simple minds-empires and dance

[jup8]

HI john, I am a big fan of your work especially simple minds Empires and Dance. An amazing sounding and influential record.. I was wondering how finished the songs were when the band came to the studio and how much influence you had on the arrangements and sounds of the tracks? Also What kind of treatments did you use on mick macneils synths? I think he was using a korg770 and roland jupiter4 at the time. The synths sound amazing on that record. thanks analog-jeff

[johnleckie]

I posted reply to similar question on Minds. Empires and Dance was very keyboard based along with the rock solid bass lines. I think it was Korg MS20 and we had a Yamaha CS80 which I hated and a lot of tracks started with Jupiter arpeggiator. There was no MIDI. There was good piano in studio and hammond but I dont think we used it except for leslie guitar and backing vocals. it was all played in and often used a big Carlsboro amp with silver horn Mick used live. A lot of bass synth done with this and room ambience recorded. It was 24 track and we were really concentrating on doing extended 12 versions of I Travel and Celebrate. A lot of songs were rehearsed at Monow Valley before Stones truck arrived so we had arrangements though I remember a lot of two inch edits going on.
Cheers
JL

[Meriphew]

I love the stuff you did with Simple Minds. They're a phenomenal band. I've always felt that they should be as big as U2 is now.