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Simple Minds' Jim Kerr: 'Every generation wants its own heroes'




Still touring the globe and releasing new music, Scottish superstars Simple Minds will be performing at Audley End on Thursday August 11. Singer Jim Kerr looks back with Adrian Peel on 40-plus years with the mega-selling band...

With massive worldwide hits, million-selling albums and high-profile appearances at some of the biggest live events of the day, watched by billions around the planet, it's difficult to underestimate just how big Simple Minds were in the 1980s and early 90s.

Happily, the Scottish collective - still led by founding members singer Jim Kerr and guitarist Charlie Burchill - are not only still going strong but continue, despite a dip in popularity in the early 2000s, to fill out arenas.

Simple Minds live in Hamburg. Picture: Thorsten Samesch (58305151)
Simple Minds live in Hamburg. Picture: Thorsten Samesch (58305151)

"We've been scratching our heads on that [why they're still so popular] recently," reveals Jim, speaking from his hotel room in Santander, Spain, where the band were due to perform that night as part of their European tour.

"We certainly don't take anything for granted, and it's not always been on the up. If you do something for 40, 45 years there's going to be swings and roundabouts, and also being the band of one generation - we probably were one of the bands of our generation - more's the chance you're going to get it in the neck from the next generation because every generation wants its own heroes and wants its own styles.

"Could I see this current situation, 20 years ago could I see that the band would be filling arenas and still making music and even daring to feel contemporary, as opposed to just a heritage act? No, I wouldn't have thought that would have been possible, but lo and behold... and we have to enjoy it.

Simple Minds live in Hamburg. Picture: Thorsten Samesch (58305153)
Simple Minds live in Hamburg. Picture: Thorsten Samesch (58305153)

"There's a lot of things involved. We work with a great team, we work bloody hard - that's one thing. And also there is quality in what we do - we believe there's quality - and if you have real quality you can take the blows, you can fall out of popularity, you can go out of fashion, you can do all that stuff but there'll always be some kind of fanbase.

"And you can work with that and you can keep it going and you can get a living and satisfaction, and then if you're really lucky, somehow things come round the circle again and people look at you through a different lens, or you're valued in a different way.

"You see it all the time - you see it in fashion, you see it in architecture, but there has to be inherent quality and you have to work bloody hard, you have to get out and go to people. They're not going to come to you."

On how the current tour's been going so far, the 63-year-old says: "Well it's been amazing but we're just starting to feel that we're on the last lap now, because we started tail-end of March and we're due to finish middle of August in Edinburgh.

Simple Minds live in Hamburg. Picture: Thorsten Samesch (58305149)
Simple Minds live in Hamburg. Picture: Thorsten Samesch (58305149)

"We're on the home strait but yes, reactions have been great, business has been good - but more importantly, the band sounds so strong and that above all else makes you feel good."

Like with so many acts, the pandemic brought the Simple Minds globe-trotting juggernaut to an abrupt halt. "We have had gaps but you're not far off the mark," replies Jim, when asked if the lockdown period was the longest the band had ever been without touring and performing since the original lineup first got together in 1977.

"It certainly is the weirdest gap we've ever had... I mean I'm sure you'll remember, particularly at the peak of that thing, we were actually wondering if touring would ever come back again - people aren't going to travel, people aren't going to go to gigs, people aren't going to do this, people aren't going to do that...

Simple Minds live in Hamburg. Picture: Thorsten Samesch (58305147)
Simple Minds live in Hamburg. Picture: Thorsten Samesch (58305147)

"But when we got together and got out playing - not just the band, actually, the whole organisation, people that have worked with us for years - we always gave it 100 per cent, but I think we were determined to give even more, if that's possible, or certainly enjoy it even more. And there's been a kind of feeling in the air."

With such a large back catalogue and selection of albums to choose from (their first LP Life in a Day came out in 1979), have the band been digging out some tracks they perhaps haven't played in a while?

"Well I have to say this tour is somewhat different because a lot of these are festivals and such so by their very nature it's a shorter set," says Jim, "but when we did the spring tour to the arenas, we were playing two sets, which was quite a lot of music, and that afforded us to do the very thing that you said there.

"We were playing over two hours so... essentially what we do is there's maybe 60, 70 per cent of the set is fixed and then the other 30, 40 per cent we'll chop and change things around and we try and tick a lot of boxes.

"We have different kinds of fans - obviously people that come to hear the big songs hear that, but we like to play some stuff that particularly the hardcore fans might not have heard, or might enjoy hearing, and then a couple of surprises. I mean we actually start this tour with a song that we wrote in 1978 [Act of Love] and had never played again after 1978, and here we are all this time later starting the set with it.

"When I told my mate we were doing that, he said it was suicide but it's worked very well."

The "big songs" to which Jim refers include such bona fide pop/rock classics such as Don't You (Forget About Me) and Alive and Kicking. "You could add [UK number one] Belfast Child to that," says the star, who was previously married to Pretenders singer Chrissie Hynde and actress and model Patsy Kensit.

"We wrote this song called Mandela Day that particularly in Europe got a ton of radio play, as an unlikely hit but it always works well. Then Waterfront as well is another one, so there's about a handful and they're the ones that if you play festivals... you could say that 80 per cent of the crowd at a festival have never seen us, don't know the catalogue, but those songs always go down well no matter where we're playing."

Does Jim have a favourite amongst them? "Certainly live, the bombast of Waterfront is always... A lot of songs go down well, I can really say that, but you can see the peak ecstasy moments, a song like that [Waterfront], the place goes mental - just with that rhythm, and that's always something.

"I always tell people when they ask what's your favourite song to play... the whole band was asked recently and they all said the same thing: 'Oh, the first song because we're hanging around, we're dying to get on and finally we're on and we're playing, the excitement, things are about to begin'.

"I completely understood why they would say that, however, I wasn't trying to be contrary but my favourite song, regardless of what song it is, is always the last song! It is a great moment [the first song], I always take a moment to look out, but the last song, the place is going mental, you can see that people have really enjoyed themselves, and with that comes a great sense of relief.

"It's like, 'Good, done, we did it, people are really happy - great'. And just as you're thinking 'fantastic', this voice comes in your head saying, 'You've got to do it all again tomorrow!' But that sense of relief is wonderful, because it's not us, it's the organisation involved.

"There's a lot of effort goes into putting these things on and there's a lot of things that could go wrong so it really merits the recognition at the end of the night. 'Great, we did it, that's fantastic, people are happy, that's the main thing, what's next?'"

Simple Minds have a new album, Direction of the Heart, due for release in October and songs from it have also featured on the tour. "We have started to creep them into the set by stealth, one by one," notes Jim.

"Fortunately, the style of the record is that a lot of the songs are very 'up' songs, very big, chunky choruses so they're the kind of things you can risk playing, even if people don't know them, because they've a very instant appeal about them, and they're working great."

As was the case with so many acts who found themselves at a bit of a loose end, touring-wise, the new album was written during lockdown. "We had been on tour - we were two weeks into what was going to be a world tour when things came crashing to a halt," recalls Jim, "so that was the end of playing live.

Simple Minds founding members singer Jim Kerr, right, and guitarist Charlie Burchill. Picture: Dean Chalkley (58261590)
Simple Minds founding members singer Jim Kerr, right, and guitarist Charlie Burchill. Picture: Dean Chalkley (58261590)

"At least we had music to turn to - ideas up our sleeves and in the end that is what happened. We ended up spending the time working on the new record so that something productive, or something quite substantial, came out of the frustration of lockdown."

He continues: "Charlie [Burchill] came to Sicily, I have a place there, and we were set up together, and then from time to time you could still travel about. There was a studio in Germany where we would go and we would work with some of the producers and such, but by and large it was Charlie and I. I would say of the time spent on the record, about 70 per cent of it was Charlie and I in the room together."

Having visited numerous cities and countries over the years, is there anywhere Jim would like to perform where he and the band haven't yet been? "Everyone was wanting to play in China at one point, I don't know if that's still quite the case right now, for various reasons," he says, "but we have played all over the world and we still do. We're already planning tours next year for America and Australia...

"I'd like to play in Japan more than we do - we have played there - because I just really, really enjoy being there."

In Spain of course when we spoke, Jim has also always enjoyed spending time on the continent (he calls Taormina, Sicily home) and this love of Europe was solidified at an early age when he and Charlie set out to hitch-hike to London in the 70s with the intention of attending a Sex Pistols gig.

A truck driver said he was going to Paris, however, and asked if the pair would like to go there instead. They then ended up spending a month hitch-hiking through France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

"We've always been wanderers, that's for sure," says the Glasgow-born singer, "and that lust for travel... this was the age before Ryan Air and easyJet, where you could go for a tenner, but it was both this thing of just a sense of other things out there.

"It wasn't a rejection of what we had because we loved growing up in Glasgow. I mean we didn't know anything else so for us it was the centre of the world. But the thing that you mentioned there [hitching around Europe] yeah, well actually even prior to that, going on a school trip.

"I went to Italy when I was 13 with the school and I can remember imagining living there. I thought, 'When I'm older, maybe, maybe'. It seems ridiculous but that's the way things have panned out - I do live there now."

Jim certainly seems very happy with his choice of Sicily. "Most ex-pats who live in Italy, they stay in the north and Tuscany and all of that," he explains, "which is beautiful, but I found a different kind of soul in Sicily. It's really ancient and the sea there and all of that, it got under my skin and that was more than 20 years ago and now I'm fully resident there."

That said, Jim does pop back to Scotland a fair bit. "Yeah, the irony is - not this year obviously because we're touring - I like to go back there [to Scotland] in the summer where it's cool," he notes. "I'm the opposite - I go the other way! I love Scotland, I love the landscape there. I'm a hiker, I'm a walker, and that's what I do."

A formidable live act, Simple Minds delivered memorable sets at major events including Live Aid in Philadelphia in 1985 and at the Mandela Day Concert, celebrating Nelson Mandela's 70th birthday, in 1988 at Wembley Stadium (they also made a brief, two-song appearance at a celebration concert marking Mandela's 90th birthday in Hyde Park in 2008).

"You look back at it [Live Aid] and it's such a historical moment, in terms of popular culture, and you could feel it at the time," remembers Jim. "It was the biggest televised event ever, but you didn't ever think that nearly 40 years on people would still talk about it...

"Funnily enough, all those big things - the Mandela concerts, all those landmark things, don't get me wrong they were terribly exciting, but the high of in the late 70s, early 80s going to places for the first time, still learning our trade, playing in the back woods of Germany and Holland...

"This will sound exceptionally rose-tinted glasses, and it kind of is, but I'm just trying to explain the feeling of turning up to a place and there'd be two men and a dog, but at the end of the night the promoter would say, 'I've never seen two men and a dog go crazy like that! You've got something, don't give up'.

"There was a great feeling of 'this thing might happen'. The moment preceding the big time, those naive years, they were sweet."

* Simple Minds will be appearing at Audley End House and Gardens, as part of the Heritage Live series of concerts, on Thursday August 11. For more information, visit heritagelive.net/whats-on/simple-minds. For more on the band, go to simpleminds.com.



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