IN MY LIFE
He’s the Glasgow guitar maverick who broke into the 80s stadium league with Simple Minds. Now, as the band return with 18th album, Direction Of The Heart, Charlie Burchill tells us about pushing the envelope, falling for the White Falcon, commandeering The Edge’s rig, and why you won’t catch him playing powerchords
Sparking Up
“My very first guitar, my mother got me when I was maybe nine. It’s a true story – she bought me this guitar with coupons from Embassy cigarette packets! I started playing when I was about 12. I had two older brothers: one of them, he fancied playing guitar and bought a semi-decent one that I eventually nicked off him. He gave up and I carried on.”
Local Heroes
“Jim [Kerr] and I, we joined Johnny And The Self Abusers in 1977. The punk scene was flourishing in Glasgow and it created so many opportunities for everybody. We didn’t really come from a punk background – Jim and I were much more into The Doors, Velvet Underground and Roxy Music – but it was our doorway in. Sadly, it killed off a lot of older artists, but punk gave people the chance. Even if you weren’t proficient, you could believe that you could actually play in a band. At the end of Johnny And The Self Abusers, Jim and I went on to start a new band, and that was Simple Minds.”
Simple Pleasures
“My early Simple Minds rig was really simple. I was using a transistor Carlsbro, there wasn’t a great deal of stuff going on. But I always had the delay – that was really important. We hooked up with a guy who worked with us for years, and he was a technical wizard who used to put together pedalboards for me with all sorts of different variations. We would just experiment. It was all a bit makeshift, but it got us to where we wanted to be.”
High Flyer
“I never knew much about Gretsch, but in the early 80s, we started playing America and I came across the White Falcon. It’s such a beautiful guitar, that was the original attraction. The White Falcon is not the easiest to play, but I realised that Gretsch is something that suited me because it speaks really well, no matter how distorted it is. With the older ones, you can hear how good they sound without even plugging in, and if it’s good from the source then it’s going to be good when it’s amplified. Now I collect Gretsches and I’ve got a couple I still use today. But it’s crazy to think that in 1982, White Falcons were $600…”
Sound & Vision
“I hated the straightforward guitar stuff. I never liked the idea of powerchords and just giving the song a bit of body. I was never a big fan of AOR American rock stuff. I was coming from a slightly more psychedelic background. Somebody like Robby Krieger in The Doors, he can play blues and he’s playing what you coul
