- The working title of the album was Children Of The Game, a Jean Cocteau reference.
- It was
changed to Life In A Day after the band wrote the title song
whilst selecting and rejecting material in a barn near Edinburgh in January, 1979.
- Their first choice of producer was John Cale. Arista vetoed this suggestion.
- Their second choice was John Anthony, who'd produced Van Der Graff Generator and others. Again, this was vetoed.
- But Arista did allow their third choice, the legendary John Leckie.
- The album was recorded in the grounds of Farmyard Studios in Amersham, using the
Rolling Stones Mobile, an ex-army mobile unit. It was freezing in this huge truck - hence the
sly footnote: "Recorded at a very low temperature."
- After recording the songs, the final mixing was done at Townhouse and Abbey Road studios.
- Whilst at Abbey Road, Derek Forbes called up everyone he knew, enthusing that
he'd played the actual harpsicord used on Sgt. Peppper.
- The album track listing was finalised in mid March - this reel-to-reel copy master from early in the month reveals a different
track ordering. Test pressings of the album were also distributed with slightly different artwork.
- The cover artwork was designed by Carole Moss, a friend of
John Leckie. She also photographed the band against the blinds in the
Rolling Stones Mobile - this was the basis of all the artwork of the inner sleeve.
- Journalist, and Zoom press officer,
Brian Hogg designed the tambourine labels.
- Original LPs included an inner sleeve with album credits and artwork.
All the text appeared to be Jim's handwriting.
- Some original copies also included posters.
- The album was licensed through Arista/Ariola throughout Europe and
PVC Records in the USA. PVC decided to change the artwork, making the title easier to read.
- Life In A Day and Chelsea Girl were selected as singles.
- The band hated the final result and quickly disowned the album, despite parent label
Arista being pleased with its chart placing.
- "“I have bittersweet emotions about that first album. Incredibly exciting, obviously. We were just starting to get a wee bit clever.
We got a new keyboard in and he brought lots of frills and hooks. We got the deal, very exciting, John Leckie,
the producer we wanted to work with even though we didn't know what a producer did, he'd worked with all these bands like
XTC, Magazine... I remember at the time, the result sounded professional, sounded impressive, but I
privately felt there was something not quite right with it which I couldn't articulate. No one else was saying anything, but we went to
press it, got the acetates, and as we were about to drive up to Scotland, someone gave me a cassette of
"Unknown Pleasures" by Joy Division and I thought, we've completely blown it. Our live stuff, our demos were a bit darker,
more hints of the Velvets, etc, and no hint at all of The Boomtown Rats! I wanted to scrap it, make it again, but
I think we'd played the songs to death by the time we brought them to the studio, played around with them, got a bit clever with them and
didn't reproduce them in their raw state." - Jim.
- Life In A Day was the only album issued by Zoom Records.
- In 1986, Virgin finally issued the album on CD. This caught out one reviewer,
who assumed it was the follow-up to Once Upon A Time. He commended
Simple Minds on their brave new direction.
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