As a result, Mick could only speak Gaelic when his family moved to Glasgow."I couldnae speak English when I first started school," he claims. "Well I could a wee bit, but it was really bad. Now I canna speak English or Gaelic."

Don't let him fool you, though. Behind his self-effacing exterior lies a cool and subtle operator (could you look as calm as that onstage?), and his guileful mastery of the modern electronic keyboard is frequently rewarded by phone calls from journalists from technical music magazines ringing up begging for interviews. These are often dismiised with curt one-word answers.

Mick's musical skills were brought out by his mother, who insisted that he followed in the footsteps of his elder brothers and sisters and enrolled him in a music school when he was 10. Here, Mick learned to play the accordion and alos picked up a sound knowledge of musical theory.

"Every year they gave you tests and all that," he recalls. "You got certificates and entered competitions and won medals. They gave you enough work that you had to practise at lease an hour a day to keep up."

"I did that from when I was 10 to when I was 16 or 17. Then I got a Korg synthesiser and took it from there."

Mick formed a band with his drum-playing brother when he was 16, and they played cabaret clubs, weddings, social functions and the like, mainly to earn some money to buy new equipment. "We just went around social clubs doing old Drifters songs and all that," he remembers with a shudder. "I got really tired of it and I was either gonna just wrap it or do something I'd never done before."

Luckily he met Messrs Burchill and Kerr in the formative stages of Simple Minds and got hired pronto. "It was really good 'cos they'd just play and you had to play what was in your head, y'know, and I'd never done that."

"Up to that point I hadn't been into music outside of Highland music and all that, so I never watched 'Top Of The Pops' or anything and I never listened to the radio and I didnae know who did what. It was funny 'cos everybody'd say the keyboards were just like the stuff from Magazine and Ultravox and all that, and I'd never heard their records or anything."

Nowadays, of course, Mick himself is used as a reference point for other keyboards players. Move over Herbie Hancock.

Adam Sweeting
New Gold Tour Programme

He also has an impressive capacity for severe partying, but he's so quiet people tend not to notice. Has been known to listen to classical music and hates talking about his equipment.

Adam Sweeting
Tour Du Monde Tour Programme

discography

family tree

live appearances