SIMPLE MINDS

Credit in here And then there were four: Simple Minds looking to the future on Castlehill,

Edinburgh, August 1981 (from left) Jim Kerr, Derek Forbes,

Charlie Burchill, Mick MacNeil.

36 MOJO

N SEPTEMBER 25, 1982, Simple Minds’ fifth album entered the UK chart at Number 6 – the band’s first Top 10 record. It was titled New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84), an auspicious, slightly pretentious declaration of context, momentum, and intent: there’s where we’ve been, here’s where we’re going. “On previous albums I still felt we were a student band,” says Jim Kerr. “In the sense we’re still learning from those who inspired us – Magazine, Bowie, Roxy and so on, using base metals to get to our own thing. With New Gold Dream, it was like: this is us now. These are our times.”

One week later, Glittering Prize, a celestial union of iridescent melody, assertive rhythm and Kerr singing about “the price of lost love” and “the attraction of fame”, sashayed into the Top 20 singles chart like a counterfactual ’80s Roxy Music that Eno had never left. Six months earlier, their Top 20 debut had “promised you a miracle”; here now was the assured confirmation of Simple Minds’ metamorphosis from agitated art-rock misfits into heralds of an aspirational new pop.

Soon enough, however, the sublime bowed to the ridiculous. Having prefaced their album’s release with some low-key UK gigs, by the time New Gold Dream charted, Simple Minds were touring Australia and New Zealand. The journey home included 12 dates in Canada, with Vancouver and Toronto bookending an eastward slog across the endless prairies of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. “The tour from hell!” chuckles drummer Mike Ogletree. “There was a truck accident, one of the drivers broke his collarbone, my drums were strewn across the highway…”

Late October found Ogletree in a Saskatchewan hotel room watching a documentary about the Ku Klux Klan – a weird premonition of the subsequent gig in a local student union hall. “Because it was a Halloween party, these people had turned up dressed as Ku Klux Klan,” he says. “We were basically in redneck country. Jim freaked out at the promoter: ‘Get them the fuck out of here.’”

Bassist Derek Forbes remembers grabbing the promoter by the throat. “He was dressed as Dracula. His head’s down, he’s ashamed, people in the audience thinking Ku Klux Klan outfits were a good choice for a band with a black drummer. I says, ‘You’re an asshole.’ He says, ‘Hey – I might be an asshole, but I’m the biggest asshole in Canada.’”

In Jim Kerr’s recollection, the promoter later tried to make amends by driving the singer, guitarist Charlie Burchill and Ogletree across town in search of entertainment, only to be stopped by the police.

“Fortunately we weren’t carrying anything, but Dracula got hauled off. We’re left by the side of the road in Saskatoon. That was one of my favourite tours. A fucking disaster, but riveting. Dodgy equipment, dodgy trucks, a bus that was 20 years out of date. It was a Heart Of Darkness feeling: ‘If we can get to Toronto, we’ll be saved.’”

Toronto on November 7 would be Mike Ogletree’s last act as a member of Simple Minds. Upon returning to the UK, at a band meeting in London’s Columbia Hotel he was told he wouldn’t be on the forthcoming UK tour. “They said, ‘We’re using Mel Gaynor from now on. Here’s 500 bucks and a ticket to Scotland.’” Ogletree laughs. “It was good-natured – because of me, y’know, I’m an easy-going guy. And I loved the band. Still do.”

It was the second time in a matter of months that Ogletree had been usurped by Mel Gaynor. During the New Gold Dream recording sessions, producer Peter Walsh identified the need for a drummer who worked “quicker and more accurately”. Having engineered Gaynor on a slew of Brit-funk records by Beggar & Co, Central Line and Light Of The World, Walsh knew he fitted that bill and more. In the ➢

➣ end, Gaynor played on five tracks to Ogletree’s three. “Mike did the bulk of the groundwork, and Mel’s stepped in and taken the glory in the studio,” says keyboardist Mick MacNeil. “But once Mel was on the seat, it was obvious nobody was gonna beat that guy. He was like Muhammad Ali on drums.”

The Canadian debacle impelled an upgrade of the band’s components to a level commensurate with their new record’s gilded aura and next-level commercial status. Fundamentally, in Charlie Burchill’s estimation, “we realised we need to get better live.” Ironically, however, Mike Ogletree had played a pivotal role in re-orienting Simple Minds towards this brilliant future. His tenure in the band lasted barely eight months, similar to his predecessor Kenny Hyslop, who succeeded founder member Brian McGee in August 1981 and played on the band’s breakthrough hit, only to be sacked shortly afterwards.

Yet if Hyslop’s brief period in Simple Minds proved significant – he sourced the riff that begat Promised You A Miracle from a New York Kiss FM megamix – Ogletree’s was even more so. During his time, Simple Minds utilised a brand new tonal palette, profoundly shaped by the drummer’s particular style, from which they created New Gold Dream, a Simple Minds album unlike any before or since – and one with which the band are still reckoning today.

N APRIL 1982, THE REGISTERED unemployment total in the UK was 3,007,726 – one in eight of the population, and the highest figure since the 1930s. That same month, Britain went to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. Meanwhile, on a farm just outside the Fife village of Newburgh, Simple Minds began work on a new album.

“I call New Gold Dream our Sgt. Pepper,” says Derek Forbes, “because the farm in Newburgh had a cook. ‘Do you boys like mushrooms?’ ‘Aye’. ‘OK, we’re having mushroom pizza tonight.’ Whooft! ‘Would you like some mushroom tea as well? Try it!’ So we tried it. Every night was mushroom this, mushroom that. And the penny dropped. I was in the shower following a bubble of steam around. That was us, the whole album. The chemistry was there.”

Despite, or in reaction to, the often grim political landscape, 1982 was a year of transformative energy for bands forged in the post-punk cauldron. Also in April, New Order unveiled their single Temptation, an exultant synthesis of machine precision and raw emotion, while The Associates, high-concept pop mavericks from Dundee, made a bravura entry into the Top 10 with the head-spinning Party Fears Two. With Promised You A Miracle heading in the same direction, maybe it was time for Simple Minds to paint in different colours. In the barn at Newburgh, from his vantage point on top of Derek Forbes’s 8 x 10 Ampeg speaker, Jim Kerr was keeping his eyes and ears wide open.

“It was springtime, Scotland at its most dreamy version of Avalon, with the River Tay below us… and, I have to say, quite a lot of amphetamine. Because we wanted to play 24 hours a day! I had this huge ghetto blaster and would record everything. No one really came in with a song. ‘What have you got?’ ‘I’ve got this bassline.’ We would play with it for hours, like Krautrock, going round in a loop, the mood would be amazing. Then somebody would change a chord – wow, what’s that?! And I’d go back to the tape at night and take notes. ‘There’s this bit here…’ The songs were collages that bit by bit got edited down. It was a very home-made language, there was no real writer. Even the drummer would come in and start with the groove.” Mike Ogletree was working as a driver and guard for Securicor in Kilmarnock when he got the call from Bruce Findlay, Simple Minds’ manager, who had also managed Ogletree’s previous band, the Rupert Hine-produced sophisto-prog trio Café Jacques. Accepting Findlay’s offer to audition, he sought the opinion of a musician friend. “I’d heard of Simple Minds, because Bruce was managing them, saw them a couple of times in 1979, but I didn’t really know much about them. My friend said, ‘Simple Minds? They’re amazing! You got an audition? That’s unbelievable!’” In Kilmarnock’s Shabby Road studio, Simple Minds watched as Ogletree played along to their two most recent albums, Empires And Dance and Sons And Fascination. “Charlie said it was a formality, just to make sure I could still play,” says Ogletree. “I really liked what Brian had done on those records. Trance rock, very powerful, tribal drumming. I thought, I could do that, but make it jazzier, funkier. Funky trance! They thought it could work.” At Newburgh, their isolated locale and the personnel change (as well as the psychedelic menu) brought fresh perspectives, calmer rhythms, ethereal textures. “We started finding a lot of tracks were quite gentle,” says Burchill. “Mike was a left-handed player, who played his kit righthanded – quite an unorthodox way of playing the hi-hat. Because he was new, we didn’t really have any history there. So he was just playing what he was hearing.” For Mick MacNeil, Simple Minds’ recent rapid turnover of drummers was becoming a source of anxiety. In the pre-MIDI era, his plate was full enough dealing with multiple keyboards and pedals, without also worrying whether this latest incumbent was keeping time. “Mike Ogletree really did lay it back, and pulled the whole thing into a cooler space where he wasn’t playing so much. We never questioned whether it was sufficient or not, it just fitted perfectly.”

“Also,” says Burchill, “we started realising we could actually write songs! Up to that point, we never saw any of the albums as having songs on them. They were all collections of instrumental parts. Jim did an amazing job of throwing all that together. His overview was great.”

ATCHING THE NEWBURGH JAMS ALONGSIDE Kerr was Peter Walsh, a 22-year-old south Londoner schooled in the engineer’s craft by Phil Wainman at Utopia Studios in Primrose Hill, where he’d recorded and mixed the likes of Heatwave, Stevie Wonder, Boomtown Rats’ I Don’t Like Mondays and, in late 1981, a reworking of Simple Minds’ Sweat In Bullet. After successfully delivering Promised You A Miracle in quick order and into the charts, Walsh was now tasked by

Good news from the new world: (clockwise from above) Kerr puts a brave face on 1982’s ‘Heart Of Darkness’ Canadian tour; in Holyrood Park, Edinburgh (from left) MacNeil, Forbes, Burchill, new drummer Kenny Hyslop and Kerr, August 27, 1981; Kerr on-stage in 1981; Burchill and MacNeil, responsible for Simple Minds’ guitar/keyboards special relationship, on-stage at Tiffany’s, Glasgow, November 19, 1982.

Virgin Records with his first album production.

He noted that unlike Promised You A Miracle, which was more or less completely written and arranged in advance, the Newburgh material was very much in development, with no lyrics, apart from the sinister Talking Heads creep of King Is White And In The Crowd, which had featured on a February BBC Radio 1 session for Kid Jensen.

“There was a big, open fireplace,” says Walsh. “So Jim would be tending the fire, as it were. He’d be making comments about what he liked. He’s involved in the discussion but not actively performing. The band were in front of us, and he and I were sitting on sofas. Kind of directing it.”

Walsh was particularly struck by the relationship between Charlie Burchill and Mick MacNeil. In a more conventionally structured band, the guitar and keyboards might behave as virtuosic rivals, competing for the listener’s attention. In Simple Minds, however, the combination was so self-effacing it was often unclear who was playing what. “The way the keyboards and the guitar sat in the same space was respectful of each other. Their interaction was great.”

After four weeks in Fife, Simple Minds moved to Virgin’s Townhouse Studios in west London to begin recording. They brought with them a compilation of the farm instrumentals, recorded on Kerr’s ghetto blaster which compressed the music around the bass drum, lending a pulsing ambience. Informed by his grounding in club music, Walsh was determined to retain that characteristic. His approach was also shaped by watching the band live in Belgium earlier in the year. “The beat and the power – I was blown away. I thought if we can capture that excitement by playing live on tape it would be very special. So, in the bass and drums in particular, I was after a very precise articulation of what we’d rehearsed.”

After four days, only two songs had backing tracks. “In a few, we couldn’t get through it to the end,” says Walsh. “And that’s a problem, if you’re recording on tape, and you want to get a live feeling. There’s a difference between live and recording. Maybe Mike had a bit of red light fever. The last thing I wanted was to get a new drummer in, but I remember a certain amount of frustration. Jim went: ‘We need to work faster on this.’”

Enter Mel Gaynor with his big bag of drums. Accounts differ over the whys and wherefores of Ogletree’s sidelining. Although the drummer acknowledges feeling uncomfortable in the “glass cage” environment of the studio, he saw the time issue as a red herring. “I thought it was going pretty good, but Pete liked Mel’s sound, and him and Peter had a working relationship. I think Pete really ➢

The beat goes on: JIm Kerr and Sarah Brown fronting Simple Minds, Zenith Arena, Lille, May 2, 2022.

JIM KERR is a morning person. Nonetheless, it’s still impressive to see him in the Hôtel Le Louis Versailles Château’s breakfast room looking quite so fresh, a mere 12 hours after leading Simple Minds on-stage at the Seine Musicale auditorium in Paris. Kerr’s enjoying the reactivated 40 Years Of Hits tour, two years after being halted by the pandemic. Yet he ascribes his energy to anticipation at the imminent release of new LP, Direction Of The Heart.

“We did not sit on our thumbs during Covid,” he smiles, nodding towards Charlie Burchill, Kerr’s creative partner throughout Simple Minds’ lifespan. Until relatively late in the process, a 24-song double album was planned. “But then,” Burchill says, “we decided no – one LP, and we’re keeping it to nine tracks. You need to put your cards on the table and say: ‘We think these ones are good.’”

Work got underway during 2019, in Glasgow, where Kerr was living close to his terminally ill father. “For six months, I spent every day there. But my dad wouldn’t have me just sitting around. He’s like, ‘You gotta work.’ So Charlie came over, we started writing. Fortunately, my dad didn’t suffer long. He felt he’d lived a great life. Also, he was teaching me for what’s coming. It was great getting his thoughts on things.”

Album opener Vision Thing emerged from this emotionally charged situation, albeit not without a critique from Kerr Snr. “I realise I’m writing about things he’s told me, and I’m getting excited about this song,” says Jim. “And he’s shouting: ‘The noise! Fucking turn it down!’ I’m like, (mutters) ‘I’m writing a song about this cunt…’” Kerr laughs. “But the song, it’s so celebratory.”

When the first 2020 lockdown eased, Kerr and Burchill resumed recording, initially in Hamburg, and then in Taormina in Sicily, where the hotel that Kerr owns was sitting empty. “We moved all the gear in and it was like The Shining, just me and him. ‘Don’t touch the peanuts on the bar Charlie!’ We recorded a ton of stuff, had a great old time, just ourselves, being creative.”

Other standouts include the JG Ballard-inspired Human Traffic, with its ear-catching cameo from Sparks’ Russell Mael, and First You Jump, a classic Simple Minds anthem with sky-scraping Burchill guitar heroics. Direction… is disconcertingly energetic. Burchill chuckles at MOJO’s suggested descriptor “Valhalla disco” – but says he’ll take it. “We wanted to defy where we are,” says Kerr, “both in life and in music. Y’know, we’re getting on, we should be reflective… To hell with that. The greatest thing for Simple Minds at this stage of the game is to feel that vitality. There’s something visceral still there.” ➣ wanted to get him in the band. So Mel basically just played the grooves that I’d been doing… Because the grooves weren’t the problem. It was the sound Peter wanted that he said he wasn’t getting. It wasn’t a subterfuge. It was an agreement for the good of the band and the album – and I agreed as well.”

Beyond dispute is the fact that Gaynor nailed the parts right away, as directed by Walsh and Ogletree. The two drummers even played together, on what became the album’s euphoric title track: sat opposite each other, Gaynor on the left, Ogletree the right. Between them, amid the almighty noise filling the 30-foot-high Townhouse stone room (where Phil Collins’s In The Air Tonight was recorded), stood Derek Forbes, thundering his cyclical bassline to infinity and beyond. “One of the best moments in a studio I’ve ever had,” he says. “The two of them, looking at each other. What a sound! What a brilliant sound!”

With backing tracks approaching completion, an unexpected guest appeared at the Townhouse to check out the facilities. “We didn’t know who Herbie Hancock was,” admits Burchill. “Well, Mike would have, and Pete Walsh. But the rest of us knew nothing. We just said, ‘Do you fancy having a play?’ Because they were saying, ‘This guy’s amazing!’”

Suitably awestruck at meeting the legendary jazz pianist, Walsh set aside the three remaining tracks on the song Hunter And The Hunted and pointed Hancock towards Mick MacNeil’s Oberheim OB-X synthesizer. As soon as Hancock began perfectly essaying a solo, MacNeil knew he was in the presence of greatness. “I think he heard the track once, he never even asked for a run through, he just went up and played the thing. It was fantastic. I was frightened of the guy, I gotta say. And then I’m just sitting about for the next month, thinking, ‘Shit, I’ve got to learn how to play that now.’”

After three flawless takes, Hancock bade them farewell. “Thanks for letting me drop by guys. Hope I didn’t ruin your album.” ORK MOVED TO THE MANOR, VIRGIN’S residential facility in Oxfordshire, for overdubs and Jim Kerr’s vocals. Until that point, an album’s worth of music had been recorded without the singer committing a single word to tape. Songs had working titles – Arpeggio Riff became Colours Fly And Catherine Wheel; The Low Song became Hunter And The Hunted; Festival Riff became New Gold Dream itself – but the album’s specific character had yet to be defined. The process entailed a certain amount of jeopardy, primarily for the singer.

“There’d always be a lyric in my head, a melody,” says Kerr. “But I really had to match the atmosphere of what I perceived in the music. After three or four weeks, these tracks are sounding monumental. I started to have the fear of the penalty taker, because you’ve got that long walk out to the mike, everyone’s in the room: is he gonna put the ball in the net or sky it over the bar?”

As Burchill notes, however, Kerr’s omnipresence during the sessions meant the singer saw the big picture clearer than anyone else, and understood exactly what was required. “His voice had changed, he’d got more confident, I think because there was space in the music – a lot easier to sing across.”

The predominant mood, almost palpable amid the humid vistas of Someone Somewhere In Summertime or Hunter And The Hunted’s stately processional, was sweet, romantic melancholy, the music permanently on the verge of immaculate ascent. When finally revealed, Kerr’s lyrical gaze had shifted decisively, from previous albums’ alienated third-person cut-ups to first-person entreaties, evoking a universal oneness. The evangelical subtext bubbled over on the title track vocal, delivered in late July at the eleventh hour as Walsh lobbied Virgin for extra time.

“We were meant to finish on the Friday, and we had a festival in Sweden,” says Kerr. “Between the soundcheck and the gig, I had a bath. Listening to the track, I thought, ‘That ‘new gold dream’ chant I had a while back… That’s it!’ When I’d heard the stuff at the Townhouse, the feeling in the room was ecstatic. That ecstasy in the sound brought these ecstatic lyrics. ‘Worldwide on the widest screen’. I was trying to say: we’ve arrived.”

ORTY YEARS AFTER THAT Archimedes moment, New Gold Dream continues to ripple through the lives of all its participants. MOJO meets Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill the morning after the current Simple Minds play Paris on the 40 Years Of Hits Tour, a two-and-half hour celebration delayed for two years by the pandemic. In Paris, New Gold Dream is the most-represented album, with five songs. The remaining four are guaranteed to air on August 13, when the entire record will be performed, in sequence, in Edinburgh’s Princes Street Gardens, to benefit the UNICEF For Children In Ukraine appeal.

New Gold Dream occupies sacred space within the Simple Minds community. It managed the rare feat of taking a band to a whole new audience without alienating the old one. Subsequent albums, most notably Sparkle In The Rain and Once Upon A Time, sold more but are loved less. Kerr and Burchill are taking great lengths to do their landmark record justice. Burchill, in particular, the band’s de facto musical director, has been diligently working out the logistics of taking 21st century technology, and personnel, back in time.

“I’m going to sit down with Cherisse [Osei, drums] and get forensic on that drum area. The keys are the keys. The bass, Ged [Grimes]’s got that nailed. Obviously the guitar, I can sort out. The only thing we can’t do is get Jim sounding like 23 years of age!”

He laughs.

“It’s so easy to mess up an album like that live. We could never do it properly with Mel, funnily enough. Because live, Mel would just go into ‘Mel’. And he wasn’t ‘Mel’ on New Gold Dream. So we had to always keep a lid on that.”

Miracle workers: (clockwise from top left) New Gold Dream producer Peter Walsh; Simple Minds in 1982, with drummer Mike Ogletree (second from right); in 1984, with Ogletree’s replacement Mel Gaynor (far left), “like Muhammad Ali on drums”; surprise New Gold Dream guest soloist Herbie Hancock.

Derek Forbes and Mick MacNeil are above-averagely interested in their old pals’ legacy curation. Forbes still plays New Gold Dream material with his band The Dark. “We sound more like Simple Minds than they do now!” he grins. “New Gold Dream is a masterpiece.”

The album’s rookie producer, meanwhile, flourished in its wake and continues to enjoy a successful career. Peter Walsh’s long association with Scott Walker began, in 1984, directly because of Walker’s appreciation for New Gold Dream. In 2016, Walsh presented an Abbey Road Institute mix workshop using the original multi-track tapes – a kind of new gold wet dream for SM tech-heads.

“It’s very dear to me,” he says. “The funny thing is, I’m so much more experienced as a producer and engineer, I could probably do a much better mix of it now. But I don’t know if it would be as good.”

As for Mike Ogletree, he took his one-way ticket back to Scotland and kept on going. He subsequently joined Fiction Factory, scoring a UK Top 10 single with (Feels Like) Heaven, a whole 12 months before Simple Minds achieved similar with Don’t You (Forget About Me). Today he’s the artist in residence at the Meadowlark Motel in North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains, singing traditional Scottish and Irish songs – a remit that does, he admits, extend to granting requests for New Gold Dream unplugged.

“We created a new space, a new sound for Simple Minds,” Ogletree says. “One that everybody loved.” M