mind on music

Rip It Up, Issue 64, 1 November 1982, Page 22

mind on music

George Kay

During their brief two-day (and two nights at Mainstreet) stay in New Zealand, Simple Minds made lasting impressions all of them favourable. They brought a little bit of Glaswegian empathy and warmth and a whole wave of rock'n'roll spirit and feeling. You need look no further than New Gold Dream to discover a band who are on the threshold of merging .real emotions and discovering new sensitivities. A soul record in every meaning of the word. Live and the first night at Mainstreet. The band emerged during the P.A. introduction of 'Somebody Up There Likes You' and they went straight for the tape with an athletic set focussing on the new album and past high points including devastating versions of 'I Travel', Celebration' and a faster rerun of 'Sweat in Bullet'. The band were excelling but parts of the packed Mainstreet audience were restless, seemingly intent on using the concert as an opportunity to attract attention. No encore. In the dressing room after the gig, the band explained that there was no encore because certain people in the crowd were endangering others. This was a subject that was to be broached in more detail the next day. It's Tuesday afternoon at the RTC offices in Parnell. The local rock'n'roll press and media faces are noshing up as Jim Kerr,' obviously shy and apprehensive at the size of the reception, Charlie - Burchill and Michael Mac Neill are ushered in. Conspicuously absent are bassist Derek Forbes who cut a bottle and a half of Jack Daniels the night before and was too tired to make it and drummer Mike Ogletree who was out buying equipment. - Anyway with the best interview room full of Radio With Pictures crew, lights and Karen Hay, Jim Kerr sat on an empty bread tray in the kitchen to talk to the Auckland Star. Patience and finally Rip It Up manage to guide Jim Kerr into an office with chairs. A step up from the kitchen. Right Jim, what about last night? "There was a drunken quantity who were making it rough for everyone. At the start everyone was getting into it and then the attention was getting moved as you had to watch you didn't get banged on the head. It was stupid.'' At this point Charlie Burchill arrives and believe me, he's Glasgow sunshine. Talkative and direct, there's no middle ground. He was annoyed about the first night:' "People could've been really badly hurt down the front, they could've been cut in half as there was no way they could push the audience back and there was a real bad feeling beginning to spread." But that sort of behaviour at gigs is commonplace here. . Jim:'" l know, but it shouldn't be commonplace. I've spoken to a few people who say bands never come here and no wonder they don't." - But what about Australia? Jim: "Much more civilised. If you get twelve drunken yobs who spoil it for the rest then that's not on. They're not there for the music, they're there because there's a crowd or a rage and we're not a rage band. If we felt we had played crap then we would've been back to justify it but we felt that we'd done well. But towards the end it was just, these fuckin' yobbos." Charlie: "Put us in control of it and we'd handle it no problem but there were five security guards there who told us during the day that they wanted to handle it themselves." Jim: "Some of the atmosphere from the people at the front reminded me of the outbacks of Europe, like Italian gigs. And because you don't get many gigs when one does happen it's a barndance." Charlie:" start last night was really great, the potential of the gig was fantastic." Jim: "It becomes a certain duty not to go on for an encore as it makes the audience look at themselves. Without being too condescending, audiences here have got to learn or else bands

won't come or they'll think it's a fuckin' outback full of yobbos." But surely in Britain you'd be attracting a different type of audience. Here you'd be attracting a wider spectrum? Jim: "No, that's rubbish. In English we attract over the board. We don't want to attract cunts who throw things at gigs or push for the sake of it. Where we're from anyway isn't England it's Glasgow and we see enough yobs, we can see them coming a mile away." Changing tack and I mention to Jim and Charlie that they seemed taken aback when they were confronted by the big press entourage assembled here: Jim: "Yeah, it was strange, I heard a buzz of chat before we came in. But we're not razzamatazz or showbiz, we're warm people, so we can't go like 'hiya folks, good to see you all'. Although it would've been weird if we'd come to New Zealand and there was no one here to speak to us." So shyness is the main reason why the other members of the band rarely speak to the press? Jim: "It's a bit of that but hardly any people ask you about the music as such, just the concept. And because we don't plan that much we really don't have the answers laid out." At this point keyboards player Michael Mac Neill arrives and Kerr quips: "Here's a silent member, get a quote from him, I don't think there's been a quote from him in history." Amidst the laughter we're told our time is up but the three interviewees make assurances that there would be plenty of time after the second night's stint. Tuesday night and it's a different vibe, man. The Simple Minds' fans are here determined to find out why this band is in ascendance, why they can touch dormant passions and sensibilities. It's all in their empathy, their mutual respect and understanding of each other. It's the same set as the previous night: 'Miracle', the opener 'As Love Brings the Fall', 'The American', 'Glittering Prize', 'Hunter and the Hunted' and 'Someone Somewhere In Summertime' shine out. Two encores, 'Love Song' and 'Room' from Empires and Dance. No complaints.

m i c h a e 1 macneill

Champagne, Australian, and beers at the reception in Mascot Studios. Michael Mac Neill and I escape to the kitchen where there's some semblance of tape-able tranquillity. He's the quiet man, modest to a fault yet it's he along with Burchill who's responsible for those aching Simple Minds' arrangements and melodies. Background: "I started on keyboards when I was about ten and learned the basics. I first started off on piano accordion playing Scottish Country Dance music. I played that until I was seventeen then I bought a synthesiser. That's why my left hand on the piano is really naff because of the accordion you have buttons and they're no problem. "Before I joined the band they were Johnny and the SelfAbusers and I saw them at a pub one night at the height of pu,nk and I was quite impressed with the way they were moving about on the tables and things. I joined them shortly after that when they changed the name." Do you work on your own technique much? "No, I don't sit down to try and become original. I just sit down with Charlie and Derek and enjoy myself. I never worry about technique or style. We've grown up a lot as far as songwriting goes and we've sussed how to arrange things and how to maintain interest. In the past we used to hide behind sound as we were a little embarrassed by some of the melodies but we've grown out of that."

Who's responsible for the melodies? "We all sit down with a tape machine and we try to get a concentrated period where we can play and enjoy ourselves and then we listen to it back and pick out bits and maybe get the roots to one song out of three hours." It would be fair to say that if the main melody is carried by the keyboards then you'd be responsible for it? I'm thinking of 'The Big Sleep'. "Yeah, that one in particular just started off with a keyboard and then we got a bass line for it. But it varies. Sometimes it depends on what the guitar's doing as to what I'm gonna play. If I come up with a melody that doesn't fit in with the guitar then I'd leave it as the guitar line might be better." Original drummer Brian McGee left after Sons and Fascination. What happened? "It was a slow build up as we could see that he wasn't into the whole touring thing plus he wanted to get married to this girl that he'd been going out with for a long time. It was his own decision to leave but we tried to advise him against it. I don't think it would be possible for us to get another permanent member as the five of us were so close and so we regard ourselves as a four piece now. In the last year or so we've had three different drummers and we'll keep changing depending on how our musical direction is going. Mike is a really good drummer he's jazz-rock influenced and in a way it clashes with what we do so it's strange having to adapt." Brian was a more straightforward drummer? "Yeah he was actually like a drum machine because he could really keep a steady tempo going and the repetition could hypnotise you." Simple Minds have gained the reputation of going into the studio with very little rehearsed. Did that apply to the new album? "No, we had a bit more rehearsed because we wanted songs completed before we moved on to the next idea but we still wanted enough room for experimenting. It's been our most controlled recording. “Real to Real was an example of us having practically nothing. We didn't know at the time the sort of risk we were taking or the expense if we didn't come up with the ideas. We just switched on the tape machine and saw what we were made of." Finally, what's your favourite Simple Minds' song? " 'The Hunter and the Hunted' because it's so varied. It's a good example of everyone playing different things but everything seems to gell. I think it's the most advanced we've become musically."

Charlie burchill

Again, a natural character, Burchill is full of life and ideas, and would have to rank as the friendliest and most approachable rock'n'roll personality that's blessed this country in a long while. He and Kerr have known each other for fourteen years and they still live in the same street with their parents when they're not touring. What made you take up guitar? "I had a brother who started learning guitar and he encouraged me. We both used to listen to the same music Doors, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young and we'd sit around with acoustic guitars. Even after a year and a half I believed I could play it better than a lot of people around at the time, not in a bigheaded technical sense but just in an understanding of the instrument. Instruments are just there to articulate emotions. I know it sounds abstract but that's how I feel." What is special about Simple Minds' music to you?

There's a certain type of atmosphere. Our music can be used for different purposes for listening to or travelling to. This Earth That You Walk Upon', 'Seeing Out the Angels' and two songs on the new album, 'Someone Somewhere in Summertime' and The Big Sleep' when I play them Ido literally feel like breaking into tears. Jim and I have known each other a long time and he says certain things that evoke certain feelings and when they're combined with the melodic content then that really wrenches my heart. That's what Simple Minds' music means to me, "I'll give you an example. We played a festival in Belgium earlier this year and we came on and it was pouring but we plugged in and started playing 'Someone Somewhere in Summertime’ with no thoughts of being electrocuted. And I kept thinking of the lyric 'walking in the soft rain', it was the first time the line really grabbed me and I just experienced a shiver up my spine and I was reduced to tears. The feeling in the band was almost psychic."

j i m k e r r

Kerr the catalyst. A man with little musical ability according to Burchill but full of ideas and imagination. What sort of education did you have Jim? "I stayed at school until I was 16. Charles and I used to stay off school and go to the library to get the books we wanted instead of William Golding, which is fair enough, but we wanted more abstract stuff like Cocteau. I'm not into that now, I'm more into movies and magazines." What sort? De Niro and Nicholson. People like that have much more of an influence on me now than music. I get the same warm feeling from brilliant films as I do from brilliant music. I think its all connected." So what about the audience and concert tonight, everything seemed to go according to expectations, the audience were receptive and right behind the band? "Yeah, chalk and cheese, we actually felt we were on a stage and so we felt we could project. I, think on the first night we felt subconsciously that no one was seeing us apart from the first two rows and maybe that shadowed our performance." Another live occasion, this time last year when a friend of mine saw Simple Minds in the Hammersmith Odeon and a certain Jim Kerr fell off the stage. What happened? "Just drugs. I never do anything in halves and for months on end I'm the straightest man in the world and then I just blow out. I don’t want to glorify the effects of it but the way the light hit the mike-stand it was just like a shining ball and I was drawn towards it and I just walked by it and before I knew it I was off the fuckin' stage. I felt so stupid. Since then I've been pretty straight." I heard that Martin Fry of ABC tried to lecture you on drugs? "Yeah, we were doing Top of the Pops, our first appearance and we were staying at the same hotel and he came down for breakfast and he says to me 'you look terrible, what have you been taking?' And I said speed and stuff and I hadn't been to bed in two days. And he said, 'you're getting too involved in rock'n'roll things, look at us we like to go home at the weekends to our parents'. And I said you don't have to tell me that Martin, it's written all over your face that you like to be with your

mummy. But apparently he was genuine as one of his friends really destroyed himself with drugs." What do you think of ABC? "I really love them but there's a few bands in Britain that are brilliant but only at one thing and for me, album wise, fortyfive minutes of the same thing is not on. Believe it or not Fry's influences are Television, Lou Reed, Patti Smith and Magazine. He told me but you'd never know that from their music." But surely Bryan Ferry is his hero? "Yeah, but he won't talk about that because it's obvious. Fry's great, a brilliant writer too but he's limiting himself as he's only writing valentines." Top of the Pops, chart success, it must mean that Simple Minds are in the money? "No not yet because we spent so many years doing things well good lights, equipment and recording in the best studios. The money we're making just now, and we are making money, is just going to pay off those debts. I'd like to buy my parents a house as for twenty years they've lived in the same corporation house. I think that's terrible." Where are Simple Minds now and where will they be? "It's not bravado or being egotistical but I know at the end of the year our album has to be one of the top three albums of this year. We've set ourselves up and we feel comfortable there. NME said something last month that Simple Minds are trying on the hat of popular success for the first time and they don't know if it fits them. We do want to be on the front cover and we do want to be top of the charts but we want to be private people too. Or maybe this year will be too glaring for us and maybe next year we'll do our most self-indulgent album ever. I don't know."