IIT was June 1987, and more than 400 fans of the Glasgow rock group, Simple Minds, flocked to the Virgin Megastore in the city’s Union Street to meet lead singer Jim Kerr, guitarist Charlie Burchill and keyboard player Mick MacNeil.
The band were one of the world’s biggest acts: they had played Live Aid in 1985 and their most recent studio albums – New Gold Dream, Sparkle in the Rain, and Once Upon a Time – had all been major commercial successes.
As Kerr himself once wrote: "The decade known as the 80’s had witnessed our group emerge from being a little group with a passionate local following in Glasgow, gradually rising all the way into the big league of popular music, becoming one of the top bands of a generation along the way".
The musicians were at the megastore to sign copies of the band’s latest album, Live in the City of Light, all of the tracks on which (apart from one) had been recorded at a concert in Paris the previous August. “It’s great to be here,” Kerr told the Evening Times. “As they say, home is where the heart is – and Glasgow is still home for me”.
One male fan had been queuing since 6am, having come off his nightshift at a nearby casino. A young woman of 16, from Hamilton, had a photograph of Kerr. “Jim wanted to know where I got the picture”, she said. A second teenage female fan said: “Charlie Burchill wrote something on my hand because I didn’t have an album".
The photograph above shows some of the fans who queued outside Barrowland a few years earlier for a forthcoming concert by the band.
An oral history of the group is, incidentally, being published. ‘Heart of the Crowd’ combines more than 800 fan anecdotes with those of band members through the years.
Read more: Herald Diary
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here