24 Aug, 2006 DON’T YOU FORGET ABOUT US
DON’T YOU FORGET ABOUT US
Liam Rudden
Arts & Entertainment Editor
Edinburgh Evening News
Thursday August 24, 2006
“WHEN I meet people, and they ask what style of music my band do, I say, ‘Well, we started as a punk band. Then we were a new wave band. Some would even say that for a while we were a new romantic band. We had a political period, are a stadium band, and yet we have always been intrinsically Simple Minds’.” – Jim Kerr is musing on the longevity of what is, internationally, Scotland’s best known rock bands as it approaches a milestone in its history.
Few groups can claim a 30 year heritage that transcends not just generations but musical styles, an achievement of which the singer is justifiably proud, and one that makes Monday’s Simple Minds’ concert in Princes Street Gardens a highlight of the 2006 T on the Fringe.
The band’s return to Edinburgh could also be described as a homecoming of sorts for the 47-year-old Glaswegian, who acknowledges that the Capital has played a “massively important” part in the band’s story.
“It still does,” he says emphatically. “It’s true that we are a Glasgow band but when we started I lived in Edinburgh (I still have a flat there) and we were managed by Bruce Findlay who is based there. To this day our office is in Edinburgh, our accountants and our bank. So although we are Glasgow boys, Edinburgh is core to our whole operation.
Even the gigs – it was Pete and Barry at Regular Music that gave us our first gigs at Bruce’s Record Shop in Rose Street. So we’re stamped with Edinburgh.”
Part of the reason the Capital played such an important part in the band’s early years is that in the 80s, unlike today, Edinburgh had a music scene that was far superior to that of Glasgow.
“At that point Glasgow never had the Sub Clubs, the King Tuts and all that. Edinburgh always had the gigs – you had Tiffany’s, and places like that,” remembers Kerr, adding, “So although Edinburgh is always cool in its own way, it was particularly cool then.”
As were Simple Minds, although on occasion Kerr’s dress sense was known to embrace the more flamboyant excesses of the new romantic movement.
“I’m a wee bit gentler on myself these days,” he says with a grin, before adding, “When it was announced that we were going on tour last year, my son – whose teacher is a bit of a Simple Minds’ fan – came in one day and said, ‘Da, da, teacher says you used to wear tons of mascara…’ I looked at him and said, “What do you mean used to..?’
“But listen, if you weren’t looking like that you weren’t happening man. I know that sounds like a bit of a stretch but it’s true.”
From Tiffany’s in St Stephen Street to Verona’s historic Roman amphitheatre and stadiums worldwide, Kerr has played them all – although today the make-up, leggings and baggy shirts are gone – and Simple Minds are one of the world’s most acclaimed stadium bands. A transformation that began after the release of their 1982 album, New Gold Dream.
“There was a moment that we became a stadium band,” says Kerr.
“When people think of New Gold Dream, they probably don’t think of stadiums and arenas and stuff because that album is from the sort of ‘cooler’ period of Simple Minds. But it was the success of New Gold Dream in Europe – the album and the tour combined – that meant we got to play festival stages.
“At that time festivals weren’t big in the UK, but we would go to something like Pink Pop in Holland and be onstage in front of 30,000 or 40,000 people. Surprisingly to us, our music worked in that environment.
It didn’t work for everyone – we stood at the side and saw that a lot of bands just weren’t coming across in such a setting, even though they were great artists. Our music just seemed to have something inherent in it that worked on that scale.”
Much of that success can be put down to Kerr’s stage presence, and his ability to work a crowd. Laughing, he admits, “There’s no doubt about it, whether it’s me or someone else, you basically have to have a frontman who’s a bit of an ar**hole. Or who can give of himself completely. Put it this way, there’s no room for being cool.”
Originally formed as Johnny & The Self Abusers at the tail end of 1977, by Kerr and Charlie Burchill, Simple Minds released their first single, Life In A Day, on March 1, 1979. However, it wasn’t until the release of Promised You A Miracle three years later that the band tasted real chart success, although previous singles such as I Travel (one of the first records to have a 12in remix) and Love Song had secured them a strong club following, both on the live circuit and on the dance floor.
“The one thing about Simple Minds is that although we are obviously a rock band, we always had a groove. Not many of our contemporaries had a groove. I say that with some pride, and we still do. We’ve got a hell of a drummer and essentially funk driven bass lines.”
Between 1982 and 1989, the albums New Gold Dream, Sparkle In The Rain, Once Upon A Time, Alive and Kicking and Street Fighting Years saw the band’s popularity soar, helped by film-maker John Hughes decision to use the single Don’t You (Forget About Me) as the opening theme for his box-office smash, The Breakfast Club, which broke the band in the US almost overnight. But by the early 90s, with the band exploring a more politically inspired vein of work however, sales were waning. Looking back, Kerr is philosophical.
“Lets be frank, come 1992 we had been going non-stop since 1977, and despite all the great things that happened the net result was that the band was set to implode. Some of the key members were deciding that it wasn’t for them anymore, and that was a real blow. But maybe at that point we had taken the formula as far as it could go. There was a feeling of trying to get blood out of a stone, plus, in our wisdom, we were looking around and our generation had come and gone. We were looking at the Stone Roses, The Happy Mondays and knew it was going to be tough for us, because apart from the odd exception, if you’re of one generation, the next generation just isn’t going to want to know. So we didn’t panic or quit, but we had to step back and see how things would go.”
Ten years later, Simple Minds took to the road once again with the Floating World Tour – their first in seven years – before returning to the studio to record Black & White 050505, and album which saw them return to their roots and resulted in a tour of Europe, the Far East, Australia and New Zealand earlier this year.
“I hope Simple Minds are a great band…” says Kerr. “If we are, that is what has allowed us to play through the times when we were getting plaudits and when we were getting ridiculed. If you can play well and you don’t lose the desire… well, in our case there has always been a few thousand people who will turn out to see us on any given night. On some occasions there were 15,000 or 20,000 – that was the oxygen that kept us going. If you’re having doubts, that kind of reception gives you all the encouragement you need because, at the end of the day, there are how ever many thousand you have delighted. The world feels a much better place when you know that you have turned people on.”
And he adds, “We feel we have already been blessed with much more than we could ever have imagined, but suddenly it’s exciting again. We never plan more than a couple of years ahead but already with the new album and tour (although it’s been the most intense period in the sense of work for a long time) were feeling energised as opposed to knackered.
“The only pressure we have now is to go on stage every single night and play like our lives depended on it because what are we saying when we go on stage now? We’re not saying, ‘This is our new album’ or ‘This is our big hit’. We’re saying, ‘This is what we have done with our lives’. So even a mediocre gig wouldn’t be acceptable – it would be a reflection of everything we have ever done and would knock us for six.”
Photo (c) Dave Cable
(c) 2006 Edinburgh Evening News