21 Dec, 2011 Merry Christmas from Jim!
The week before Christmas has a special significance for me, albeit purely in a sentimental way. It was after all this very week that Simple Minds signed their first ever-recording deal, some 33 years ago to be precise, and that is something that I am unlikely ever to forget, health willing.
To say that an event like that was exciting for all involved would be a huge understatement. It was both a dream suddenly realized as well as the absolute answer to all our prayers and wishes. Not that we actually did much praying or wishing back then, or at least not that I am aware of. We were however bursting with the desire to make and release our music to the great wide world, and that was only possible in those days with the help and support from a major record company.
Putting pen to paper on such an agreement between band and company was therefore a quite an unbelievably exciting moment for us and to put it in context, I should say that we had never even met anyone who had secured himself or herself a worldwide deal with a major record label. That then was how rare an achievement it was for a Scots band back in `78. London and New York may well have been swamped with bands queuing up to record their debut albums, but “Dear Old Glasgow Town” was pretty much a desert in comparison to those metropolises. Surely then, no one could imagine the situation which was to come only a few years later, where countless bands from our city were happily, and in many cases successfully realizing their recording ambitions.
In any case I still get the warmest feeling when I float back to that frozen December morning and when we hurtled through to our manager Bruce Findlay´s office in Edinburgh. That office in Shandwick Place, above his very own record shop, (Hey! Record shops! Do you remember them?) was where we signed the recording deal that initially enabled us to become whatever we have become – and to put in motion the first bold pages of our still on going story.
The actual signing deed was rather quickly done and although I cannot quite imagine how it could have been so, there were no particular celebratory hi-jinks. I mean, surely a bottle of champagne would have been opened and perhaps even an “exotic cigarette” or two was passed around. That was much more our style in those days after all. (The fact that it would still have been mid morning would have been no deterrent in the slightest.)
For sure we almost certainly did not go to any trendy restaurant and immediately begin spending our recording advance on prawn cocktails or lobster thermidor. (That malarkey would come some years later.) Or on second thoughts, perhaps Bruce did go to some hip Edinburgh eatery as that was more his kind of thing. If so, he merited the best of whatever the particular menu was proposing. He along with his partner Robert White had after all secured our freshly signed record deal and were already enthusiastically engaged in the process of “masterminding” our early developments.
So what did we do for the remainder of that great day? Well, thinking about it now, we probably rushed straight back through to Glasgow and immediately got down to some Christmas shopping. Having signed a record deal meant that we were officially professional musicians, additionally it meant that we had a monthly wage to look forward to and would no more be relying on the Government to deal us those cheques that barely help the unemployed survive. That alone meant that we had in a way recovered our dignity, or it did to me at least because I always felt humiliated whenever I had to make the weekly visit to the bureau of unemployment. That explains my continual sympathy to those who find themselves in that position.
In any case, on arriving back in our hometown, thanks to Brian Mc Gee who was the only one among us with a driver´s license, and the only one with access to a four-wheel vehicle. (It was his father´s dusty old builders van and he very kindly allowed us to use it at will) I recall meeting my then girlfriend in the Mars Bar pub and from there we went to a record shop (yes, one of them again) to buy some previously unaffordable albums. All of this was prior to treating ourselves to some “theatrical” clothes that were purchased from a trendy second hand store in nearby Sauchiehall St, and from there we then went on to buy Christmas gifts for my parents – who along with all our parents and some others – had faithfully supported us throughout the preceding year.
Signing a worldwide record deal that December morning might have felt to us like we had just won the lotto. But no bigger celebration was necessary. I was ecstatic that evening as I considered the future prospects for Simple Minds. But I also had no idea of the colossal amount of hard work that would be necessary in the years ahead.
Well, some of that same ecstasy still exists and the hard work continues to this day. But we are blessed to have it all the same, truly blessed in fact.
Merry Christmas!
Jim Kerr