1. Rottenrow Maternity Hospital

I WAS born in Rottenrow Maternity Hospital, so obviously that changed my life. This is all to do with the geography and how being a Glaswegian has shaped me.

Apart from being born in the centre of the city, I was raised there, and obviously started the band there.

I’m speaking from Glasgow right now and will always call it home. The time that I grew up in the city and everything it offered shaped what the band became too.

I’ve always been a keen traveller and that can’t fail to have an effect on you, but I don’t think there’s any doubt that we’re all carved from a certain rock – and in my case, that rock is Glasgow.

2. A library ticket

Govanhill Library

MY dad was a brickie’s labourer and always worked with his hands. He was a great reader though and took me to the nearest library, in our case the Govanhill Library, when I was five years old.

That was my first introduction to the world of books and consequently to a world of imagination. Libraries are among the greatest things we have been gifted, and Govanhill, as well as many others, was the gift of Andrew Carnegie.

I walked past it the other day and so many memories flooded back to me. It started with The Famous Five and The Secret Seven and then on to Robert Louis Stevenson and much more.

It was my dad that really taught me the value of books and that value came through a library ticket, which was absolutely free.

3. Learning the language from Michel Thomas

ITALY, and Sicily in particular, has been a big part of my life for at least 20 years. I was spending so much time there, I decided not to speak English there and immerse myself in learning the language.

The greatest source of help to me was the linguist Michel Thomas. I bought his Italian language learning course, at that time it was all on CD, and for me he had a system that seems absolutely obvious now. He said the backbone of any language is the verbs. Once they are in place, the vocabulary will come.

At that time I was about 40 and I thought that the days of learning a language were over for me, because they always say that it’s much easier to learn another language when you’re younger.

But this was the start of a new life for me in many ways. At that time I was living in Sicily, which meant I could do an hour of language learning in the morning and then go straight out to the shops and use what I had just learned.

I was also amazed at how much I enjoyed it, because I always thought back to what learning French at school was like. Now I’m working on Spanish – it’s a great thing to do whatever your age.

4. Meeting Charlie Burchill

MY first years were spent in the Gorbals, but when I was about eight we moved to the Toryglen high flats and this is when the scheme was still being built. You know what it’s like on the day of a move ... it’s pandemonium.

Add to the usual hassle of a move, having to get big bits of furniture up in the lifts. My ma was exasperated and said to us, “go on yoos, go oot and play!” It was still a bit of a building site, so there were mountains of sand and bags of cement lying about and, like all building sites, loads of wee boys playing among it all. And there, at the top of what looked like a giant sandcastle, Charlie Burchill was sitting.

We shouted, “Can we play wi’ you?” and he said, “Aye OK”. And I’m still playing with Charlie – I’m seeing him later today, I was with him last night.

At that age we knew nothing about music, we were just pals. We were just boys at the school like anybody else. If we hadn’t lived in the same street, who knows what would have happened?

It’s been an amazing thing to have a pal, a workmate, a songwriter, a collaborator, all rolled into one. He’s been more than a brother.

5. Getting a passport

FOR some people the world ends at the bottom of their street and for others that’s where the world begins.

I’m very firmly in that latter category. As much as I love my home city and home country, being born in Scotland means having access to the kind of passport that allows me to travel pretty much anywhere in the world safely and with few checks and restrictions.

That’s not something that you can say for many other people living on this planet. I think the Scots have always had a curiosity about the world and there’s no doubt that what you see has an effect on your thinking.

Who knows what kind of passport we’re going to have in the future?

6. Getting a job

David Bowie

BY the age of 14 I was desperate to get some kind of job and make my own money – mainly to buy records and concert tickets. All my pals had wee jobs, mainly paper rounds.

One day my ma said to me that the butcher in the local supermarket was looking for a boy. Of course, I said ... “To do what?!” It was mainly to go in on a Saturday and help clean up the back shop.

It was well paid – he was giving me a fiver a week, so I felt like Frank bloody Sinatra. I bought a David Bowie ticket for 60p, I was rich! I’ve still got that ticket, and one I got around the same time for Genesis that was also 60p. With the money I could also take my pals to gigs if they didn’t have any money.

It wasn’t the most glamorous job with all that blood and crap, but it really gave me a work ethic and it was a great place for making pals – and because it was a supermarket, I worked with men and women. I’ve worked ever since. I loved the idea of having a job and my heart goes out to people who can’t find work.

7. Meeting Chrissie Hynde

OF course Chrissie and I got married. We had a child together, so we’ve got shared grandchildren. When we met she was a bit older than me – nine years actually, which I suppose was a lot then, but in many ways it didn’t feel like it.

When we met I was only 23, so I suppose it did matter in that she had lived a lot more than me.

She had already made a lot of records and, being American, she had had so many different experiences to me.

She was already a mother and really was a massive influence on my life. She still is – it was great to see her when she paid me a visit here just last week.

I have so much respect for her, not just as a musician and what she introduced me to, but as a person. I respect her values and how fiercely she holds them.

Sometimes she’ll say things and I think “Well, I don’t think I would have put it quite THAT way”, but she’s always authentic and she’s always persistent. To me she’s just the real deal.

8. Punk

I LIKED a lot of music before punk and, to be honest, it was punk as a whole idea rather than just the music that had a huge effect on me. It was what punk allows you to do – the ethos behind it – that really liberated me.

Before that the idea of starting a band or even starting a record label, fashion label, magazine or film company was completely alien,particularly in the sticks, which was anywhere outside of London. I was trying to explain this to someone much younger the other day, but for me it was that feeling of liberation. It was that feeling that I could do anything.

It also felt like there was a community there. When you say punk to most people, they immediately add “rock” and think of the sound of punk, which is obviously important as well. But for me it was the ethos, the ethic. Before then it was all about gatekeepers, you had to wait to be introduced or invited When punk came along, you could storm the walls and then when you got in there it was up to you.

9. The ferry to Sicily

MY grandad was in Sicily during the war and he spoke to me about it quite a bit. He was obviously taken with it. He would say “what a place” and he spoke about Mount Etna and everything he had seen there.

Many years later we had the chance to go and play there. What I remember most vividly is arriving there – travelling across on the ferry. It was very early in the morning, a glorious morning with the sun just coming up. I could really feel my grandad’s presence there.

In that moment I had absolutely no idea that this new chapter of my life was about to begin. I loved Sicily so much that I returned for holidays often, so began to make a lot of friends there. Eventually it seemed like the best option was to move there. It’s still a big part of my life and I have a business there.

It was that ferry journey, with my grandad’s presence around me, that felt like the beginning of it all.

10. Simple Minds

IT might seem like stating the obvious, but of course Simple Minds altered the course of my life. With the band, we had no idea of what kind of rocket we were building. At the very beginning we had no idea if it would last a week, two weeks, a month ... you can never tell.

Certainly more than 40 years wasn’t in our minds. Our lives are completely intertwined with it, and it’s given us these great lives.

Sometimes it’s good to stand on the outside and look at it and realise that in many ways, even for a short time, we have the ability to change lives just by giving people pleasure from what we do.

I think sometimes looking at what you do from a distance gives you that perspective – this thing we built that started as a small idea is still growing in some ways. People turned up in their thousands, they come into the hall, you would think if they’ve bought a ticket that they’re looking forward to it, then by the end of the night they’ve been jumping up and down and seem to be really energised by it. There’s something transcendent about what happens at a live gig, that relationship between us and the audience. And that for so long has changed my life.

Simple Minds Live – In The City Of Angels is out now.

In addition, a career-spanning compilation 40: The Best Of – 1979-2019 is released on November 1.

Tickets for next year’s 40 Years Of Hits tour are now on sale from www.simpleminds.com