Mel Gaynor (Simple Minds, Elton John) Interview: Broken Gear & 'Don't You (Forget About Me)'

The Groove, the Feel and the Space In Between

One of the most fascinating threads in our conversation was about what actually makes a great drummer great.

"It's not all about technique. It's about the feeling."

He talked at length about the idea of sitting behind the beat, that slightly laid-back quality you hear in Jeff Porcaro, Steve Gadd, even Buddy Rich. The groove that pulls rather than pushes. It's something that's incredibly difficult to teach, and Mel acknowledged as much. You either feel it or you don't. He counts it as something of a trademark in his own playing, and listening back to his work with Simple Minds, you can absolutely hear it.

When asked about the compositional side of drumming, how he approaches a new track, Mel was clear that thinking like a songwriter changes everything. He talked about listening to what the melody is doing, what the chords are doing, and building drum parts that serve and complement those elements rather than just keeping time. In Simple Minds, that often meant locking into Mick MacNeil's keyboard parts.

"I was queuing off the melody of Mick on a lot of the stuff I was playing. On Once Upon a Time, his playing was so elaborate, but it was clear to me that was the melody of the whole record."

That album, recorded at CCT Studios in Wembley, also produced one of Mel's most distinctive snare sounds, a 14x5 brass snare in a room with extraordinary natural acoustics. If you've ever wondered where that crack came from, now you know. He also attempted to make off with producer Bob Clearmountain's Black Beauty snare in his kit case. It did not go undetected.

Don't You (Forget About Me) and the Road Ahead

No conversation with Mel Gaynor would be complete without talking about perhaps the most famous song in the Simple Minds catalogue. When an audience member brought up Don't You (Forget About Me), Mel's face lit up. The track came together remarkably quickly, essentially two takes of jamming around a demo that Keith Forsey had presented to the band.

"That breakdown was a mistake. It wasn't a mistake, it's just that Jim didn't have any words for that section. That's why he sang la la la. I had to bring it in with the feel."

And bring it in he did. That moment, which audiences worldwide still wait for every time the song plays, came entirely from instinct. There was no grand plan, no careful arrangement. Just a musician feeling his way through a gap in the song and landing perfectly.

Mel spent 38 years with Simple Minds, his tenure ending after the 2017 album. He was characteristically measured about the circumstances of his departure, noting that a book is in the works that will tell the full story. What he was happy to talk about was what comes next, his Marquee Club Allstar Band, a project built around reimagining songs from the bands that defined the legendary London venue. Not covers, as Mel was keen to point out, but reinterpretations with the band's own stamp on them.

At nine years old, his grandson is already obsessed with drums, and watching them together at the Drum Show, it wasn't hard to see why. Mel Gaynor is exactly the kind of musician who makes you fall in love with playing, not through flash or ego, but through a deep, genuine love of feel, groove and the spaces in between.