EVER since the beginning of their career, Simple Minds have been a compelling live act. For evidence, look no further than the video of their set at the epic Live Aid concert from July 1985.
As the band plays their chart-topping single, Don’t You (Forget About Me) for soe 85,000 people at Philadelphia’s JFK Stadium, Jim Kerr jumps off the stage down to where the photographers are clustered. It’s clearly a moment to be savoured, with the eyes of the world upon him. Surrounded by cameras, Kerr runs his hands through his hair, places one foot on a railing, holds the microphone out to the vast, singalong crowd (U2’s Bono would do something similar later in the day, at Wembley stadium).
“On lead guitar – Charlie Burchill!” he calls out. A stagehand brusquely clears two photographers out of the way as Kerr returns. Back up on stage, he stands behind Burchill, mid-solo, and briefly places his hands on his shoulders. Two twentysomethings from Glasgow’s Toryglen, the eyes of the world upon them.
Simple Minds’ 15-minute set was sandwiched between those of Queen and David Bowie (Queen's in particular has gone down in pop music history), but they more than held their own. Kerr, however, actually spent most of that quarter of an hour thinking about the fact that the band had just been introduced by none other than Jack Nicholson.
It also crossed his mind that his white trousers were the wrong choice. They were flapping in the wind and “looked like I should have been on a yacht”. Nevertheless, the Live Aid songs would establish Simple Minds as a high-quality act. “Every single night we have the desire to play like it's the only night on Earth”, Kerr would say in 2008. “I think that's why we still have a career, through the good and the bad and the indifferent”.
The band has released a succession of fine albums – the most recent, Direction of the Heart – came out a year ago to admiring reviews. Kerr has said that, while making it, he and Burchill “kicked the tyres more than perhaps we have in the past. When things started to sound good, it was like, ‘Well, how can we make it great?’ And you don’t always put yourself through that”.
Simple Minds have now announced a global tour for next year. It starts in New Zealand in January before heading to Australia and, in mid-March, Europe. There are two gigs at the OVO Hydro, in late March. The Hydro was where they recorded an excellent live DVD nearly 10 years ago.
The new tour comes not long after the 40 Years of Hits tour which, thanks to the Covid lockdown, ended up spanning the two years to 2022. The reason for such a quick follow-up is, well, simple: “There’s a demand [for Simple Minds]”, Kerr says, “the invites to play and go around the world. Last time, we didn’t get the chance to go to America, we didn’t get the chance to go to Asia. We didn’t get the chance to go to South America. All of that is going to happen this time”. The success of the last tour also played a part, he adds.
I mention some of the times I’ve enjoyed the band in concert, most recently at Edinburgh’s Princes Street Gardens in August 2022. “It’s nice of you to appreciate the effort that goes in [to the live shows] but there’s a tremendous amount at stake for us with every single gig”, he says. “It seems a ridiculous thing to say when we’re about to go on the biggest tour we’ve ever done, that it has to happen every single night.
“You can’t have a so-so night and then an okay night and then a great night, because there’s just so much at stake. First and foremost there’s people coming along who’ve invested so much of their time and money.
“But our reputations are at stake. And that’s all we have, really. And so that effort that you sense, it comes from somewhere deep; it comes from this sense of, ‘we can’t let the side down’.”
The support act on the forthcoming tour is another notable Scottish act, Del Amitri. Says Kerr: “We’ve always had a great sense of goodwill with other Glasgow bands, Scottish bands. If you’re not interconnected through knowing them, you’ve got somebody who works for you who worked with them. Or somebody knows so-and-so.
“Del Amitri – I don’t know Justin [Currie] but I do know how great a writer he is. I’m really looking forward to that. When I heard they’re coming out with us, I thought, that’ll be great. That will get people up out of their seats before we’re even ready, which makes a great night for all involved”.
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Kerr is looking forward to playing the Hydro, and its noisily appreciative audiences. “I was there not so long ago for Peter Gabriel. It was emotional for me, because the first gig I ever saw was Gabriel, and that was 1973 [with Genesis at the Apollo, on October 9]. That was the beginning of live music for me personally.
“It felt great, going to gigs, and still going to see Peter Gabriel, who’s still touring and still brilliant. Sometimes you take it for granted, outside of what I do, just as a fan of music; there’s still something about a great gig, and there’s certainly still something about a great gig in Glasgow.
“We go around the world and we meet bands from every corner of the world, and they always talk about Glasgow, and they always talk about [venues], whether it’s King Tut’s to Barrowland or, back in the day, the Apollo, and of course now the Hydro”.
He remembers seeing Arcade Fire, too, at the Hydro. “You know you’ve been to a great gig when you can’t stop thinking about it for days afterwards. Though they’re one of my favourite bands, it somehow escaped me seeing them until fairly recently, but I saw The Who there. I was fortunate that night; someone had really got me up close, and I could almost hear the sound of [Pete] Townshend’s guitar coming right at me. My eyes were getting moist. I was thinking, you know, this is never … when this goes, that’s it.
“We don’t know how to build the Forth road bridge anymore, the railway bridge, you know … the materials aren’t there, the people aren’t there. You can’t do it: it’s a moment in time. And that’s the thing with bands that have a legacy, or bands that have impacted you during your life. You go and see them live. Never mind the songs. It might just be the sound. You think, oh, that’s that sound. And suddenly, something awakes in you again”.
The band’s history is fascinating. They worked incredibly hard in their first years, releasing four albums – Life in a Day, Real to Real Cacophony, Empires & Dance, and Sons and Fascination/Sister Feelings Call – between April 1979 and September 1981.
Their first gig was on January 17, 1978, in a four-act bill in support of Steel Pulse, at Satellite City, atop Glasgow’s Apollo theatre. Billy Sloan, the journalist and broadcaster who did so much to promote the band, remembers Kerr wearing a black priest’s frock coat, tight jeans, winklepicker boots and a severe pudding-bowl haircut. The effect was unsettling, to say the least. Audiences at other early shows – the Third Eye Centre, the Doune Castle, the Mars Bar on Howard Street – were equally struck.
“Somebody recently showed me the first-ever interview we did, on the day of our first-ever gig”, Kerr says. “Don’t ask me where I got the gall to say this, but the question was kind of, ‘so what is it you want out of this? Why be in a band? What is it you’re looking for – riches and fame?’
“And I said, ‘there’s three things. We want to be in a great live band’. It’s kind of interesting that I said ‘great’ …; ‘we want to take it around the world; and we want to get a life out of doing that’.
“And here we are, lo and behold, all these years later, still getting to wrestle with that challenge. We’ve certainly had a life out of it, that’s for sure. And that’s it - that’s who we are, and we still wrestle with that challenge.”
It's notable that the global tour takes in Australia. It was, after all, a momentous visit there in 1981 that became a turning-point in the band’s fortunes. Australia loved Simple Minds. It was mutual.
Inspired, they released their fifth studio album, New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84), in September 1982. Enhanced by such classic songs as Promised You a Miracle, Glittering Prize, and Someone Somewhere in Summertime, it reached number 3 in the UK album chart and sold well across Europe. “By the time of New Gold Dream, the full glare of the southern hemisphere has tempered their bones, mirroring the new colours of the post-punk age of pop, futurism, and new romanticism”, writes Graeme Thomson in his Simple Minds book, Themes for Great Cities.
“Up until [the 1981 visit to Australia] the band was getting plaudits, we were getting much more confident live, but we hadn’t had a breakthrough”, Kerr says. “There was a feeling that Simple Minds might not be a household name, but we would be an art-rock band. But there was something about Australia. They had these – it was almost like pirate [radio] stations that the law didn’t come down on. They were illegal, but they were there.
“They were playing the hell out of music, Simple Minds being part of it. We thought we were turning up unknown and in fact, within weeks, it was like, ‘maybe we could be pop stars as well’. There was that kind of fever, and that kind of encouragement propelled us into what would be our next record, and that really opened the floodgates for so many things that were to come”.
New Gold Dream still sounds fresh after 40 years. “That really is the mysterious thing”, says Kerr. “You make a record and you hope it’s a record of its time, and then the times move on. There is a period where you maybe grow distant from it, or it’s lost in the mists of time. Where the mystery comes in is that years later, somehow the sounds and the songs find a new life or relevance and they find a new audience. How that happens, I don’t know. But it happens all the time - in fashion, in architecture, in films”.
The floodgates did indeed open after New Gold Dream. It was followed by the epic, euphoric, textured Sparkle in the Rain (February 1984), which boasted such classics-to-be as Waterfront (with its driving, irresistible pulse), Up On The Catwalk, and Speed Your Love to Me, and sat atop the album charts of twenty countries. The CD of the band's concert at Paisley Abbey, during which they ran through New Gold Dream for a Sky Arts special, is now available.
New Gold Dream in turn was followed by Once Upon a Time (October 1985), on which the highlights included Alive and Kicking, Sanctify Yourself, All The Things She Said, and Ghost Dancing. Despite the absence of the hugely popular single, Don't You (Forget About Me) - it had been written by Keith Forsey and Steve Schiff, and featured prominently in John Hughes's 1985 film, The Breakfast Club - the album reached the top 10 in the States, and reached number 1 in the UK charts. Street Fighting Years (May 1989) included the superb Belfast Child, and Mandela Day.
Truly, the Eighties belonged to Simple Minds. As the band remarked on X/Twitter recently, Once Upon a Time "is the album that brought Simple Minds a level of success that truly went beyond our dreams".
So much has changed in the music industry from those days, from the way record companies scout for new acts to the way we consume music. “It’s unrecognisable from the world we were in”, Kerr observes. The music industry, for one, has changed beyond belief.
“A few years ago I would have said there’s no more record shops, no-one buys albums. Now of course there is a resurgence in record shops - not to the degree there once was”.
Music, he went on, can also be streamed. “Music is a kind of utility now. You walk around with so much recorded music in your pocket, which is different from the culture we grew up with. You bought a record, and you had to sit and listen to it. You gave it a shot, and usually the song that you didn’t like became your favourite song.
“The one thing I’m so thankful for, in amongst all those changes, for us, the things we do fundamentally have not changed at all.
“What do we do? Well, we look for a melody, we look for a lyric, we look for an atmosphere. We put it together, it becomes a song, we record it and we take it around the world and we play in front of people. And that has not changed in our sense.
“The technicalities – how it’s sold, how it’s distributed – have all changed. But … forty years ago, right now, I would be getting ready to go to Australia, I would be sitting on the phone, doing interviews. And here we are.
“It’s almost like, in the dizzying amount of changes, we’ve had this - we still have this almost like a banister we can hold onto that is recognisable. It’s still about plugging in and creating the emotion through the sound that Simple Minds make”.
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Certainly, Kerr has never taken success for granted. “The thing that scared me – I realised this at an early point – was that I could see success coming, and it scared me that it would pass us by without appreciating it. It could pass you by and, in fact, a lot of people have spoken about it passing them by.
“I remember thinking that I’m going to take a minute or two at every gig, just to take it in. The feelings that run through you in those two minutes – I mean, where else do you see that communal thing?
“You don’t really see it at football stadiums. Two sides go to war – sure, if your team’s winning and you’re in amongst your gang, it can feel like that. But you can’t really compare it.
“So where else do you feel that? The answer is, ‘few and far between, so when it happens in music, and you helped create that… I’m very quiet before the gig. Sometimes I sit out on the bus, sometimes I’m out where the bus is parked.
“You see people coming in. They’re meeting their pals or whatever, they’ve got a spring in their step, but that’s nothing compared to the end of the night. Something transcendent has happened. People are energised, people are hugging each other …There’s an immense feeling of satisfaction that you’ve been witness to that chemistry”.
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Running through the Simple Minds story, of course, is Kerr’s bond with Burchill. They became friends at Holyrood Secondary and worked together ever since.
As it turns out, Burchill had been at Kerr’s Glasgow home shortly before our interview. “We were sitting in the garden and had lunch, going through the months ahead”, Kerr says. “We hadn’t seen each other for four or five weeks. It’s amazing, I’ll say, ‘what are you reading?’ and he’ll say so-and-so and I’ll say, ‘I just bought that two days ago’. Or it will be the same with the music he’s listening to.
“We have so much in common, in our interests, our tastes, and that has never gone. Having said that, we’re so distinct in the sense that, ultimately, he’s a musician.
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“How he expresses himself is that he gets up first thing in the morning and before the coffee pot is even boiled he’s either sitting at the piano or he’s got a guitar on his lap and he’s kind of meditating, and he’ll be noodling around with some things that will then become the seeds of songs.
“I’m still full of awe for not only him but musicians in general, because I’m not one. So our roles are very different. We’re very different as people”.
Kerr laughs. “Charlie and I used to live in the same street in Toryglen and we live in the same street in Sicily now. We call it ‘Still Game Sicily’ – we walk up and down the hills there, putting the world to rights. He loves Italy; he speaks fantastic Italian and he loves the history. I don’t speak Italian as well as him but I love the history, all that stuff.
“Usually, when there’s a duo or a rock band, they can’t stand the sight of each other after a period. But Charlie and I … We both have such a commitment to the band where we, in our own little comical way, see it as some kind of crusade. And we both think it’s got some to go”.
Simple Minds play Glasgow's OVO Hydro on March 29 and 30. ‘Simple Minds: Everything Is Possible’, the first-ever feature-length documentary film to chronicle the band's history, is available on Paramount Plus UK. simpleminds.com
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