Derek Forbes on Simple Minds: "Most of all, we always had fun":

From left to right: Charlie Burchill, Derek Forbes, Jim Kerr, Mick MacNeil and Brian McGee of Simple Minds pose for a group portrait in London in 1980 (Image: free)

Forbes’s book, A Very Simple Mind on Tour, begins with a sugar-rush of the concerts the band undertook in 1984, not long after Sparkle in the Rain had topped the British album charts. The line-up then was: Forbes, singer Jim Kerr, guitarist Charlie Burchill, drummer Mel Gaynor and, on keyboards, Mick MacNeil.

And what a year it was: gig after gig in Australia, New Zealand, Dublin, the UK (including eight nights at the famed Hammersmith Palais), the Continent, mesmerising audiences night after night after night. Then there were sold-out shows in the US and Canada, and further ones in Europe again.

It’s a blurred and exhausting list of concerts and travel and glimpses of different hotels, airports and cultures, but even now there was to be no let-up. As Forbes writes: “It was now time to get back home and prepare for the massive tour supporting the Pretenders in the USA. The first gig was on 25 July – and yes, it’s still 1984!”

At Madison Square Garden he chats to Courtney Cox, the future Friends star, in the dressing-room. Even after the States, the band still had other concerts to play with the Pretenders, in Japan.

Forbes's new book (Image: PR)During the year the Glaswegians got to know such luminaries as Robert Plant, Dave Stewart, Dumbarton-born David Byrne, the actor Peter Firth, John McEnroe, Graham Nash and Stephen Stills. Add this to the sense that the band was knocking on the door of major-league success and it is little wonder that the chapter is headed ‘The best year ever’.

Finally, Forbes records, “We flew back home, first-class – just the ticket. Great to be able to stretch your legs and get a proper sleep after our marathon tour. The next event for us was to go to the big John Giblin’s studio at Barwell Court, Surrey, to write songs for the new album. It is now October 1984”.

FourGoodMen: Carrie MacNeil, Mick MacNeil, Ian Donaldson, Jane Button, Derek Forbes, Bruce Watson and Malcolm Button (Image: Lewis Segal)

Except that Forbes will not be around for the making of the seventh studio album, to be called Once Upon a Time. His departure has been recorded in previous books about the band. In this one, he writes that he had crashed his car one night after an argument with his then girlfriend. The accident had led to headlines in the newspapers.

“Then” he adds, “I got a call from the Simple Minds office, asking me to come in and see them. I was staying with Mick and [MacNeil’s partner] Hannah at the time, so I left for Edinburgh to go to the office. I walked in, saw Bruce Findlay the manager, and I said, ‘What is it, am I sacked?’

Simple Minds at the Hydro: Jim Kerr is ready for show

Bruce looked up and said ,‘Yes.’ Charlie, Mick and Paul Kerr, Jim’s brother, came into the office. Charlie and Mick were both crying, and Paul was raging about Jim, who was not there. I ended up talking to Jim on the phone. Jim just wouldn’t listen or give me a chance to redeem myself. I had disappeared from the band too often, giving too much attention to my girlfriend, and not nearly enough to the band. But, whatever the reason, I was sacked and that was it”.

Simple Minds on tour, Bologna, Italy (Image: Picture courtesy of Derek Forbes)In Graeme Thomson’s authoritative book, Themes for Great Cities: A New History of Simple Minds, Forbes is quoted as saying: “It was like a plane crash. I never saw anything coming”. Thomson also quotes Bruce Findlay, the band’s manager at the time, as reflecting, some 35 years after the event: “I still think it was a mistake and maybe I should have dug my heels in”. Forbes’s place on bass guitar was taken (with his consent) by his friend, John Giblin, an esteemed Scots-born bass player who throughout his career would play with everyone from Peter Gabriel to Kate Bush (Giblin died in May of last year, aged 71).

Thomson also notes that it’s “impossible to overstate” Forbes’s impact on “the sound, the sensibility, the shape of the music they made in those first seven years”. Bruce Findlay tells him: “When you listen to the records, Derek is a massive miss”.

Derek Forbes (second from left) with Alex Copland (Culture and Sport Glasgow), Joe McBride, Tom Forsyth and Bobby Lennox in a fund-raising golf match for Clyde 1's 'Cash for Kids', 2007 (Image: Jamie Simpson)Forbes licked his wounds and went on to have an impressive career away from Simple Minds, playing for seven years with Propaganda, the German synth-pop quartet, and with an impressive range of other groups, from The Alarm, Spear of Destiny and Big Country. He played bass guitar on Kirsty MacColl’s 1984 hit version of Billy Bragg’s A New England (she’d sung on a couple of tracks on Sparkle in the Rain). He played in FourGoodMen, alongside Mick MacNeil, Ian Donaldson and Bruce Watson, established Ex-Simple Minds (XSM) with drummer Brian McGee, and in 2016 released Echoes, a selection of Simple Minds’ songs and on which he now played every instrument, from drums to theremin.

Promised you a miracle: Simple Minds in words and pictures

He returned to the Simple Minds fold to play bass on Néapolis, their 11th studio album, which was released in March 1998. The subsequent European tour included a couple of dates supporting the Rolling Stones, no less. In his book Forbes describes the late Charlie Watts as one of the nicest people he ever met. “He told me that all he wanted to do was tour, because that’s where he made his fortune. He was a very down-to-earth man and a total musical legend”.

Forbes’s book indicates that he still feels some pain at his exclusion from the Minds in 1985. He, McGee and MacNeil decided not to take part in a recent Paramount documentary about the band. “We have”, he discloses, “other plans”. Two pages later, he notes: “I must say to all the loyal fans who still follow the band, you will be in for a special treat quite soon”.

An early promotional shot of Simple Minds (Image: Newsquest)

Forbes’s book is a captivating chronicle of what it is like to be in a group that, by dint of exceptional musicianship, vivid songs and a stunning work ethic, deservedly made it big. He’s especially good on the band’s experience of touring as the opening act for Peter Gabriel in 1980. Throughout it all, the sense of camaraderie comes across strongly: five young guys against the world. As Forbes writes in his introduction: “We laughed together, we laughed at each other, we had fights and arguments, we learned to work with luminaries of the music industry, but most of all, we always had fun. This is my truth”.

·  A Very Simple Mind on Tour is published by McNidder & Grace at £22. Derek Forbes is on Facebook at  https://www.facebook.com/Jackal2016