DESPITE BEING FORGED FROM PERSONAL LOSS AMIDST A GLOBAL PANDEMIC, SIMPLE MINDS’ LATEST ALBUM, DIRECTION OF THE HEART, AIMS TO SHINE A POSITIVE LIGHT IN DARK TIMES – AND IT MIGHT EVEN BE THEIR NEW NEW GOLD DREAM EXPLAINS JIM KERR AND CHARLIE BURCHILL…
PAUL KIRKLEY
Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill have spent a lot of time in each other’s company over the past 55 years. But in 2020, the lifelong friends and musical fellow travellers found themselves hunkered down in splendid isolation in the Sicilian hills, working up songs for Simple Minds’ next album in a shuttered and deserted hotel (proprietor: J. Kerr) high above the town of Taormina.
“Of all the places to be locked down,” smiles Kerr, when Classic Pop catches up with the pair two years on. “It was kind of mystical. The view we had was of Mount Etna, which has a brooding, incredibly powerful presence. But also kind of benevolent. Etna’s almost bang in the centre of the island – when it’s throwing this stuff up into the air, it’s not just flames, it’s this ash, which makes the place incredibly fertile – Sicily was the breadbasket of the Roman Empire.
“Sorry, this is me getting a bit hippy-dippy,” he says, checking himself. “But every day, Charlie and I were looking at that, and at the sea. It’s just an amazing place – you’re nearer Africa than you are Rome. So you wake up and everything’s covered in red sand from the desert. As I say, it’s a mystical place.”
Burchill’s memory of those weeks is slightly less romantic. “It was a bit like The Shining,” he laughs. “We were in this empty hotel… for a lot of the time it was just me, on my own in the hotel. So yeah, slightly Shining vibes. But we had a great time, and a lot of the songs for the album were written there.”
The story of Direction Of The Heart, Simple Minds’ 18th studio LP, actually begins a year earlier, in the spring of 2019, when Kerr was back living in the band’s hometown of Glasgow, so that he could be close to his dying father.
“Although we weren’t going to give up hope, we knew the writing was on the wall with Dad’s situation,” says Kerr. “He knew what was in store, but the last thing he wanted was people freaking out. He wanted life to go on as it was.”
So Jim did what he’s done so many times in his life – he called up Charlie, who flew over and the pair set to work writing songs. “Dad would be like, ‘How’s the work going?’” he recalls. “We were down the road, so while he was still mobile, he’d pop into the studio and…” Kerr’s eyes p
