of nine.
Speaker 1: All the interesting thing was being in Glasgow were obviously Scotts,
Speaker 1: but Glasgow is such a strong Irish community. Grandparents on
Speaker 1: both sides were Irish, so it was almost brought up
Speaker 1: with an Irish culture inside of Scotland, so we weren't
Speaker 1: quite sure who we were. We knew that London seemed
Speaker 1: the long place away. Um we weren't Irish because it
Speaker 1: was real Irish people, but we were definitely brought up
Speaker 1: with this culture. Mom she was a machinist. She was
Speaker 1: she worked in the factories, heavy garmentree police uniforms, army uniforms,
Speaker 1: hard working girls. And I was thinking today because you
Speaker 1: know I was, I knew were going to speak. And
Speaker 1: my earliest music memory was Mom would get paid once
Speaker 1: a month and my aunt would take us up to
Speaker 1: meet her at lunchtime. And two things great about that
Speaker 1: was would go to this car where we had nicker
Speaker 1: Boker Glories which were just wow ice cream and fruits.
Speaker 1: And then she would go to the record shop and
Speaker 1: she would buy a single, usually the Beatles, um, sometimes
Speaker 1: the Rolling Stones, and we go home and she'd put
Speaker 1: it on, she'd dance, and um, that was the first
Speaker 1: music I was conscious of. On that side, he was
Speaker 1: also a big, big music fan. He liked people like
Speaker 1: fat Dominos. He liked a lot of the country stuff
Speaker 1: we called the country and Western then Patty Lane, Jim Reeves,
Speaker 1: all of that stuff really big in Scotland, Johnny cash
Speaker 1: Um and a lot of Irish rebel songs. So that
Speaker 1: was that was the kind of music that that was
Speaker 1: the background. People would work hard, they would enjoy themselves
Speaker 1: on a Friday and Saturday night singing and dancing. Glass
Speaker 1: was still like that. People Glass region spend their money.
Speaker 1: Edinburgh's old money. Um, they hold on to it. That's
Speaker 1: the cliche. But Glasgow, and it's the time I grew up,
Speaker 1: it had more dance halls than anywhere else in Britain.
Speaker 1: People just love to have a ball. If probably Glasgow probably,
Speaker 1: I mean to your American audience, if you could imagine
Speaker 1: probably Detroit or New Jersey type of environment. Okay, so
Speaker 1: how many kids in the family. Well, there's two brothers. Um.
Speaker 1: I was the eldest. I am the oldest. UM. But
Speaker 1: the interesting thing was you'll find this interesting because you
Speaker 1: you mentioned the band. But at the age of five,
Speaker 1: kid upstairs from us, because we lived in a tenement.
Speaker 1: Then kid upstairs his parents split up and it was
Speaker 1: kind of odd. It was very odd at that time,
Speaker 1: it was unheard of, but it was his Motherhoo had
Speaker 1: left and he was left. He was loved with it
Speaker 1: dad and as dad remember his dad coming down. I
Speaker 1: remember clearly there was a bit of a commotion and
Speaker 1: basically my mom said his name was Joe Joseph was
Speaker 1: going to be coming for lunch and dinner and and
Speaker 1: he might be staying for us with us for a while,
Speaker 1: and which he started great. Another friend, Joe was already
Speaker 1: my my friend. Well, Joe stayed with us for about
Speaker 1: the next fourteen years. And Joe also was in a
Speaker 1: band called The Silences, who you mentioned just recently. Another
Speaker 1: music fan. Another another one who wasn't prepared just to
Speaker 1: listen to records, wanted to actually get around to making them.
Speaker 1: So essentially it was like four boys eventually four boys
Speaker 1: and uh and the one one family. What kind of
Speaker 1: kid were you? Were you popular? Did you do well
Speaker 1: in school? How did it end with school? I think,
Speaker 1: going back, the first thing that really marked me out
Speaker 1: young I had a very quite pronounced speech impediment, a
Speaker 1: stutter or stammer. There was no one else at school
Speaker 1: had that, and I wasn't bullied or anything like like that,
Speaker 1: So I'm not gonna go down that that road. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, people got used to that. But whenever I
Speaker 1: went outside of you could say my safety nead of
Speaker 1: people who knew me, I would I would be quiet.
Speaker 1: I was very quiet, and I think I realized this
Speaker 1: later on. UM being being quiet forced me to have this.
Speaker 1: I think I also had a great inner dialogue. And
Speaker 1: I also made me listen much more to people, because
Speaker 1: if you're not talking, you're listening, or you should be,
Speaker 1: or you're noticing. And only recently I thought, God, that's
Speaker 1: that helped me a lot, you know, in terms of
Speaker 1: being a writer or or UM. At the time, it
Speaker 1: didn't seem to be an advantage. But anyway, it was
Speaker 1: super announced that, you know, they wanted to send me
Speaker 1: to UM, a different school, and my mother was having
Speaker 1: none of that. UM. But other than that, I was popular.
Speaker 1: I was popular at school. I was kind of I
Speaker 1: was pretty bright as well. I mean when I when
Speaker 1: I tried, I would I would get casual one year.
Speaker 1: The pressure would be on to do well, and I
Speaker 1: would do well, and then I'd get casual the next
Speaker 1: year and the results would go down. So I enjoyed school,
Speaker 1: I am. The teachers were great, as I said to
Speaker 1: you earlier, even on a school trip to Italy. The
Speaker 1: age at thirteen. You know that teachers would take us
Speaker 1: there and show us the world um or begin what
Speaker 1: became a hunger to see the world. So I was
Speaker 1: I enjoyed. I I really enjoyed school, enjoyed the cameraderie. Um.
Speaker 1: But the big thing was going back to Dad. That
Speaker 1: was a construction worker. As I said, you know, it
Speaker 1: was all about the pubs after work. And but the
Speaker 1: one thing so different from Dad and all his mates
Speaker 1: was he was a reader, a real reader, educated himself.
Speaker 1: And I remember him taking me to the first library
Speaker 1: when I was six and getting me signed up and
Speaker 1: him telling me, you don't know what you've got in
Speaker 1: your hand. Well, the first thing you told me. He
Speaker 1: was so proud because the local library, the local library
Speaker 1: was funded by Carnegie, who everyone in America, of course
Speaker 1: is aware of Carnegie and what he did there. But
Speaker 1: he was a Scotsman from dun Firm one. He told me,
Speaker 1: this man has done this, He's built these libraries. What
Speaker 1: you have in here, this is a golden ticket. Kids
Speaker 1: around the world would die or have this. And I
Speaker 1: remember him, and boy was he right. I mean he
Speaker 1: was he was banging on there. So that's a kind
Speaker 1: of that's the kind of background. Okay, I'm six years
Speaker 1: older than you, so what do I remember. I remember
Speaker 1: we had transistor radios, we were listening to sports. We're
Speaker 1: kind of aware of the uh, you know, the popular music.
Speaker 1: Then the we all wanted to be athletes. The Beatles
Speaker 1: came along. Everything changed. Everybody bought a guitar, everybody wanted
Speaker 1: to be in a band. So when you grew up,
Speaker 1: you talked about meeting Charlie etcetera. Did you think you're
Speaker 1: gonna be a musician or did you think you're gonna
Speaker 1: be somebody else? And when did you say this is it?
Speaker 1: This is what I'm gonna do. Well, no, I mean
Speaker 1: you've been six years older. You you remember the Beatles,
Speaker 1: you know, appear on TV. For the first thing, for me,
Speaker 1: the Beatles were more my mom's thing, even though because
Speaker 1: you know, they were just your mom and dad danced
Speaker 1: to them, and so it wasn't until for me it
Speaker 1: was seeing Mark Boling where that was the first thing
Speaker 1: that I thought, this is main Mark Bowland appeared on
Speaker 1: top of the Pops and you know it was like
Speaker 1: the coming of Jesus. Well we thought it was Jesus,
Speaker 1: but it was probably more John the Baptist Jesus was
Speaker 1: still come. That was ziggy Stardust. But seeing Bowling, Uh,
Speaker 1: that's when we started buying our own records, not our
Speaker 1: modern dad's records, are not our big big Brothers records.
Speaker 1: This was our thing and that was something. But it
Speaker 1: really began with a life thing because having the money
Speaker 1: to go to concerts. Now, um I told you about
Speaker 1: you know the boy ticket that the the other great
Speaker 1: memory was seeing um you know when you turned up
Speaker 1: and for some reason, tours with start in Glasgow. I
Speaker 1: think the agents would say send them up there. You
Speaker 1: know whoever it is, the Glasgow audience is a great
Speaker 1: one to get a start with. Well, I remember it
Speaker 1: would go like this. Let's say it was Genesis with
Speaker 1: Sell in England by by the Pound. They would be
Speaker 1: on the whistle Test. They agree whistle Test, which was
Speaker 1: our rock program on a Tuesday night. The Wednesday, I
Speaker 1: think Enemy would come up on the train from London,
Speaker 1: so we had the New Musical Express talking about the
Speaker 1: tour coming. Thursday would be Sounds, the next magazine Friday
Speaker 1: would be Melody Maker. All this build up and tours
Speaker 1: would begin on a Friday night and usually I would
Speaker 1: be there in those years. But I like telling people
Speaker 1: this story. This is I really looked out. There was
Speaker 1: a kid in my class who said to me, you
Speaker 1: know you're gonna know all this muse all this weird stuff,
Speaker 1: gigs and all that. He said, I can get you
Speaker 1: into any gig you want to go to, which is
Speaker 1: quite a statement. And I said, how come? He said,
Speaker 1: my brothers the head of security at the was the
Speaker 1: Glasgow Greens. Then I can get into any gig. I said,
Speaker 1: your kid, yeah, let's school. And indeed we went and
Speaker 1: his brother would open the door and we we got
Speaker 1: to see the Stones come through, Bob Marley came through,
Speaker 1: you name it, um Zeppelin, the Who. And then eventually
Speaker 1: his brother took quite a shaming to me. He said,
Speaker 1: you're really into this. I tell you what. Um, sometimes
Speaker 1: we need a few kids to run out and get
Speaker 1: beer and cigarettes and all this for the bands, and
Speaker 1: you know, like a runner, you know, come up and
Speaker 1: you can do so. We then got to see sound
Speaker 1: checks and we got to watch on the side. We
Speaker 1: were just just kids and my There's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of stories that came from that, but the one I
Speaker 1: like telling the best is that the band that I
Speaker 1: loved at that moment, I really loved them as a
Speaker 1: band called Mott the Hoople. I know you you. I
Speaker 1: think they're spoken to Ian and they were my band.
Speaker 1: And he said, well, you know, Thursday night, Mott the
Speaker 1: Hoople come up after school. I didn't even he didn't
Speaker 1: even go to school. I ran up. I remember getting
Speaker 1: the bus into town and the head of the road
Speaker 1: cruise said, no, not the Hoople aren't gonna sound check. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're doing Top of the Pops. They're not doing a
Speaker 1: sound check. Um, go over there and help the support band,
Speaker 1: help the drummer. And I said, who's the support band?
Speaker 1: And he shrugged and went, I don't know. A band
Speaker 1: called Queen. And so I remember clearly being on the
Speaker 1: stage and then it just before Queen had come through
Speaker 1: with seven seas Awry, Freddie was already in the suit,
Speaker 1: the black and white suit. I already knew on hearing
Speaker 1: the guitar, what what is this? And so I stood
Speaker 1: by that night and watched Queen Blowmat the Hoople off
Speaker 1: the stage like like there was no stage, that's just
Speaker 1: one and ignored. But in some ways it was like
Speaker 1: this is getting to your question. And someone was like
Speaker 1: it was amazing education. Did I look at Freddie Mercury
Speaker 1: or David Bowie and think I could do that? Not
Speaker 1: at all. Did I look at that world and think
Speaker 1: I've got to get involved with that world somehow? Yes
Speaker 1: I did. I would have been happy to be in
Speaker 1: a roadie. I would have been happy to be in
Speaker 1: a tour manager. I've been happy to being a manager.
Speaker 1: And um, it didn't dawn on me someone with a stutter,
Speaker 1: a starmer who was afraid to stand up in reading class.
Speaker 1: Why would you throw yourself in at the front plane
Speaker 1: and make an absolute laughing stock yourself. No, that wasn't
Speaker 1: on the agenda. Okay, I've never been to Scotland. Actually
Speaker 1: is Scotland? I mean it's not wouldn't be identical to
Speaker 1: Kenna the United States, but some countries, even though they
Speaker 1: bud each other, it's like having a glass wall and
Speaker 1: you look at the other side. Was Scotland fluid with
Speaker 1: London and UK saying oh yeah, I know, to mere
Speaker 1: Chest or wherever it was that like a big leap.
Speaker 1: Well again, it's funny enough it was. It was a
Speaker 1: big leap. London was a hell of a leap, you know.
Speaker 1: And of course not so much in Scotland, but you
Speaker 1: became aware as you get older of a class system
Speaker 1: now already explained to you that this is a phenomenal figure. Um,
Speaker 1: we were from manual workers. The percentage of people in
Speaker 1: Glasgow who went to university that came from parents who
Speaker 1: were manual workers is something like not point three percent.
Speaker 1: So there was this feeling of oh, we just don't
Speaker 1: do that stuff. That's the class system, that's the way
Speaker 1: all above us. We're gonna have to find some other hustle.
Speaker 1: And so there was we we you know, and then
Speaker 1: people with those plumbing accents and Eaton and Oxford and
Speaker 1: Cambridge and all of that stuff that could have been Mars. However,
Speaker 1: there was a kinship with people in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham
Speaker 1: who who were all in the same kind of industries.
Speaker 1: There was a kinship there. But the biggest thing, you know,
Speaker 1: transformative events in my life, one of the greatest things.
Speaker 1: People don't do it anymore. We discovered at the age
Speaker 1: of fourteen this thing called hitchhiking, where if you went
Speaker 1: down to the motorway and stuck out your thumb you
Speaker 1: could go on some kind of adventure. And indeed both
Speaker 1: Charlie and I started to do that quite a lot.
Speaker 1: Initially it was hit shaking too. There must have been
Speaker 1: a year when the local venues in Glasgow we're getting
Speaker 1: re refurbished or something. So the bands we wanted to
Speaker 1: see where coming north that was stopping at Newcastle. Let's
Speaker 1: hit shake down to Newcastle and see aggy pop and
Speaker 1: we would hitch shakedown I mean lesson two hundred miles.
Speaker 1: But of course when you got there sometimes you didn't
Speaker 1: even see the gig, but you met someone that became friends,
Speaker 1: a whole other adventure. It it's um. It was almost
Speaker 1: like for a lot of people the world ends at
Speaker 1: the bottom of your street, but for us, the world
Speaker 1: began at the bottom of our street. And I remember
Speaker 1: getting this is quite cute a letter from a friend
Speaker 1: who had moved to London, and he said, there's this
Speaker 1: thing called punk rock, the Sex Pistols, and it plays
Speaker 1: every week. You've got to get down and see this
Speaker 1: hitch hikedown. You can stay with me. Now, what year
Speaker 1: woul dat have been? We already had were already sort
Speaker 1: of tuning into the ramons Paris Smith's first album. We
Speaker 1: knew about this punk thing, but up until then it
Speaker 1: was a New York thing. New York that was of
Speaker 1: course prior, but this English punk thing, the Stranglers. We
Speaker 1: heard John Peele was starting to play the Stranglers and
Speaker 1: we could really feel somehow the gates were opening something else.
Speaker 1: So Charlie and I hitch hiked down all the way
Speaker 1: to London and we started to see these bands at
Speaker 1: the Marquee and and hoping anchor Elvis Crystello playing UM
Speaker 1: and Enemy was starting to rate about this stuff. And
Speaker 1: I remember, after going, I think I want to see
Speaker 1: Elvis Corstello in It was a tiny pub and it
Speaker 1: was it was electrifying, you know, he was just so wired.
Speaker 1: The band was so wired. And then on the way
Speaker 1: back it was the first ever festival I want Bob
Speaker 1: Dylan was playing in Black Bush at the Clapton and
Speaker 1: with the greatest respect, I couldn't relate to it anymore.
Speaker 1: After seeing Elvis Costello pumped up and playing those I
Speaker 1: just we that's where it is. After seeing the Stranglers,
Speaker 1: that's where it is. Um it's really m And of
Speaker 1: course before we knew it, this um let's call it
Speaker 1: the punk Revolution had cutlet wildfire through the UK and
Speaker 1: for the first time. It really was the the lunatics
Speaker 1: had taken over the asylum in a way that I
Speaker 1: could never imagine before. Before we knew it, kids like
Speaker 1: us were starting bands. Kids like us, we're starting fashion labels,
Speaker 1: kids like us were making documentary, starting fanzines. Suddenly it
Speaker 1: felt like m It felt like the shackles were off.
Speaker 1: It didn't matter what school you went to. It didn't
Speaker 1: matter if you had a rich daddy, it didn't matter
Speaker 1: if if you had a manager in London. And the
Speaker 1: liberation of all that set certainly set me on course,
Speaker 1: and people are my A lot of artists from my
Speaker 1: generation set us on course to you know, still to
Speaker 1: where we are today. Okay, it's unbelievably hard to make
Speaker 1: it talented, is it? Most fifty percent? So needless to say,
Speaker 1: you and Charlie made it. Who was the driving force?
Speaker 1: Was that you? Was it? Charlie was a third party?
Speaker 1: Did you ever waiver say Okay, we've seen the future,
Speaker 1: We're gonna go, We're gonna get there. I mean, you
Speaker 1: could say it's all about music, and certainly Charlie plays
Speaker 1: the music. But I've got to give great credit also
Speaker 1: to the guys in the band Michael McNeil and keyboards.
Speaker 1: Denck Forbes was really a guitar player who played basslines
Speaker 1: as well as a guitar. The everyone was chipping in,
Speaker 1: but as you know, there needs to be a vision
Speaker 1: of a writing. There needs to be a vision. What
Speaker 1: kind of band are we going to be? What's the
Speaker 1: ethics gonna be, what's the ideal is gonna be? Was
Speaker 1: the looks gonna be, Who's the producer we're gonna work with,
Speaker 1: who's the artwork? It was me and it still is me,
Speaker 1: and um, Charlie's absolutely cool with that. I mean, on
Speaker 1: top of the fact that I write lyrics and melodies.
Speaker 1: But it goes back to this thing and I just
Speaker 1: didn't want anything else in my life. I mean, in
Speaker 1: those young years, I have to see now, I really
Speaker 1: regret it. I was horrible with the girl friends and
Speaker 1: and and the wives and all when they when anyone came,
Speaker 1: when anything that caused work to stop. I was an
Speaker 1: anti social because I was just so into it. Um
Speaker 1: And I'm still so into it. Um. But I I
Speaker 1: I kind of well if if the people who knew
Speaker 1: me around and they say that when I whenever I
Speaker 1: turned up with my demo, cassette. Listen to this, this
Speaker 1: is what what we're gonna do. There was all there
Speaker 1: was always some kind of plan there, There was always
Speaker 1: some kind of vision there. Um. I don't know how
Speaker 1: I was able to do that. I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: because there was no there was no rock school, there
Speaker 1: was no there was no you couldn't go along to
Speaker 1: the guy along the road whose uncle was in a
Speaker 1: band and could show you how to do There was nothing.
Speaker 1: So it was all on and sheer instinct. Um, but
Speaker 1: I am. It's amazing thing. On Sunday there we played
Speaker 1: a gig in France and this time there was a
Speaker 1: lot of eighties bands playing playing there and names you'll know, Madness,
Speaker 1: the undertones um oh m D. And the amazing thing
Speaker 1: was you talking to those guys. They all went to
Speaker 1: school together. Now, I'm not sure what other industries where
Speaker 1: I guess it doesn't happen now. Bands really even happen now,
Speaker 1: But they all went to school together. Now, I'm not
Speaker 1: even sure what other industries that ever happened. I mean,
Speaker 1: of course we know about Bill Gates and you know
Speaker 1: the how Microsoft began and a rather Apple and and
Speaker 1: those guys they were, but it is amazing. I mean,
Speaker 1: of course that goes back to the ly Beatles and
Speaker 1: the Rolling Stones and the Who and all of those bands.
Speaker 1: It was really it was a school thing and everyone
Speaker 1: has their part to play and it um fits together
Speaker 1: to a point where it stops spitting together. Okay. You
Speaker 1: know when bands get together and they start to rehearse,
Speaker 1: and it's probably you. There's always someone say okay, we
Speaker 1: gotta get gigs, we gotta get an age, and we
Speaker 1: gotta get a manager. How did that all come together? Well,
Speaker 1: I remember, you know people talk about, you know, in
Speaker 1: the early days was also thing of you know, selling
Speaker 1: out and you know you're treating this like it's a business.
Speaker 1: I'd be like, what are you talking about? It is
Speaker 1: a business? For example, business skilled business, lesson one or
Speaker 1: first over a gig playing in a pub in Glasgow
Speaker 1: and we couldn't believe we're even getting the gig, but
Speaker 1: the owner gave us the gig a Monday night that
Speaker 1: would be otherwise empty. We filled it with our friends
Speaker 1: and I went down a storm and you know, we
Speaker 1: looked around. We get paid fifteen pounds. Basically it went
Speaker 1: something like it costs about five pounds to rent the van,
Speaker 1: five pounds to rent the p a, five pounds to
Speaker 1: get a couple of guys to help us, a driver
Speaker 1: or whatever. Basically, it costs us twenty quid to put
Speaker 1: the gig on and we got paid fifteen. So we
Speaker 1: were bankrupt on the first night. That was us. Now,
Speaker 1: as soon as the gig finished, I just thought, how
Speaker 1: are we going to get to the next gig? You know,
Speaker 1: we're five we're five it down. How is this going
Speaker 1: to ever work? So I remember going upstairs and I
Speaker 1: got I got sent upstairs. He was upstairs the office
Speaker 1: to challenge him. It's pretty funny. It's a little Greek guy.
Speaker 1: And I said, listen. He said, you bands great, come back,
Speaker 1: you can play every Monday. I said, no, you this
Speaker 1: won't work. We're bankrupt. What are you talking about, I explained,
Speaker 1: and said, you have to pay us more more money. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not paying what I said. You have to pay
Speaker 1: us more. We'll fill This place would've been empty, and
Speaker 1: I've been here on Monday nights empty. You have to
Speaker 1: pay us more. We can't make it work. Finally he said,
Speaker 1: all right. It was a steakhouse that the seller was
Speaker 1: the music upstairs and we're reading steak and stuff. He said,
Speaker 1: I'll do you a deal. I'll give you twenty five
Speaker 1: pounds if you turn down. And I said, we can't
Speaker 1: turn down. We can't turn down. People have to feel it.
Speaker 1: We can't turn down. It's too loud. I said, what
Speaker 1: makes you say it's too loud? You're up, Pierre, He said,
Speaker 1: the peas are bouncing off the plate. He said, people
Speaker 1: are complaining up here, the plates are rattling. Well, we
Speaker 1: played there for the next six months and every time
Speaker 1: I'd go back and hit him up for more because
Speaker 1: we were then wanting to spread, going playing Aberdeen, going
Speaker 1: playing Dundee, going playing, studdling, and it became a real lesson.
Speaker 1: It became a real you know, a real uh lesson.
Speaker 1: It was. It was already a company. And that's a
Speaker 1: dirty secret, okay. The dream of a band is to
Speaker 1: get a record deal. So you had a manager. It
Speaker 1: was associated with the airs. Do you get a record deal?
Speaker 1: How did that all come together? Well, that was an
Speaker 1: amazing thing. Um Our parents, they were great. Our parents
Speaker 1: chipped in to give us a hundred pounds to go
Speaker 1: into a studio in Glasgow to make a demo type
Speaker 1: um about five or six songs, and I had a
Speaker 1: friend in the local record shop who said, I can
Speaker 1: get you the name of all the and our guys.
Speaker 1: We didn't really we didn't know what in our guys.
Speaker 1: We we came in you but he said, no, you
Speaker 1: just take it down. You give him your tape. He'll
Speaker 1: give it a listen. You know. We were so green,
Speaker 1: but at least being he worked in the record store,
Speaker 1: he was the cool guy. He gave us a name,
Speaker 1: you know, Island Records and whoever the CBS so we had.
Speaker 1: I had checked down with my friend David Henderson. Well
Speaker 1: go around there again. Can we see that in our guy? No,
Speaker 1: are you crazy? You're an appointment? No, no, you've what
Speaker 1: are you crazy? So um usually be girls at the
Speaker 1: front desk, you know, and we would say, oh, that's
Speaker 1: a drug, you know, and maybe you'd like a cassette
Speaker 1: and bob. It took me two weeks to hitchhake home.
Speaker 1: But believe it or not, but tell you my hedgehake home.
Speaker 1: A couple of people had called that the girls had
Speaker 1: been playing the music and the recess usually you know,
Speaker 1: the interns and the receptionists and stuff. They and our
Speaker 1: guys walking through on the way to lunch. What's that
Speaker 1: song called? Who's this? As? These Glasgow guys anyway? Big time?
Speaker 1: We had no manager. Obviously by time I had hedgehacked home.
Speaker 1: My mom said, oh, a couple of guys have called
Speaker 1: for you, And I said, well, who was it? Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I didn't have a pen at the time.
Speaker 1: I was making your dad's dinner, right and I would say, well,
Speaker 1: was it CBS? No, I don't think that was it?
Speaker 1: Was it? E M I No, that sounds familiar a
Speaker 1: christ you know. She said, if they like you, they'll
Speaker 1: call back. Well they did, and don't ask me where
Speaker 1: we got the hootspa for this. But two or three
Speaker 1: called back and they said, listen, we want to bring
Speaker 1: you down play a gig in London, do a showcase. Uh,
Speaker 1: we'll let the rest of the people in the company
Speaker 1: see now. To hear those words was so you know,
Speaker 1: people would have died. The local bands where we were
Speaker 1: would have died to hear the words. To every one
Speaker 1: of them. I said, no, no, no, no, you've got
Speaker 1: to come up here. What At that time people didn't
Speaker 1: travel the provinces. You had to go to London that's
Speaker 1: why a lot of Scottish bands failed. That we go
Speaker 1: to London sudden they would be broke and then they
Speaker 1: would fall out. They'd be living in a squad. I
Speaker 1: knew all that. I said, now you've got to come
Speaker 1: up here. Now we don't, We're not gonna. I said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we play up here. I knew. We played
Speaker 1: every Sunday night in a place called the Mars Bar.
Speaker 1: And by that time, not only were we getting good,
Speaker 1: people would come and see it. They knew every word.
Speaker 1: So when they in our guys eventually made their way
Speaker 1: up and they did, it was like every song was
Speaker 1: a hit because the audiences knew all the choruses and
Speaker 1: and we had worked it out really so well. You know,
Speaker 1: we had our own little light show. I mean it
Speaker 1: was I'm talking about a tiny pub, but in our
Speaker 1: mind it was Madison Square Garden, and we already knew
Speaker 1: and you're gonna laugh at this, the I and he
Speaker 1: we already knew the label we wanted. We wanted to
Speaker 1: be an arista why lou Reid, Patty Smith, iggy Pop,
Speaker 1: and it was an American and our guy there, you
Speaker 1: you may be known, guy called Ben Edmonds who who
Speaker 1: I really liked us, so we eventually saying and we thought, God,
Speaker 1: we're in the coolest label out. I remember going down
Speaker 1: to the Plush Offices and Marble Arts thinking home of
Speaker 1: lou Reid, Patty Smith, Iggy Pop. They only have one
Speaker 1: huge portrait on the wall. When we walked in Barry Manilow,
Speaker 1: I thought, what is this and then I realized that's
Speaker 1: Botty that's paying for all of this, because none of
Speaker 1: the other three were. Let's be honest, um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: that was It was a dream to get a record deal.
Speaker 1: It was a dream too for someone who hung out
Speaker 1: and record stores all my life. To the first day
Speaker 1: when you see your single in the window of the
Speaker 1: store and I can't tell you that thrill of that,
Speaker 1: it's something that will never leave me. Okay, Now, all
Speaker 1: those early albums didn't come out in America. The first
Speaker 1: thing we saw was New Gold Dream, which was on
Speaker 1: A and M Virgin through A and M. It was
Speaker 1: hard to follow what went on before, even though all
Speaker 1: the press SAIDs I mean, so what was going on
Speaker 1: when you run Arista? Well, unfortunately not a lot in
Speaker 1: terms of sales. I mean, what happened was there was
Speaker 1: there was always a couple of says to simple means.
Speaker 1: I mean, we really started out wanting to be an
Speaker 1: art rock band for for lack of a better term,
Speaker 1: and indeed we still do, to be honest with you,
Speaker 1: but we couldn't help ourselves in the sense it there
Speaker 1: was always a few pop tunes in there that would
Speaker 1: make us different from Magazine, that would make us different
Speaker 1: from Wire, um, that would make us different from the
Speaker 1: early ultro box um. But there was always this what
Speaker 1: is it gonna be? And our first album came out
Speaker 1: and based on based on the live work. I mean
Speaker 1: even before even before we played in England, our album
Speaker 1: was out and in the chart just in Scottish sales alone.
Speaker 1: But that was the life thing. The record came Now
Speaker 1: radio weren't up for it. Um. We didn't like it either.
Speaker 1: The debut album I remember thinking, I mean, it was
Speaker 1: a great experience. We worked with legendary producer John Leckey
Speaker 1: and I remember when you think about this, well, but
Speaker 1: John in his well, it was a wisdom. Um. We
Speaker 1: recorded in this residential place with the Rolling Stones mobile
Speaker 1: truck and John thought we'll do that. That was a
Speaker 1: thrill to be inside the Rolling Stones mobile truck. But
Speaker 1: we'll save the budget and I'll take you to Abbey
Speaker 1: Road for ten days. Now. I guess he was thinking
Speaker 1: what an education that will be, and it certainly was,
Speaker 1: because as soon as we went into an Abbey Road
Speaker 1: I completely froze the magnitude of the whole the magnitude.
Speaker 1: I thought, who you know that you're walking past? Where
Speaker 1: you know the Beatles plugged in here and we're pink
Speaker 1: Floyd did? I thought, who the hell needs us? It
Speaker 1: just we should have stayed in Glasgow and stayed in
Speaker 1: the little studio and worked on a much raw sound.
Speaker 1: I mean not all the guys thought that. Some of
Speaker 1: the other guys thought this is great, but I it
Speaker 1: was like being a rookie and you know you're already
Speaker 1: playing the World Series or something. You haven't even up
Speaker 1: until then. We've only been in a studio in Glasgow
Speaker 1: for one hour. I mean it was like, what is this?
Speaker 1: So when the records were making the record, thank so
Speaker 1: the engineers and the production, I realized, now it sounded good.
Speaker 1: What has sounded? It sounded professional, but it was hollow.
Speaker 1: It didn't have the vibe and I we weren't. I was.
Speaker 1: I seen me the only one with the problem, but
Speaker 1: it just didn't make me feel as the demos were feeling.
Speaker 1: So it was the first case of demo whitis. We
Speaker 1: should have just worked on the demos, so we we
Speaker 1: didn't like the first record, but we always kept this
Speaker 1: thing of playing live, and even though we weren't getting
Speaker 1: radio play, we would go round and round, and at
Speaker 1: first there'd be two men and a dog, and then
Speaker 1: you go back a month later and there'd be ten
Speaker 1: men and a dog, and then promoters were starting to say, listen,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen that reaction that you got tonight. So
Speaker 1: we always kept alife then going, even though the first
Speaker 1: two or three records. But by the third record, and
Speaker 1: of course now this is insane, you wouldn't even get
Speaker 1: the chance to make one reagon. Now it the third record,
Speaker 1: we were in a heck of a lot of debt
Speaker 1: um and looked like we're gonna get dropped, and who
Speaker 1: knows what was going to be. But just at that moment,
Speaker 1: this new romantic then came a lot where anyone that
Speaker 1: had a synthesizer and a bit of a disco beat
Speaker 1: um in our guys, we're up for you know. Duran
Speaker 1: Duran we're coming out Spando Ballet, We're coming out these
Speaker 1: the dance charts and billboard. Um. And we had a
Speaker 1: couple of songs that started to feature in that. And
Speaker 1: I have to say by that time our favorite record
Speaker 1: label had become Virgin. That's so much great stuff from
Speaker 1: sex Pistols, xtc um, so on and so forth. Um,
Speaker 1: Virgin started to kind of put out the feelers, well,
Speaker 1: if you get dropped, we're here. And we didn't get dropped.
Speaker 1: To be honest, we had to buy ourselves out. Um.
Speaker 1: That was a bit painful, but Virgin picked us up
Speaker 1: and they were the greatest label to be with, and
Speaker 1: then threw them eventually in Them, which was another great
Speaker 1: grit grit label to be with. But the thing with
Speaker 1: Simple Minds in Europe, UK and States, it was always
Speaker 1: out of kilter because as you you said, those for
Speaker 1: three records were released in America. So who bought you
Speaker 1: out of areas to yourselves or Virgin version brought us out?
Speaker 1: The the the bought us out I think for thirty
Speaker 1: five grand and the first record we did with them,
Speaker 1: Clear the Debts, and from then on in the next
Speaker 1: four or five or number one albums, Okay, so as
Speaker 1: I say, from an American perspective, new Gold dream comes
Speaker 1: out comes out on Gold. Ye know, it really gotta push.
Speaker 1: What was the perspective from your end? It was exciting.
Speaker 1: I mean it's still you know, it gotta push college radio.
Speaker 1: Great friends of hers and especially the younger kids that
Speaker 1: ain't Karen Globear. Jeff Gold was a kid then when
Speaker 1: Isaac's people like that on our side, um starting to push.
Speaker 1: But even with that, Bob, it didn't make a dent
Speaker 1: like it did everywhere else, I mean American Canada and
Speaker 1: make sure we got played there and started to started
Speaker 1: to feel like what we're getting places, you know, selling
Speaker 1: out the Massy Hall, and and and Australia. We were
Speaker 1: having hits, it seemed everywhere else. Let's just say we
Speaker 1: were at the door. We were at the door of
Speaker 1: going into the bigger league. Of course, there was this
Speaker 1: thing just about to come over the horizon called them TV,
Speaker 1: but no one knew about that. Then. Okay, how do
Speaker 1: you end up working with Steve will lily White? What's
Speaker 1: that experience like? And how do you end up with Waterfront? Well?
Speaker 1: That was I mean Steve at that time, that really
Speaker 1: was not very many um not going to see young
Speaker 1: ish rock producers and Steve he had made a bit
Speaker 1: of a name for himself, especially with Peter Gabriel's album,
Speaker 1: that Third Album which blew all our minds. But then
Speaker 1: of course the YouTube records, Big Country. There was a
Speaker 1: point where it just seems Steve was the only guy
Speaker 1: everyone was using drum machines. There was a point where
Speaker 1: it just seemed like Steve was the only guy that
Speaker 1: could make a rock record in the UK. M that's
Speaker 1: not quite true, but that's how it seemed. He everything
Speaker 1: he from XTC, you to UM so it was always
Speaker 1: imminent and then we ended up playing well, we ended
Speaker 1: up playing a few festivals. But this time when I
Speaker 1: said we're going through the big league, same same life,
Speaker 1: we started to get asked to beyond some of the
Speaker 1: bigger festivals in Germany, Holland, Belgium, and then you would
Speaker 1: get to meet really get to meet some of your
Speaker 1: contemporaries and people would hang out. One of the festivals,
Speaker 1: it was a two day festival where we finally caught
Speaker 1: up with you too, and Steve was there with them
Speaker 1: the first day. UM, I gotta get this right. They
Speaker 1: went on before us and the second day we went
Speaker 1: on before them, and that was a heck of an experience.
Speaker 1: They had just come back from the States with a
Speaker 1: gold album with War and to say they were main
Speaker 1: blowing was I mean, there were I could I couldn't
Speaker 1: work out whether the noise were coming for it only
Speaker 1: looked like when you see now the huge show. Back then,
Speaker 1: it looked like there was just a vox ump um
Speaker 1: and they were mind blowingly good. Um so good. In fact,
Speaker 1: I remember someone said to me recently, Um, did you
Speaker 1: did you think then they would become the biggest band
Speaker 1: in the world. I said, well, I knew they would
Speaker 1: become the biggest band in the world. And she said,
Speaker 1: how did you know? And I said, because Bono told
Speaker 1: me they would. Um with that level of self assuredness
Speaker 1: and confidence. Um. But anyway, Steve was there, He's a
Speaker 1: charming guy, had made great, great records, and we were
Speaker 1: we were wanting to be for sound up. Were brought
Speaker 1: in a much heavier drama and it all seemed to
Speaker 1: be It all seemed to be right. So what was
Speaker 1: the experience like in how you know my favorite song
Speaker 1: from that album's Waterfront? How did that come together? But
Speaker 1: that's a song that was written. Really, I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's it's even hard to cause it's not a song
Speaker 1: in a traditional sense, but um lyrically, it's about the
Speaker 1: rebirth of our city, or city Glasgow, as many cities,
Speaker 1: originally began as a fishing village and it goes through,
Speaker 1: it grows, the industrial age comes, the city grows, it
Speaker 1: gets rich, the river dies all that pollution. Then the
Speaker 1: industrial age ends. There's rust everywhere, there's no more work.
Speaker 1: Guess what, the salmon's back now. I'm not saying the
Speaker 1: whole city could live in salmon, Bob, but there was
Speaker 1: something in this about renew, rebirth. Take me to the river. Um.
Speaker 1: When I got the music. Usually the way it works,
Speaker 1: as I get the music, and nine times out of ten,
Speaker 1: I'm blown away with it and I can just hear
Speaker 1: an atmosphere in it. I see a picture in it,
Speaker 1: and usually it's in sync with some words I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about or something. And the first time we played
Speaker 1: that song was at a festival and the song hadn't
Speaker 1: even a song. We hadn't even finished right in the song,
Speaker 1: but sonically it was so strong we thought we could
Speaker 1: just start with this as I kno with and see
Speaker 1: where the audience goes with it, and well they went mental.
Speaker 1: So we knew we were onto something and Steve brought
Speaker 1: a great, great focus to it. But it was the
Speaker 1: base players melody Derek Forbes. I've got to say that. Now,
Speaker 1: what else? You'll be on the phone to me tomorrow. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I have you right here. There's a lot been
Speaker 1: written about tell me the story of Keith Forcey. Don't
Speaker 1: you forget about me? How it happened? Did you like
Speaker 1: it at the time? Did you not want to do it?
Speaker 1: Word was that you resented? That was a hit? What
Speaker 1: was going on? And what are your feelings about it today? Well,
Speaker 1: everything you said there is true. There was, there was.
Speaker 1: I can tell you our story, of course, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you our story. I now keep hearing everyone else's story,
Speaker 1: and I think I don't think that's true. You know,
Speaker 1: I keep hearing that it was offered to this person,
Speaker 1: and offered to that person, and offer this person. It
Speaker 1: may well have been, but I'm maintained if it was
Speaker 1: offered to them, it was offered while we were refusing
Speaker 1: and Deli dallow and you might say the whole approach
Speaker 1: was wrong. We you know, we're all we're young, we
Speaker 1: were brattish. We thought, why the heck would we do
Speaker 1: someone else's song, especially when we had just written this
Speaker 1: thing called Alive and Kicking, which wasn't out yet or recorded,
Speaker 1: but we thought it was the Bee's knees, and we thought,
Speaker 1: why would we do someone else's song? What's this about? Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out that Keith had come to see us play,
Speaker 1: had come backstage. There's a lot of people backstage. I
Speaker 1: didn't get to meet him, but he had given the
Speaker 1: cassette of the song and said, you know, the record
Speaker 1: company is going to be in touch with you soon.
Speaker 1: He had given it to the keyboard player who put
Speaker 1: in his pocket and didn't listen to it for weeks.
Speaker 1: So it was going nowhere, and we started getting this
Speaker 1: these calls UM basically in him, in him, we're kind
Speaker 1: of saying we should have pushed harder with New Gold Dream.
Speaker 1: They saw the success it hid everywhere else. We should
Speaker 1: have pushed harder. Um your next record. And you remember
Speaker 1: the great Charlie Minor. He was on the phone, you
Speaker 1: gotta do this, you gotta do this, this will set
Speaker 1: up your next record. Great. For those who don't know,
Speaker 1: he was one of the greatest promotion guys ever. Um,
Speaker 1: when Charlie got on the phone, it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is serious. He said, this movie is gonna be great,
Speaker 1: and um, this will this will set you up so good.
Speaker 1: You'll love it and you'll love the song. And I
Speaker 1: said what song? And he said, UM, I thought you
Speaker 1: were I thought we were writing this song. None all
Speaker 1: the songs there, they've got the song for the movie.
Speaker 1: It worked with the script. And that doesn't sound good.
Speaker 1: We're our own songs. We'd never the idea of doing
Speaker 1: someone else's song was alien to us. Anyway, we listened
Speaker 1: to the song, and we don't think it's a bad song.
Speaker 1: And I gotta say to you the other day talking
Speaker 1: about the how the way songs turned up on the
Speaker 1: internet now that the original demos, I love to listen
Speaker 1: to the the Jerry Rafferty song and how that dispute was.
Speaker 1: What a great thing to hear that. I played that
Speaker 1: track actually about twenty times the demo. Um. Anyway, we
Speaker 1: listened to it and Keith was singing this song don't
Speaker 1: You Forget About Me, which to me sounded much more
Speaker 1: like the Psychedelic Force, who incidentally is a band we
Speaker 1: all liked it didn't sound like a simple main song.
Speaker 1: It didn't sound like a lyric I would write. Um,
Speaker 1: we just couldn't see, you know why. And we really
Speaker 1: dragged our feet. And I'm not sure about this, not sure,
Speaker 1: not sure. And the way I remember it is that
Speaker 1: Keith eventually turned up, and the story was, you see,
Speaker 1: I already I know will come to him. I already
Speaker 1: had in my men. I wanted to work with Jimmy Iovine.
Speaker 1: I thought we needed someone really to pushes and writing
Speaker 1: better songs. But Keith turned up, and I see, I
Speaker 1: know you're not going to do the song, but maybe
Speaker 1: we'll work in future, and all that well alone, behold,
Speaker 1: we love Keith. Doesn't so much love his song, but
Speaker 1: loved him. And you know, you hung out a couple
Speaker 1: of days and they happen. Why not just try? He would,
Speaker 1: very he would, very shrewd kind of codjoulders. Let's goin
Speaker 1: for a couple of hours. If it works, who knows,
Speaker 1: If it doesn't work, you get the record company off
Speaker 1: your back. Shrewd. Well, we went in and you know,
Speaker 1: literally was about two hours, and we mocked up the
Speaker 1: start to their song with a he he has and
Speaker 1: then we this whole breakdown thing. There was no words
Speaker 1: for that. So I started to sing the corneyst thing
Speaker 1: that came in my mind, La la la la, And
Speaker 1: before we knew it, it was there, and I'll kept
Speaker 1: saying no, no, I got it back. I can't leave
Speaker 1: that quota like that. I have to sing meaningful worlds.
Speaker 1: But they weren't having none of it. And isn't it strange?
Speaker 1: You know? It's the way life throws up these things
Speaker 1: that were not You try, you're very hardest, it's something
Speaker 1: it doesn't work, and then something you couldn't care about.
Speaker 1: You just do it and it becomes, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of a song of his generation, and some might even
Speaker 1: say subsequent generations. So how do you feel about it now? Well,
Speaker 1: the first thing I feel is the first thing I
Speaker 1: feel is this is where it's childish to have any
Speaker 1: problems with it. What I feel about it now is
Speaker 1: when we went in that day, we put our heart
Speaker 1: and soul in it. That was the thing, and we
Speaker 1: put our heart and soul in it. Every night we
Speaker 1: played because that song has given the world over so
Speaker 1: much pleasure to people. Do we play it as sound checks? No?
Speaker 1: Do we played at rehearsals. No. Are we grateful for
Speaker 1: everything it brought to us, Yes, but I also think
Speaker 1: we had a problem. Is it's a stupid problem. We felt, God,
Speaker 1: We've got all that success with that thing, and we
Speaker 1: didn't We didn't deserve it. I think there's a feeling
Speaker 1: that we didn't deserve it. Um. Only therapists could work
Speaker 1: that out, Bob, but none of us go to therapy. Okay,
Speaker 1: so how do you end up working with Jimmy Ivy?
Speaker 1: You know, he just seemed again as a fan of music,
Speaker 1: so many great records. His name seemed to be there.
Speaker 1: I mean the obvious obviously born born a run and
Speaker 1: then a Smith's Tom Petty dire straits. Um. I mean
Speaker 1: that's not bad right there, I have induced I have
Speaker 1: his name kept popping up. The one thing I felt
Speaker 1: after working with Steve, which was the record prior to
Speaker 1: working with Jimmy and Bob Clear Mountain. We can't leave
Speaker 1: Bob out in this, um, I felt Steve. The record
Speaker 1: we did with Steve was a game of two halves.
Speaker 1: You know, the first half I think has got great tracks,
Speaker 1: but the second half not so. I mean one of
Speaker 1: the reasons was we were constantly touring, and we would
Speaker 1: take six weeks to do a record and we will
Speaker 1: be bluffing it. But you can only bluff it so far.
Speaker 1: And I thought, we need someone to really put his
Speaker 1: under pressure with the songs. And someone must have told
Speaker 1: me that that was Jimmy's thing, that he really beat
Speaker 1: you up before you got anywhere near the studio. And
Speaker 1: and I was up for that kind of I was
Speaker 1: up for that that kind of challenge. But unfortunately we
Speaker 1: couldn't get Jimmy to bait for the longest time. And
Speaker 1: he tells the story of he had gone down to Australia.
Speaker 1: I think you remember, well, I know, you know he's
Speaker 1: brilliant Colin hey men at work, who you know. I
Speaker 1: also had this kind of freakish success in the States
Speaker 1: um and I think they weren't playing ball with the
Speaker 1: American record Company as I held it, and they wanted
Speaker 1: to send someone down, and Jimmy got the offer. He
Speaker 1: went down. When he got to Australia, he found out
Speaker 1: that those Australians don't take anything from no one. So
Speaker 1: Jimmy told the story of he was making his way
Speaker 1: back to the airport and he was in the taxi
Speaker 1: with a kid Driver, what do you do? And Jimmy,
Speaker 1: I'm a record producer. Really, who do you work with? Well?
Speaker 1: I worked with Springsteen and I work with you two
Speaker 1: and blah blah blah. Now we haven't been able to
Speaker 1: get Jimmy on the phone anyway. Taxi driver kids, sister, Jimmie,
Speaker 1: this is my band and he plays on Waterfront and
Speaker 1: Jimmy went, wow, that's that band. Um. And of course
Speaker 1: we met up at the time he was I remember
Speaker 1: going down to the studio he was working with Lawn
Speaker 1: Justice and we were so keen, you know, and he said, so,
Speaker 1: what do you got to play me? I should I
Speaker 1: haven't got anything yet, you know, we're just Oh, you
Speaker 1: haven't got anything. And he said, well, you know there's
Speaker 1: that song you've got that. Don't you forget about me?
Speaker 1: Song that's on fire. You better have stuff and I said,
Speaker 1: we will have stuff. We we will, We'll have stuff,
Speaker 1: will have good stuff. The bands and forum just now,
Speaker 1: h yeah, I've heard all that before. He said, I've
Speaker 1: heard it all beat before. I'm not going to near
Speaker 1: you until you have the songs that you can play
Speaker 1: me the songs. And I said, okay, I'll be back
Speaker 1: with songs. Um, he said one. I said, about six weeks.
Speaker 1: He said, he said, You're gonna have ten great songs
Speaker 1: in six weeks. I said yeah. He said, are you
Speaker 1: fucking Bob Dylan? I mean, I've been looking for you.
Speaker 1: I've been looking for you all my life. And I thought,
Speaker 1: oh God, I'm in with someone tough here. And that's
Speaker 1: the way it started. And and I have to say, um,
Speaker 1: at the time, Jimmy, we didn't know this because although
Speaker 1: his name was involved in those records, it seemed to
Speaker 1: be the jury was out. What he actually did. I
Speaker 1: later found out, Um, so what he's a vibe merchant,
Speaker 1: or he creates a culture or whatever. Well, all of
Speaker 1: that's hugely important. A Shelley Yakistas does it. It's Bob
Speaker 1: clear Mountain that does it. But I have to see,
Speaker 1: even to this day, I have been, by far has
Speaker 1: been the best motivator, coach, all around good guy I
Speaker 1: came across. And I'm not saying that just now because
Speaker 1: we're best friends. I haven't spoke to Jimmy for gazillions
Speaker 1: of years. But when I look back now, I mean
Speaker 1: what a coach Jimmy was, And and he knew the
Speaker 1: thing he knew was maybe technically he couldn't articulate it,
Speaker 1: but he knew when it felt right. And for me,
Speaker 1: whether it's movies, whether it's music, where there's books, whereas
Speaker 1: people you hang out with, whether it's food you eat,
Speaker 1: it's all about how it feels. It's all about how
Speaker 1: it makes you feel. And God, Jimmy was so great.
Speaker 1: So you had phenomenal success with that album. Why didn't
Speaker 1: you work with Jimmy again? Because I think we we
Speaker 1: I think we were good at very few people did
Speaker 1: we work with again. I mean, you get a lot
Speaker 1: of bands that don't get wrong with the producers or
Speaker 1: the resenter producers are, or they see them as something
Speaker 1: that's forced on them. Quite often, that's that's the case.
Speaker 1: We loved other producers we worked with, but I think
Speaker 1: we got the best out them on the one we
Speaker 1: we we got it. Okay, that songwriting thing, I got that.
Speaker 1: Now I'm never going to do that again. That that
Speaker 1: lessons learned? What else is out there? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: Trevor Horn comes knocking. That's not bad. I mean when
Speaker 1: you think of the records he was making and so um,
Speaker 1: you know it was time for the new adventure. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that album with Trevor Horn has Belfast Child tell
Speaker 1: us the story there, Well, Trevor was. I mean the
Speaker 1: thing about Trevor is when you think back then, you
Speaker 1: think of those record breaking I mean everything he did
Speaker 1: was epic um where it was yes, whether Frankie goes
Speaker 1: to Hollywood, whether it was ABC seal. And he came
Speaker 1: up at the time, we're working in this studio and
Speaker 1: the countryside. And as soon as he comes and he
Speaker 1: goes to his um, why have you never made some
Speaker 1: kind of Celtic sounding record or song? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: that's the stuff I grew up hating. UM. I mean
Speaker 1: I didn't want to know about all of that stuff
Speaker 1: when I grew up. I wanted to know about New York.
Speaker 1: I wanted to know about Detroit, I wanted to know
Speaker 1: about Los Angeles, wanted to know about the doors. I
Speaker 1: don't want to know about my grandmother's highland home and
Speaker 1: her music and all that stuff. And he said, well,
Speaker 1: I think you're making a mistake there. So he planted
Speaker 1: a seed. And we were working one night, took a
Speaker 1: break for dinner, and I came out in the base
Speaker 1: player we're working with at the time, A fellow called
Speaker 1: John Giblin, a bit older than us. John, and he
Speaker 1: he didn't know folk music, and he didn't know a
Speaker 1: lot of the Celtic stuff. As I came into the room,
Speaker 1: he was there alone and he had taken the base
Speaker 1: off he could play a bit of keys and he
Speaker 1: was playing the most hauntingly beautiful melody. And I just
Speaker 1: sat down listened and at the end I said to him,
Speaker 1: when did you write that? I assumed he had written it,
Speaker 1: because he had he had written a couple of things
Speaker 1: for us. I just assumed he had written it. And
Speaker 1: he said, oh, about two hundred years ago. What are
Speaker 1: you talking about? He said, no, I didn't write this.
Speaker 1: This is from a traditional Irish air called she Moved
Speaker 1: through the fair And I said, really, well, just that
Speaker 1: week there had been it was before the peace process
Speaker 1: in Belfast, there had been a horrendous incident and it
Speaker 1: was all over the news. Now, growing up in Glasgow
Speaker 1: on a clear day and just down the course from
Speaker 1: Glasgow you can actually see Ireland literally, so we grew
Speaker 1: up with all that on a doorstep, all that sadness
Speaker 1: and tragedy of those years, we felt very close to it.
Speaker 1: And with that album, Street fading years. I guess I
Speaker 1: was better at thirty. Then. I guess at a certain time,
Speaker 1: you you kind of you feel the need, you want
Speaker 1: to write about the big themes, the big subjects, and
Speaker 1: at that I'm Mandela apartheid, human rights on a door
Speaker 1: step Belfast. And when he came up with that Irish well,
Speaker 1: when he presented that Irish melody, he said, go and
Speaker 1: check out the song. Someone back and I got obsessed
Speaker 1: by the song. I I, of course, it's the days
Speaker 1: before the internet. But I I ended up with so
Speaker 1: many versions and I thought, I wonder if you can
Speaker 1: just rap your own words to it? Because it was
Speaker 1: obviously public domain. I wasn't a publishing issue. And I thought,
Speaker 1: I wonder if that is I wonder how kosher that is? Um,
Speaker 1: Because for some people in the folk world it's a
Speaker 1: sacred cove, but for other people that's a very nature
Speaker 1: of folk music that they often changed the worlds, and
Speaker 1: every generation came along and they adapted and they put
Speaker 1: their own things. So eventually I thought, fuck it, Um,
Speaker 1: I'm going to write my own story. I'm going to
Speaker 1: write my own song to this melody. Um. Trevor thought
Speaker 1: I was a great idea, and in a sense what
Speaker 1: we put together was it's almost the version of Stairway
Speaker 1: Heaven because that also begins very folk, and then the
Speaker 1: song expands, you know, the band, the solo, and then
Speaker 1: it well again it's a case of well, we'll do it,
Speaker 1: but it will never work. Well it goes to number one.
Speaker 1: I don't know how many countries I went to number one.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately it wasn't for America. But it was Trevor who
Speaker 1: pushed this into that and then for the longest time
Speaker 1: we didn't play it, who started playing it again. It
Speaker 1: seems to have found its time because even though thankfully
Speaker 1: situation in Northern Ireland has changed dramatically, the real lessons
Speaker 1: to the song is about the victims of Irelan somen
Speaker 1: war and right now as we speak, certainly in Europe,
Speaker 1: um that's very prevalent. So whenever we play the song, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's about Belfast, but it's no longer about Belfast, It's
Speaker 1: about wherever war is going on. Okay, the next album
Speaker 1: you work with Trevor's guy, Stephen Lipson, um you do
Speaker 1: Let there Be Love, which is my favorite Simple Minds song.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna ask you how that came together well.
Speaker 1: I mean Stephen was when we realized working with Trevor
Speaker 1: that Stephen was such a huge part of it. I mean,
Speaker 1: Trevor wouldn't deny that he was a brilliant programmer. He
Speaker 1: could play as well, Steve, you know something, he would
Speaker 1: just give me the guitar, you know, and he would
Speaker 1: play Elaine and other people you like, hang on a minute,
Speaker 1: but it would be a great idea. So he was
Speaker 1: also a collaborate or Um. We were under pressure, Bob,
Speaker 1: because after after Belfast Child and that Street Fighting year's
Speaker 1: record that didn't do anything in America thankfully did well elsewhere,
Speaker 1: we were under pressure to try and get back to
Speaker 1: a more classic Simple Minds song in relation to a
Speaker 1: sort of alive in kicking or something. So if I
Speaker 1: was being crude, I would say that we we threw
Speaker 1: ourselves and they're trying to get something in that vein
Speaker 1: again and it worked. I mean again, it's a song
Speaker 1: when we played live, very soulful verse, but big soaring chorus.
Speaker 1: I mean they say that writers only have one or
Speaker 1: two themes, whether you're Bob Dylan or whatever, and there's
Speaker 1: always been a great optimism simple Minds music I think
Speaker 1: a great feeling of don't give up, keep the faith,
Speaker 1: and essentially under a lot of the lyrics to those songs,
Speaker 1: that's that's the message. Okay, you know I love the
Speaker 1: next five good news. But if you look back at
Speaker 1: this period, which ultimately leads to your h the Danu
Speaker 1: mar In pulling away, would you do anything different? I
Speaker 1: mean what what we would have done different was not
Speaker 1: leave so much time between albums. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: if you leave two or three years between albums, I mean,
Speaker 1: you're asking for problems. But there was reasons for those
Speaker 1: gaps as well. I mean, we as a touring band,
Speaker 1: if you tour for a year and when we throwed,
Speaker 1: it would be the best part of a year because
Speaker 1: you know, that was still how we made our coin,
Speaker 1: and that's still the life we wanted to live. So
Speaker 1: if you tour for a year, m the time you
Speaker 1: come off of that, and by this time, we're getting
Speaker 1: older and and and you know, you have other things
Speaker 1: in your life. Kids, wife's obligations, parents are getting older. Um,
Speaker 1: you've got to give time to that. Then you got
Speaker 1: to right and then it's you know, before you know it,
Speaker 1: three years is gone. Um, and a new generation comes along, so, UM,
Speaker 1: that is it. But I but I don't know. You
Speaker 1: can't have it all. Maybe some people can, I don't think.
Speaker 1: So you can't have it all. Something has to give,
Speaker 1: and you lose out in one area, you hope your
Speaker 1: life gets enriched in another area. Um, A spaces is made.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of hard to Um, it's hard. I
Speaker 1: mean I also think I also think we were running,
Speaker 1: you know, we were starting to run on fumes too.
Speaker 1: I mean, how many songs have you got in you?
Speaker 1: How much? You know? Sometimes you just have to head
Speaker 1: for the hills and give people a break. People have
Speaker 1: had enough for you, time to you know, time to
Speaker 1: move on and and see. I think the trick then
Speaker 1: is it's getting back to super talking. You've got ahead
Speaker 1: for the hills and try and not do anything too desperate,
Speaker 1: you know, because it's uh, be patient, get all the
Speaker 1: things in your life. Stock up the pool again, because
Speaker 1: what are you going to write from. You have to
Speaker 1: you have to fill up the well. You have to
Speaker 1: get hungry again. Um. Your question was what would we
Speaker 1: two different? What I would say is I'm glad. I'm
Speaker 1: glad of something that we didn't do. We didn't get
Speaker 1: embittered because you know, sometimes you meet people that can
Speaker 1: have had it and they lost it, and um, it's
Speaker 1: everyone else's fault, you know that what all those them
Speaker 1: something Although the record company didn't do this, oh the
Speaker 1: media wrote that all this. Sometimes you just got to
Speaker 1: take it on the chin. You know what, are you
Speaker 1: gonna run home your mommy? It is what it is.
Speaker 1: So you ultimately did get married and have kids. How
Speaker 1: did you keep that marriage going for so long as
Speaker 1: a road musician. What are your kids up to today? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was. I mean, of course
Speaker 1: it's subjective of what is long. But you know, one
Speaker 1: of the big stories in my life would always be
Speaker 1: was meeting Chrissy Haynd and marry and Chrissy Haynd. I mean,
Speaker 1: at the Chris, he's older than me. She she's she's
Speaker 1: your age, Bob. I think maybe a couple of years older.
Speaker 1: She's eight years older than me. Um, meeting someone, I
Speaker 1: mean everyone has this image of Chrissy and I have
Speaker 1: to say it. You know, she she does live up
Speaker 1: to it most of the time, but there's a whole
Speaker 1: other side of our But she's a pussy cat and
Speaker 1: when I met her, I was twenty four. She was
Speaker 1: there too. I don't even think i'd even met. I
Speaker 1: don't think i'd ever even live with a girlfriend before that,
Speaker 1: or a woman. But my band was sailing, we were
Speaker 1: having hits. I was maybe there was a piece of
Speaker 1: me thinking this is a piece of cake. I need
Speaker 1: a real challenge. Well, believe me, I got one. And
Speaker 1: but looking back now, I mean, amazing girl from Ohio.
Speaker 1: I was such a fan as well. I mean, what
Speaker 1: an artist she is. But she'd been around the block,
Speaker 1: and kind of no one I hung out with had
Speaker 1: been around the block more than me. I need. I
Speaker 1: didn't have any older brothers or sisters. She was at
Speaker 1: Kent State. She had all that. She from Ohio. She
Speaker 1: knew all the Midway. She had an amazing taste in
Speaker 1: music through listening to the radio. She in New Country,
Speaker 1: she knew blues, she knew rock. She's the only person
Speaker 1: now with to this day who would say, Bruce Springsteen,
Speaker 1: give me a break. It's Mitch Rider you want to see. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean she there was such an education there. Um
Speaker 1: really great, great woman. But mh. You find out that
Speaker 1: the thing that excites you the most quite often it's
Speaker 1: not the thing that's good for you. Um. That can
Speaker 1: be heroin, or it can be junk food, or it
Speaker 1: can be relationships or whatever. It wasn't meant to last long.
Speaker 1: To be honest, you see. Um hey, it makes sense, Maddie.
Speaker 1: Someone in the same industry, they'll understand. You know, if
Speaker 1: you work in a kick shop, Mary, whatever the other
Speaker 1: person work, you'll understand you're from the same line. But
Speaker 1: it's very hard to make it work together. Um. I
Speaker 1: didn't even know who I was then. I was still
Speaker 1: a kid. But we have not only a kid, we
Speaker 1: have grandkids and still in touch and still good good dialogue.
Speaker 1: And I'm still a fan. And how about Patsy Kensit
Speaker 1: after that, well, Patsy Patsy. I I was the elder one,
Speaker 1: and I think at the time, well, you know, I'm smitten.
Speaker 1: My kids loved her still do Um. I think I
Speaker 1: helped her out of a jam. Sometimes sometimes you love
Speaker 1: somebody because because you you think you can do something
Speaker 1: for them that makes you also feel good. And that
Speaker 1: was the case there. I'm still a fairly young young man,
Speaker 1: and I think a part of me felt it felt good.
Speaker 1: But you're right, then you're going tour and then you're
Speaker 1: not there for this, and you're not there for that,
Speaker 1: and then resentments begin and and I mean, and I
Speaker 1: I I mean, I have to see I'm I can't
Speaker 1: be very selfish. I really can. I'm very selfish with
Speaker 1: my time. I'm very selfish headspace, and I spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time alone. Um. I love my band and
Speaker 1: I love being out in the road, I love playing.
Speaker 1: Um maybe it just wasn't for me, Okay, but you're
Speaker 1: in a long term relationship now, right, Yeah, for the
Speaker 1: longest time, I've been with a Japanese woman. And when
Speaker 1: I said a little both finding someone who's good for you,
Speaker 1: who can organize everything as well as make you feel good,
Speaker 1: and everyone loves And also, I mean, the other thing
Speaker 1: is it's so great to be with people from other cultures.
Speaker 1: A lot of people will tell you that's not the case.
Speaker 1: You should be with with your own only. But it's
Speaker 1: been so enriching, not only to live in places, but
Speaker 1: I mean, we are I'm so gladgo through and through
Speaker 1: the rock I made from his Glasgow, through and through.
Speaker 1: But it's been shaped by your experiences, by the people
Speaker 1: who have been with different cultures, to get a language
Speaker 1: to go to Japan to spend time there. I mean
Speaker 1: it's been sort of walting. Your band has a lot
Speaker 1: of live albums, and I gotta say, the one in
Speaker 1: the Silver Box just unbelievable. And of course it's different
Speaker 1: from what it was prior to the Internet. You know,
Speaker 1: when live album was something rare, was treated like a
Speaker 1: regular release. Now there's all this stuff on YouTube, you know,
Speaker 1: And he thought, I mean, the Stones go on put
Speaker 1: on a live album from every tour, but most people
Speaker 1: do not there any thought about how many live albums,
Speaker 1: whether to put it out, not to put it out. No,
Speaker 1: I think you should always put it out. If if
Speaker 1: if if, I mean if you go to hardcore, I'm
Speaker 1: in the Grid, the Grateful Dead, they're They're the ones
Speaker 1: where I think you should put as long as the quality.
Speaker 1: If you believe in the quality, um then and if
Speaker 1: you're a great live band and you're always adding stuff
Speaker 1: or you've different versions or or then it it merits it.
Speaker 1: I think every every couple of tours, let's let's say,
Speaker 1: and we're still from that thing. I mean, going back
Speaker 1: to it when I said to you as a kid
Speaker 1: at sound checks, what did I learn at that scene? Bands?
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you got all these gigs, and
Speaker 1: you see people who are good, and then you see
Speaker 1: bands that are artists, bands whatever, who are great, and
Speaker 1: the difference between good and great is colossal. Some people
Speaker 1: can make the room jump up and down. Some people
Speaker 1: can make the walls reverby, some people can the gig finishes,
Speaker 1: you're still thinking about it two weeks later, and then
Speaker 1: there's other bands come in the plane. You think, oh,
Speaker 1: that was good, and you don't think about it again
Speaker 1: the next day. Well, we knew from the early days
Speaker 1: what kind of band we would like to be in,
Speaker 1: and and we still wrestle with that challenge, and we
Speaker 1: still documented, and that's where the live albums come in. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's go back to your point about you can be selfish.
Speaker 1: Selfish has a bad connotation, but what you're saying is
Speaker 1: you need your alone time. Does your present girlfriend of
Speaker 1: long standing does she respect that or have you adjusted? Also,
Speaker 1: of course there's the conundrum of needing your alone time
Speaker 1: and then getting on stage two thousands. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: the partner I've had for the longest time, we spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time apart. I'm in Sicily. She comes
Speaker 1: out a lot but we have a place also in Niece.
Speaker 1: She has her own life there, but of a business there,
Speaker 1: and never once has there been a complaint. She's busy.
Speaker 1: She does our thing and when we see each other
Speaker 1: as great. When we don't, when we're not with each other,
Speaker 1: we're doing our own things. We're growing up, we're adults. Um.
Speaker 1: I think we've at a certain age. You should get
Speaker 1: smart about things. There has to be space. There's got
Speaker 1: to be space, and certainly for for me, I spend
Speaker 1: I mean, I get up. It's the irony. I thought
Speaker 1: I'd get in a rock and roll band because I
Speaker 1: could lie in bed all day, and I find that
Speaker 1: I'm wide awake at five in the morning. Doesn't matter
Speaker 1: what it is. Um I never thought you would be
Speaker 1: able to listen to rock music or right rock song
Speaker 1: at five in the morning. Just doesn't seem the right thing.
Speaker 1: Believe me, you can. Your brain is sharp, it's clear.
Speaker 1: The rest of the world there's not up yet. You
Speaker 1: can get more done in those three or four hours
Speaker 1: than the rest of the day. Um So, And I'm
Speaker 1: I'm very I'm very protective now of that. I said selfish,
Speaker 1: But you know, this is the stuff that brings home
Speaker 1: the corn. This is the stuff that puts food on
Speaker 1: the table. This is the stuff that puts a roof
Speaker 1: over our heads. That's the way it works. There has
Speaker 1: to be time. You've got to read, you've gotta listen,
Speaker 1: you've gotta think, you have to room or try things
Speaker 1: and get them wrong. It's a full on commitment. And
Speaker 1: Charlie's the same now his kids are grown up. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's a full wee go there Monday Friday, we
Speaker 1: work Monday Friday. And and of course we don't have
Speaker 1: to do that. We don't have to in terms of
Speaker 1: being able to eat for the rest of our lives.
Speaker 1: Are We're into it. That's what it is. It's a
Speaker 1: sacred thing. If you have an art, it's it's sacred.
Speaker 1: And your archets jail. Your archet's jealous on you as
Speaker 1: well if you stop doing that. The muscles, the creative muscles,
Speaker 1: and I believe there's such a thing. You know, they're
Speaker 1: not long and this integrating. Um, it's hard to get
Speaker 1: back on a horse. So you you really have to
Speaker 1: keep it. You you can't do it half measures and
Speaker 1: anyone around you. That's the deal. Like certainly understand the
Speaker 1: selfish alone time. I mean, when I'm concentrate, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: like a percent fair. I don't like to be interrupted,
Speaker 1: and the average person just can't understand it because they're
Speaker 1: just used to go out. I go for days whereout
Speaker 1: speaking to anyone. I mean, I just go for days
Speaker 1: whether they're speaking to anyone. I mean, I'm also very
Speaker 1: I'm also very lucky it there is people who put
Speaker 1: up with it um um. But I like a lot
Speaker 1: of time alone. I mean, in sicily, as soon as
Speaker 1: I've done my three or four um hours in the
Speaker 1: morning working, whether I'm up in the hills, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: so you come back to a biblical landscape. They only
Speaker 1: sound up. There's goatbells and crickets. But I don't meditate
Speaker 1: the way people conventional meditation. But that is my meditation.
Speaker 1: You go walking, you hill walk, and you get into
Speaker 1: a pace you're breathing. Problems come at the forefront before
Speaker 1: you know it. You've got to I've got an idea
Speaker 1: about that. Oh, I mean, I find all of that.
Speaker 1: That's the only way I know how a function. I mean, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: I've asked my my kids, you know, because every well, Dad,
Speaker 1: you were never there for us were there, you were
Speaker 1: all You're always there, you were always there somehow managed
Speaker 1: to make it work. Um. But certainly in that thing,
Speaker 1: I mean on the on tour, if it's a night off,
Speaker 1: I'll never go out with the band, or and I
Speaker 1: go on my own, I go walk around the city,
Speaker 1: or I go whatever. Um. At the gig between four
Speaker 1: o'clock and well after the sound check two eight o'clock,
Speaker 1: I don't speak to anyone. I don't see anyone. Um.
Speaker 1: The great thing about of course, you get to save
Speaker 1: your voice. Um. And then when it comes time to
Speaker 1: spring into action and be present, whether it's on stage
Speaker 1: or whether it's the participating in life with your friends
Speaker 1: or whatever, I'm fully there. I'm never there, and I'm
Speaker 1: never there but not there, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: But that's the deal exactly. So a lot of you
Speaker 1: know their legendary stories that people become successful, they buy
Speaker 1: their parents a house, they buy them a car. Did
Speaker 1: you do anything like that all of that? And it
Speaker 1: was with the greatest pleasure. I mean, I'll tell your
Speaker 1: story here. That's pretty good because you know, Richard Brownson
Speaker 1: gets a bad rap. But I'll tell you this. So
Speaker 1: when I was living in Uh. I told you, I
Speaker 1: grew up in this high rise flat. And even when
Speaker 1: the band was still touring and just starting to break
Speaker 1: through and being in the newspaper, has been on TV,
Speaker 1: I think had their first hit, but we had all
Speaker 1: that debt to pay off, so we didn't have money.
Speaker 1: But I came back home and and I didn't have
Speaker 1: a place in my own lit because we were always
Speaker 1: in tour, so why would I So I'd come back
Speaker 1: home and crash mom and Dad's council apartment. Well, I
Speaker 1: came home and the irony because parents were always afraid
Speaker 1: when we get in this business, that would be drugs
Speaker 1: around and we would all end up. They saw heroin
Speaker 1: before I saw heroin because at that time it came
Speaker 1: into Glasgow and it was starting to come into the
Speaker 1: housing projects and schemes. Anyway, I turned up and a
Speaker 1: couple of houses you know, had become hangouts for drug
Speaker 1: drug addicts and stuff. So I thought, now, it's probably
Speaker 1: about fifty pounds a week then and I heard about
Speaker 1: this you can get a mortgage thing, and you know,
Speaker 1: and back then, of course, the bank managers before the
Speaker 1: computer says no, the bank managers were kind of allowed
Speaker 1: to um, go on a hunch, and my manager at
Speaker 1: the time said, go along in the bank manager, simple
Speaker 1: mains everyone in Glasgow No, simple mazer. He'll know you
Speaker 1: and he'll listen to you. So I saw this house.
Speaker 1: Mom and dad loved it. I couldn't see to my dad. Incidentally,
Speaker 1: I was buying it for them because you too too
Speaker 1: much prayed. I said it was for me and they
Speaker 1: would look after it while I wasn't tour because it
Speaker 1: just would have felt wrong. So we saw this house.
Speaker 1: I think it costs sixty grand. Great part of Glasgow Garden.
Speaker 1: All of this just beautiful. Can't believe that no one
Speaker 1: from our family has ever had a place like this.
Speaker 1: So I go along the bank manager and I think
Speaker 1: I'm all prepared, and he said, yep, yeah, my my
Speaker 1: daughter loves you and you know she's been at the gigs.
Speaker 1: I know you're doing well and blah blah blah. What
Speaker 1: what's going on? So I explained to him. I explained
Speaker 1: the situation and he listens to every word. Then he says, um.
Speaker 1: He says, well, that's great. I know that house. I
Speaker 1: live in the area. I know the house you're talking about. Great,
Speaker 1: so great, How are we going to do this, and
Speaker 1: I said, well, you know the mortgage, you're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna look at the mortgage and he said, yeah, what
Speaker 1: are you gonna give me? Meaning deposit? And I said,
Speaker 1: what do you mean is you had a guarantee. I
Speaker 1: think I was twenty two at the time. My guarantee, Bob.
Speaker 1: I tookout all these live reviews that that we're saying,
Speaker 1: you know, simple Mains, Band of the future, Simple Mains,
Speaker 1: They're gonna be huge. He looked at them and went,
Speaker 1: that's what you're gonna give me, these three or four
Speaker 1: bits of paper. I said, yeah, look, I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's we're happening. And he said, no, that's not how
Speaker 1: it works. You need to give me a deposit fift
Speaker 1: I said, well, I haven't got any money. He said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know what to say. And as
Speaker 1: I was getting up, he said, do you know anyone
Speaker 1: way any money? And I said no, no, I don't
Speaker 1: um anyway. Two days later I got a call from him.
Speaker 1: He says, I can't believe it. Richard Branson just phoned me.
Speaker 1: He's going to cover it. He's gonna cover it. We're
Speaker 1: on if Richard Branson is going to cover it. We're
Speaker 1: on and to this day I will always be thankful.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we have the whole thing with
Speaker 1: record industries, and we know the record deals where you
Speaker 1: get screwed for people say well, at least the bank
Speaker 1: when you pay them back. Well, you know, banks would
Speaker 1: never have given your money and make records, but Richard
Speaker 1: Branson did and I will forever be grateful to him
Speaker 1: for that. So, yeah, all of the band looked after
Speaker 1: their parents and their stuff, and and you know now
Speaker 1: it's to do with the nieces and the nephews and
Speaker 1: the sons and daughters, and we try to help out
Speaker 1: there as well. So you have a new album in
Speaker 1: the pipeline, you obviously you're making the music because you're
Speaker 1: driven to do that. What are your expectations? Most of
Speaker 1: your contemporaries, if there's a together, don't even put out
Speaker 1: new music. So you're doing this. Are you saying, well,
Speaker 1: this is what I do, the fans will like it,
Speaker 1: or you know, there's the old paradigm of having a hit.
Speaker 1: Who even knows what it hit is? Today? Top forty
Speaker 1: is certainly in America does not play this kind of music.
Speaker 1: They're play popper hip hop. So I restate my point,
Speaker 1: what are your expectations? We'll go back if you have
Speaker 1: the music and you you just have to make it.
Speaker 1: That's it. If you've got songs, I mean, how are
Speaker 1: you gonna stop? If it's still in you and still
Speaker 1: wants you know, wants to be held. When I say
Speaker 1: wants to be held, I want to hear it, Charlie
Speaker 1: wants I wants to hear it. We want to test
Speaker 1: or say where artists. This isn't just a scam where artists.
Speaker 1: We've been doing this since we're fourteen sixty three. We've
Speaker 1: been writing songs out of the lace. What are we
Speaker 1: just gonna give that up? When you love it, when
Speaker 1: you enjoy it, when it's how you see the world. No,
Speaker 1: but we know the realities and you have just pointed
Speaker 1: out many of them. As it happens again with simple Mans.
Speaker 1: Were fortunate. Our records do break even. Okay, it's the
Speaker 1: hardcore and they buy them and all the formats, but
Speaker 1: they're made with budgets and it works. The biggest thing
Speaker 1: is it refreshes everything. Now, I know you're not going
Speaker 1: to go and tour and play the whole record, but
Speaker 1: if you two killer songs that can and think, you know,
Speaker 1: if it's got to live up with your whole catalog,
Speaker 1: and that's a great, great thing. It revitalizes everything, rejuvenates everything,
Speaker 1: and you get to feel that you're just not in
Speaker 1: a museum. You know that it's not just a museum.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know people do and affair on them,
Speaker 1: they go around. But we're artists, we're creative people. So
Speaker 1: that's how we express ourselves. That's how There's always this
Speaker 1: this thing of you know, one more swing at it,
Speaker 1: one more swing, maybe we'll write that song. Um, And
Speaker 1: for us it worked. So there's no way up until
Speaker 1: now we have ever thought of given that up. What
Speaker 1: about the issue of playing that music live? Well, as
Speaker 1: I said last night on this tour, I gotta tell
Speaker 1: you we were out for four months. No Um. During
Speaker 1: the week we played about anything between four or five people,
Speaker 1: and at the weekend it gives up to ten or fifteen.
Speaker 1: It's not bad. We played twenty three songs um. Right
Speaker 1: now the new album isn't coming out to October. We
Speaker 1: play a couple of songs now. The songs we play
Speaker 1: are not the slow, moody songs that the songs were
Speaker 1: the big chunky choruses that even if you don't know them,
Speaker 1: audiences go, I don't know this, but I I like it.
Speaker 1: I'm getting it. So we always we play those those songs.
Speaker 1: And we played one last night for the first time,
Speaker 1: a song called first You Jump, And today among all
Speaker 1: our social networks, everyone's talking about it. Within our gang,
Speaker 1: everyone's talking about it, and oh, we had twenty seconds
Speaker 1: of the song. We had this it um it keeps
Speaker 1: the heartbeat going. So we've had this whole COVID situation,
Speaker 1: but generally speaking, how much do you want to play live?
Speaker 1: How many dates in a year? And can you and
Speaker 1: where can you play? And where would you not have
Speaker 1: an audience that you wish you could play? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: it was great the last few years to get back
Speaker 1: to America because there was a point what I thought
Speaker 1: maybe that was not going to happen, and there was
Speaker 1: a tour book there. Obviously didn't happen with the COVID
Speaker 1: no that, but it had the radio cities in it
Speaker 1: and what simple amazing radio city. Wow. I didn't think
Speaker 1: that's something I would see again, and others, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: there is still something about is that I wish I
Speaker 1: wish at the time we had appreciated more, um working
Speaker 1: in America, really getting you know, so much of that
Speaker 1: stuff is kind of mythical to us. We grew up
Speaker 1: with the movies, we grew up with the music. I
Speaker 1: love going to those old halls now that are re refurbished,
Speaker 1: and you look at the people who played them, not
Speaker 1: just musicians, actors and and and it's a guy in
Speaker 1: the band, a big, big Beatles fan. He'll go the
Speaker 1: Beatles played here in nine. I say, like, screw the Beatles,
Speaker 1: the Marks Brothers played here. I mean it just I
Speaker 1: wish we had worked more in America. Now, um we were,
Speaker 1: We are getting the chance to go again. We will
Speaker 1: go again, but probably for us it would be better
Speaker 1: to to to you know, hook up with another band
Speaker 1: and and if you're going there, you may as well
Speaker 1: try and get across to a bigger audience. That's about
Speaker 1: the only place that that I wish we had worked more.
Speaker 1: Tell me about two peak experiences. Whether it'd be meeting someone,
Speaker 1: hearing your song on the radio, playing a gig, Well,
Speaker 1: there's that great thing. I'm meeting your heroes and you
Speaker 1: should never meet your heroes, or meeting your heroes, and um,
Speaker 1: not only have I met many of my music heroes,
Speaker 1: I've I've got to even stand at a microphone with them.
Speaker 1: Are the ones that spring to mine is Peter Gabriel
Speaker 1: who took us on tour and and you know the
Speaker 1: humility and the sheer artistry of that guy, that was
Speaker 1: really something. Lou Reid, who we managed to do a
Speaker 1: cameo on one of our records, well, to me, that's
Speaker 1: the equivalent of having Picasso. I mean that was just
Speaker 1: mind blowing. But the story we tell a lot of
Speaker 1: a good, great story because for people our generation, David
Speaker 1: Boye was the guy, and I'll tell you a story
Speaker 1: of them. You have heard of the famous studio. It's
Speaker 1: actually in Wales called Rockfield Studios and it's a country studio.
Speaker 1: So um, we were booked in to go there and
Speaker 1: we turned up and it's really rural. There's two studios
Speaker 1: and we're booked into the little studio and as we're
Speaker 1: turning up we're thinking, I wonder who's in the big,
Speaker 1: big studio. I want to watch stars there. It was
Speaker 1: the most unlikely thing, but Iggy Pop was there? What
Speaker 1: Iggy Pop in the Welsh country side? This is eight,
Speaker 1: not seventy nine. Maybe, um, Iggy pops there. We're all
Speaker 1: Iggy fans. We can't believe it, but you know, um,
Speaker 1: it turns out one of the guys in the band,
Speaker 1: Barry Andrews, we had met him on tour. He was
Speaker 1: a bit of a fan. So when the Eggy sessions
Speaker 1: we're finished, he would come over and tell us what
Speaker 1: was going on. And at the time Iggy was always
Speaker 1: getting the confused on the wagon. He was clean and
Speaker 1: he wasn't drinking, and he wasn't anything well until we
Speaker 1: turned up. That was because at midnight every night, it
Speaker 1: was always like a a cat creeping over the wall.
Speaker 1: He would come out of our place. And we were
Speaker 1: young guys. We brought a lot of things with us
Speaker 1: to the countryside, including pretty girls and and all the
Speaker 1: other goodies. And then he would come in every day
Speaker 1: and we just canna be like, you know, we just
Speaker 1: sit at the feet of James Austerberg and it just
Speaker 1: just agreed it. And one lady says something about, oh, well,
Speaker 1: David's coming up on Saturday, and we're sure, what I
Speaker 1: wonder if it's the David we're all thinking of, But yeah,
Speaker 1: David's coming up David's coming up again Saturday afternoon, said
Speaker 1: that's you know, there's a limit? Does a Bentley pulling
Speaker 1: up outside this country? Lane? Boy gets out. I think
Speaker 1: the album was being produced by M James. I forget
Speaker 1: the other guy's name from the studges um um anyway,
Speaker 1: without hours or punt of this chaos boys taken over
Speaker 1: and all manner of breaknast. We're hearing as kind of
Speaker 1: through the wall, but we don't think we're going to
Speaker 1: be pretty to any of it. And run about midnight,
Speaker 1: Eggie walks in again, and I can't believe it's a vision.
Speaker 1: It just seems so unlikely. Boys with them. He's wearing
Speaker 1: this black we call him boilers suit, like a kind
Speaker 1: of industrial suit. He's got a ton of hy nicking
Speaker 1: in his hand and a huge bit of shedar cheese.
Speaker 1: It's the most unlikely. And they came in and they're
Speaker 1: looking for something to smoke, and they're looking for and
Speaker 1: her crew have got plenty of that. And then Boy said,
Speaker 1: tell you what, asking what are you doing? What's this?
Speaker 1: He said, listen, we're working in this song and we
Speaker 1: need a chorus. We need like a football courtus, we
Speaker 1: need a chance, we need ten people, Why don't you
Speaker 1: all come in so we get to trip through into
Speaker 1: the next studio. I mean, can you imagine Bob none, none,
Speaker 1: None of us had a camera. No one had a camera.
Speaker 1: Back then, no one walked around with a camera. So
Speaker 1: we go in and Boie is very much taken over.
Speaker 1: It's a song called play It's safe. I mean, unless
Speaker 1: the record was there, I would still be thinking I
Speaker 1: was imagining all of this is so unlikely. But he
Speaker 1: guesses around the microphone and it's the chortus, and every
Speaker 1: wants to jump in and sing this quotas and bit
Speaker 1: by bit, but we start saying like people who don't
Speaker 1: sing professionally step back, and at the point there was
Speaker 1: only iggy boy, I can't believe I'm seeing this, and
Speaker 1: myself standing at the microphone. And as I say, if
Speaker 1: that record hadn't been released with the credits on it,
Speaker 1: I could see people thinking that never happened. But it
Speaker 1: did did happen. So that was a particularly great moment.
Speaker 1: But I think the moment that really tops it all
Speaker 1: was when we played At the time it was called
Speaker 1: the Nelson Mandela Birthday Parties seventieth birthday were they were
Speaker 1: still calling for his freedom, and we had a big
Speaker 1: part of that. We wrote a song for it and
Speaker 1: Lo and behold again. Less than a year later, Mandela
Speaker 1: walked out and he came to London to thank all
Speaker 1: the artists who were involved. And that was a really
Speaker 1: special moment because little Stephen Bonsan was there. Gabriel every
Speaker 1: you know, when you do those events and when you
Speaker 1: write those songs, you're fully committed, but there is a
Speaker 1: voice in your head saying does it matter? Does it
Speaker 1: really matter? Does can music really change? Were old events
Speaker 1: and to him and delacy he explained to all. He said,
Speaker 1: listen when it was a great thing. He said, when
Speaker 1: there was no voice allowed, we somehow always held the
Speaker 1: voice of the artist. Now that may have been the writers,
Speaker 1: the poets, the painters, the songwriters, and that was quite
Speaker 1: an amazing thing, um to be in the presence of him. Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, I think we're gonna call it a
Speaker 1: day today. Man, Jim, you're unbelievable, You're intelligent, you tell
Speaker 1: a great story. I could talk for hours more. I
Speaker 1: want to thank you so much for doing this My pleasure, Bob,
Speaker 1: keep up with good work. Love listening to the podcast.
Speaker 1: So many of the people you talked to, people who
Speaker 1: influenced me, or it's it's it's just wonderful. And also
Speaker 1: a few places where we can listen to this kind
Speaker 1: of thing. So I say that really is a fan
Speaker 1: of the show and and of the writings. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: smiling broadly. People can't see that on an audio podcast
Speaker 1: until next time. This is Bob Left sets h