"Likewise and more in context with this site, how do you account for the on going resurgence in demand for music on 12" vinyl when hardly anyone has a record player, and with a couple of clicks on a keyboard you can probably access the entire history of recorded music? Nostalgia - might not be the entire answer to those questions, but it must surely figure large in any credible answer, even if it not so easy to actually describe fully what it means."

"There are, of course, many ways to look backward. You can look and reject. Or you can look and linger longingly. Within our latest recording of Broken Glass Park, available for you to hear from this week, it will be fairly obvious that the lyrical theme is based unashamedly on a personalised nostalgia that presents views from a past that although based on truths, will inevitably have been idealized as I gazed back to a time and place that seemingly no longer exists externally. But lives on forever within me."

"Many of the new songs we are working on currently, as in over the last few months, have lyrical themes that first took shape around three years ago. For much of that period I was back in my hometown of Glasgow and very happy to be there, even if the reason for my relocation was overwhelmingly sad. Such was the case as we prepared ourselves for the last six months of my mother's time with us."

"And yet it was an incredibly prolific time also as I worked in Glasgow honing and preparing things for the release of my solo work with Lostboy! AKA, as well as working on various new collaborative songwriting partnerships with Owen Parker and Iain Cook, both of whom have contributed to new Simple Minds material."

"On the morning that I finished work on Broken Glass Park, I was staying - sleeping and working - in the guest room at my parents' house, and so engrossed as I had not yet left the room to go down stairs and make my usual pot of coffee, or get out jogging around near bye Linn Park, always a pleasure. All sense of time had left me in fact, as I listened repeatedly to the track, chopping and changing lyrical phrases, looking for buzzwords as well as the need to get it all just perfect enough. It may have begun life as an idea for my solo work, but I knew instantly that I was writing a song partly about the genesis of Simple Minds and a song surely then destined to be recorded by Simple Minds."

"It was then I was startled by the knock on the door and my mother's voice asking me if she could enter. Before I could answer she was already standing in front of me, coffee in one hand, fruit salad in the other. Firing questions a dime to the dozen. "That sounds really great. I love it. What is it called? Will you record it? Can I get a copy? What does Charlie think? Will it be a single?" And then she took a pause, and with her skinny wee face and huge blue enquiring eyes, stared into me and asked. "What is it about?""

""I don’t know." I shrugged. "It's nostalgic and it's about all of us when we were growing up. Me, my brothers, our pals..., the band. Hanging around Queen's Park. Growing up in Glasgow. It is also about what fucking great fun we had!"

""Hey you, watch your bloody language!" she snapped."

"And then turning to leave she smiled and laughingly said "The Minds are great!""

Jim Kerr
10th February 2013

JK: "Owen came up with this tune that had something about it – had something of the nostalgia about it. I always liked these park songs – MacArthur Park, Itchycoo Park and stuff – and there was something about this song that the phrase Broken Glass Park came up. I mean it is pure nostalgia about the area that Charlie and I grew up in and when we were young kids we used to escape into the park and when we were teenagers we would escape into it at night and – I won't go into details about what happened there – but this park became central to our lives and Owen really did us a great, great service – well, he gave me a great, great service in feeding me that melody."

Band Interviews
Big Music Deluxe DVD

Martin Hanlin
The Real McCoy
KX 93.5