Simple Minds – New Gold Dream (81–82–83–84)

I wanted to put something in from my teenage years – Simple Minds, The Human League, Japan, Duran Duran – because they were such a big part of my life when I was at that age, fourteen to sixteen. Me and Miki went to see them on this album at the Lyceum. We used to queue up early and run right to the front to get to the barrier. Charlie Burchill smiled at us and that was it – we were just screaming. I listened to it again recently and you can really feel it’s their last album before they went in for that – for want of a better word – their arena and stadium-filling mode. It’s a kind of transition from where they started, which was more frenetic, to somewhere else, and I think it’s really beautiful, sparkly and ethereal. I was listening to it last night, and The Hunter and The Hunted…well, you could take his vocal away and put Liz Fraser on it, and this could be a Cocteau Twins track. It’s got some of that guitar, the beats, and Derek Forbes on bass…it’s just a beautiful, sparkly, very summery record. Also with my book-keeping work, I have done some accounting for Simple Minds. [laughs] Which I find funny. But Charlie Burchill’s smile is the nearest they’ve come to me.