Hello My Name Is … Jim Kerr of Simple Minds + Photo Gallery • Friday, June 20: Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island • Chicago

Although Scottish art-rockers Simple Minds enjoyed massive support in Europe and elsewhere, mainstream success in the United States remained elusive through the early ‘80s. The band had gained a modest foothold with college radio airplay for songs like the shimmering “Promised You a Miracle” from 1982’s New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) and the anthemic homage to Glasgow “Waterfront” from the 1984 album Sparkle in the Rain.

A trio of events sent the band’s status rocketing in 1985. First was the release of “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” on The Breakfast Club soundtrack, followed by a globally witnessed appearance at Live Aid, and then the release of Once Upon a Time with singles including “Alive and Kicking” and “Sanctify Yourself.”

The band is currently undertaking its extensive Alive and Kicking Tour of North America, celebrating those 40^th anniversary milestones alongside a deep catalog of transcendent alternative pop. Singer Jim Kerr spoke from the road with Illinois Entertainer’s Jeff Elbel. Simple Minds perform at the Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island on Friday, June 20.

IE: Do you remember your first performance in Chicago? The earliest I found was in 1981 at Tuts Nightclub for Empires and Dance.

JK: Oh my God. Now that you say that, I remember the gig. It was always a big deal to go to these famous cities. We grew up with American culture. I do remember Tuts because it was one of these gigs were they kindly give you a t-shirt from the club. It was a cool t-shirt that I probably wore for the next couple of years.

IE: The Pharaoh with sunglasses logo!

JK: You got it! There you go.

IE: This Alive and Kicking Tour is named after a standout single marking a milestone anniversary.

JK: We’re delighted to have the chance to come back and work pretty extensively. Promoters are always looking for an added angle to wrap it up, and indeed, it is 40 years. In fact, I just found out that yesterday was the 40^th anniversary of “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” being top of the Billboard charts.

IE: The song “Alive and Kicking” is the antidote for bad moods. It’s bottled euphoria.

JK: Oh, beautiful. That’s a great way of summing it up.

IE: Is that kind of emotion easier or harder to write and perform?

JK: I think the euphoria, the joy, is part of our DNA. I’ve always felt thankful as a writer that the music I got to work with had good, strong melodic content and came with a certain uplift. There was something feel-good about it, even when we were trying to be dark and dangerous back in the art-rock days. We couldn’t help ourselves. There was always light at the end of the tunnel. “Alive and Kicking” probably sums that up more than anything else.

IE: It’s something special that you wouldn’t hear on a Smiths record.

JK: Yeah, or a Robert Smith record. Listen, it’s great to have a thing. Even Dylan has his thing. Springsteen is still the wear-your-heart-on-your-sleeve working guy. I just like the fact that our thing not only makes me feel good, but you can feel the vibe in the audience. It’s spiraling upwards. It’s not pulling you down.

IE: Springsteen has been in the news for speaking his mind while touring Europe and catching heat for it at home. That made me think of his song “Jungleland” and your portrait of Glasgow in “Oh Jungleland.” Given your appreciation of Springsteen, is there any thread between the two songs?

JK: He’s definitely inspired us. We were big fans of that Born to Run album, but our “Oh Jungleland” was a sort of painting. We knew we were leaving that life behind in the sense that the fame of the band and the rewards it brought had taken us somewhere else. What we had growing up was rock and roll and football. For our football team [the Glasgow Celtic Football Club], there was a part of the stadium where the hardcore kids were. That part was called The Jungle. [The song] was like, we’re leaving that behind, and we’re leaving all those friends who we would see on a Saturday and hang out with. It was a song of mixed emotions. We wanted to leave it behind and go into this rock and roll universe, but there was a price to be paid.

IE: Does this tour spotlight [2022’s] Direction of the Heart or reinforce material from [2018’s] Walk Between Worlds?

JK: This tour is really picking up from one that we started last year in Europe and the UK. We did about six months, and we did play two or three [Direction of the Heart] songs. The record felt quite new then. It doesn’t feel so new now.

In America where we haven’t had the opportunity to work to the same extent, it’s always hard to put a set list together. It’s a nice problem to have, but there are a lot of boxes we want to tick. For instance, in Seattle two nights ago, we didn’t play anything from the last records, but I did get a kick out of playing a song called “Sons and Fascination.” The last time we played that in America, we were probably playing in Tuts! [laughs] But the song sounded so good, even though I would say 80% of the audience didn’t know it. The vibe of the song swept everyone up. That was us showing the DNA, the genetics of the band. It was powerful.

IE: It does seem like this is an appropriate moment for a song like “The Signal and the Noise” from Walk Between Worlds. That song seemed to be about disengaging from us-versus-them online battles and making positive connections through tangible experiences.

JK: We have been playing that, and I hear what you’re saying. You can go about it different ways, but sometimes you just want to write a song of the moment – something that evokes what is going on or has a certain kind of import to it. These songs are all up for grabs. On any given night, we will play it.

IE: Direction of the Heart followed the lockdown. You described it as a feel-good record for the worst of times.

JK: Well, we hope it was the worst of times then, but maybe it wasn’t. [laughs]

IE: We’ll keep our fingers crossed. Is that kind of album equally necessary today?

JK: It’s not even whether it’s necessary or not. You write with what you’ve got in you first and foremost, because it’s all you’ve got to work with. Then you hope that it rings a bell with others who are listening in. It’s especially magic if it can allude to the chaos and the confusions and yet still make you believe.

For me, one of the greatest songs ever is Prince’s “Sign of the Times.” He was writing about the early ‘80s in America at the time. He’s got everything in that song from Reagan’s policies to homelessness to drugs. And yet at the end of the song, he still dares to find romance and dream of something better in his own way. If you can really do that, it’s amazing. Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” is another. There’s hope in there.

IE: It’s a tragic song, but the character still reaches for the way out. Hope is embedded.

JK: There you go. There has to be hope, for me anyway. Otherwise, what’s the point?

IE: Does the USA get an outsized portion of Once Upon a Time and less of Graffiti Soul or Walk Between Worlds than elsewhere around the world?

JK: Yeah, it does. For the audience coming to see this, [Once Upon a Time] unquestionably is the album they would know more than others. It sort of feels of its time again to us. It actually feels fresh, even though we’ve played a lot of the songs. There are three or four songs on the album that we hadn’t been playing. They feel new again.

IE: Like “Oh Jungleland” and “Come a Long Way?”

JK: We started to play “Come a Long Way” at the tail end of last year. It sounded good. Now it sounds great. We played “I Wish You Were Here” for the first time in Latin America two weeks ago, and it’s sounding good. We don’t play them all on the same night, so it’s not like “here is the album.” But throughout these weeks ahead, we will revolve those songs. It’ll either be “Oh Jungleland” or “Ghost Dancing.” It’ll either be “Come a Long Way” or “I Wish You Were Here,” that kind of a thing.

IE: “Ghost Dancing” was debuted at Live Aid in Philadelphia. That event was the biggest thing in the world to me in 1985.

JK: Yeah, of course.

IE: When you opened with that song, I was mesmerized!

JK: We’ve been playing that, but we should probably play it a bit more on the grounds of what you’ve just said. Even the language of that song, “Cities, buildings falling down” … I don’t know if it’s come round again or it’s just timeless. Some songs you play from the past, and there might be elements that make you feel, “This is a jacket that doesn’t fit anymore.” But these songs have tremendous energy as well. Even if you came to the gig and didn’t know “Ghost Dancing,” I think you would still be swept up in it.

IE: How did you choose “Ghost Dancing” to open your Live Aid set?

JK: That was the first time we’d played in front of a huge crowd in America and we figured, “Whatever we play, there’ll be a lot of people who don’t know it, so why don’t we just debut this song here?” Today, you would have managers and agents and everyone all around you saying, “Don’t start with a new song.” But we thought, no, what crowds really react to is energy. That song has it in abundance. We thought, “Let’s start with a sprint.” It worked well.

IE: The last verse of “Ghost Dancing” describes a couple who take dire action. I assume that image was drawn from contemporary news.

JK: Yeah, it was a CNN event. It was the first of these suicide bombers that I ever heard of. We were touring back in those days, and the only thing I saw was CNN. It all bled into the songs.

IE: I wondered whether [bassist] Derek Forbes ever hinted to that he wished he’d played one more gig with Simple Minds? [Forbes’ exit occurred after the recording of “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” and before Live Aid.]

JK: The irony is that we all enjoyed it, but with Derek’s nature, he would’ve enjoyed that more than anyone. I don’t feel good about that.

IE: On the other hand, what an incredible first gig that must have been for John Giblin.

JK: Well, yes, absolutely. And not taking away from anyone; they’re different people, but John John was a good seven, eight years older and more experienced than us. He had played with [Peter] Gabriel and all this stuff. Having John with us that day maybe even gave us more confidence. He was never a leader in the band, but he was certainly a big brother.

IE: Tell me about the strength of your current band. [Drummer] Cherisse Osei has been with you for at least eight years, and your other bandmates have been with you and Charlie [Burchill, founding guitarist] for even longer.

JK: We’re so fortunate. Anyone who’s been on stage with Simple Minds has brought so much to it. Cherisse is really something else. She’s not only a brilliant performer and amazing drummer, but she can look to Charlie and I and say, “You’re doing that wrong.” And we go, “What do you mean? We wrote it!” She’ll really pull you up on stuff. She’s got young energy, young enthusiasm. They’re all stars in their own right, really. When you see the band onstage, the first thing is important. You’ve got to be a great band. We need that cohesion. It’s almost like a theatrical ensemble.

Sometimes we play festivals, and I see bands from back in the day. There’ll be four or five, how can I say this … jowly guys [laughs] who are doing their thing and that’s it. We’re trying to put on something a bit more theatrical. You need these characters. You could say that the live thing is the only game in town now, because let’s be honest, artists of our generation are not going to get much of a look in with rock records. Albeit, we’re halfway through a new record now. We still love to do it.

But you’ve really got to make the impact live. Especially with the price of concert tickets, our generation wants to feel they’re getting something a bit spectacular, I dare say. That’s been behind our attitude of putting together the kind of band that we have.

IE: 1985 was so significant for Simple Minds. You were gaining ground incrementally at the cult level through Sparkle in the Rain in this country, and then you exploded in 1985 with three significant touchstones. As a small-town kid, I hadn’t heard the same music that kids from Chicago knew, but absolutely no one missed “Don’t You (Forget About Me).” Live Aid followed, and then Once Upon a Time arrived. It must have been a whirlwind. What was the feeling of that time?

JK: There was definitely a feeling of, “Is this really happening?” There was no hint the year previous. Sparkle did well everywhere but didn’t get the promotional treatment in America. The record company came to us and said a thing that record companies never say. They were a cool company, A&M. Talking about themselves, they basically said, “We blew it. Your band’s happening everywhere else. We should have gotten behind you. Guaranteed, the next one, we’re here for you.”

We said, “Great, because we’re going to come anyway. We want to work with Jimmy Iovine. We want to work with Bob Clearmountain. We’ll work together, and we’ll try to be closer.”

Then out of nowhere in the months leading up to [the album], they said, “This thing [The Breakfast Club soundtrack] has come up. We think it’d be a good bridge while we’re waiting for the record.” We said, “Okay, tell us about it.” Everything sounded good until they said, “We have the song.” We said, “Hang on a minute. We write our own songs.” And they said, “We really think this is the song. MTV is going to love it,” and blah, blah blah.

They played [“Don’t You (Forget About Me)”] for us. You can actually hear Keith [Forsey]’s demo online. It is the song. It sounded pretty good, but it felt a bit generic. We were not so jumping up and down at the idea. However, once we actually spoke to the people involved … we got [The Breakfast Club director] John Hughes’ enthusiasm. Keith came over to the UK, and we loved him. Our attitude became, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Why don’t we go in for an afternoon and see what happens?” And what we did was their song, but our record. We gave it the Simple Minds treatment, and it was only for an afternoon. By the end of that afternoon, it felt like we had lightning in a bottle.

IE: Like you say, Simple Minds’ imprint went onto the song. The sound bridges Sparkle in the Rain and Once Upon a Time. The song didn’t change Simple Minds.

JK: That’s absolutely right. Charlie’s guitar, Mel [Gaynor]’s drums, the breakdown, it was all classic Simple Minds.

IE: I wasn’t alone as a kid who came to Simple Minds through that door. Did it rankle the band that the door was opened for so many people by someone else’s song?

JK: Maybe it should have rankled, but it didn’t. I think there was a kind of awkwardness, even a feeling of guilt. “Hey, we only spent a few hours on this.” But actually, we gave it the Simple Minds thing that we had developed over many years. That’s what you’re hearing on the record. It all just felt so unlikely at the time, but success on any scale has to be appreciated. We also knew we had “Alive and Kicking” up our sleeves and “All the Things She Said.”

Although [“Don’t You (Forget About Me)”] was obviously a great success when it came out, it wasn’t even remotely the success that it is now with the benefit of time. It was a big pop hit, but it wasn’t a touchstone as it is now. I think it’s right to say it’s one of the zeitgeist songs – arguably in the top 10 of the ‘80s, wouldn’t you say?

IE: I think it’s emblematic of the era even ahead of songs like “Billie Jean” or “Every Breath You Take.”

JK: If anyone said to me, “Hang on a minute, what about The Police and Dire Straits and U2 and all that?” Those are absolutely touchstones. But the thing [“Don’t You (Forget About Me)”] has is The Breakfast Club. It has Molly Ringwald. The same thing applies, doesn’t it? Kids go to school, and you’ve got the jock, you’ve got the preppy, you’ve got the goth. None of that changes, does it? Subsequent generations have found a way to use it.

IE: I’ll ask this question since you mentioned U2, with the understanding that they’re your actual friends. Your song “Big Sleep” from 1982 sounds to me like a direct influence on “One Foot in Heaven” from The Edge’s 1986 soundtrack for Captive. “Ghost Dancing” predates “Where the Streets Have No Name” from U2’s The Joshua Tree. In the ‘80s, there were comparisons between your bands. Since U2 had a larger foothold in this country, the narrative often got spun, suggesting that you were influenced by them rather than the other way around. Could you talk about that?

JK: U2 were very inspirational, apart from being great. Their attitude, their desire, and their ambition was inspiring. Meeting them and seeing their determination and their work ethic was inspiring. Being Irish and Scottish, we got on like a house on fire as people. People laugh when I say how impressed I was the first time I saw U2. They say, “Did you know then they were going to be the biggest band in the world?” And I say, “Yeah.” And they say, “How did you know?” And I say, “They told me.” [laughs]

A few years ago, there was a great book that came out about the making of The Unforgettable Fire. Bono and [Brian] Eno and Daniel Lanois talk about driving around Dublin listening to New Gold Dream and how the band wanted to incorporate elements of that Simple Minds sound. I can’t hear it to be honest, but it was lovely to see it in the book. I thought it was a great acknowledgement of the musicians in Simple Minds. It was very generous. The answer is, everyone was rubbing off onto each other. Not only did we share the Celtic blood, we shared a lot of the same idealism, and we had that big sound. The Waterboys had some of it as well. Big Country, too.

IE: You’ve said that your practically lifelong friendship and career with Charlie are down to luck. How so?

JK: It’s definitely down to luck, as most things are. Our families both moved into the same street in Glasgow within weeks of each other. Where’s the luck in that? Well, my dad really didn’t want to move into that area. He wanted to go somewhere else, and my mom harangued him. The first day we moved in, my parents said, “Go out and play. Meet the other kids.” Charlie was one of the first kids I met.

By the teenage years, he and I really came together. Everyone liked music, but we were obsessed. And we were obsessed by the same books and films and the same wanderlust. We would go hitchhiking to see bands, and then we would go hitchhiking just for the sake of hitchhiking all over Europe.

IE: Are you family to each other at this point?

JK: I’m sure it’s more common that people that have worked in rock and roll with each other a long time don’t really consider themselves friends anymore by the end. [laughs] Usually, it’s a business relationship. Charlie and I are the best of pals. We’re still able to have a good scrap or screaming match, but it’s because we’re still passionate. We support the same football team. We like the same hot curry. He has an Asian partner. I have an Asian partner.

We’ve got so much in common, but we’re so not alike. We have completely different personalities. Our roles are so clearly defined so differently. No one’s the boss. He’s very much a musician. You go around to Charlie’s for breakfast and before he’s even finished with his first cup of coffee, the guitar’s on his lap. The piano’s nearby. Before I have my first cup of coffee, I’m up in the hills. I’m hiking, I’m trekking, I’m strategizing.

We’ve been so blessed to have this band with us. I think somewhere deep to Charlie and me it’s somewhat more of a crusade. I’m not sure what it’s a crusade about, but it’s a crusade.

IE: Maybe it’s about beating against darkness and pulling light and goodwill through the cracks.

JK: Definitely. Not only do we want to entertain people, we want to transcend. The music makes us believe there’s something better, and we try to put that across.

IE: Was there a shared experience that drove you and Charlie to make music?

JK: Seeing the first live gigs, undoubtedly. We saw Bowie, Zeppelin, the Who, Genesis, Lou Reed, the Rolling Stones. But we didn’t think we could do that. These people came from another planet. What we did think was, “That’s the planet we want to live on. We’ve got to get on it somehow.” We had more chance of being astronauts, but that was a spark.

IE: What was your first Bowie show?

JK: I saw Aladdin Sane in May ‘73, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it every day for the next six months.

IE: Do you prefer anything that Simple Minds does now over what you did in the ‘80s? Your sonic palette has expanded so much. I think of the electropop and dance elements you hear in Direction of the Heart or even “Dolphins” from 20 years ago.

JK: Oh, “Dolphins” is beautiful, with the mood that it sells. We played it the other night.

No, it’s all part of the story, whether it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago. We just left the studio with new songs up our sleeve. It’s all part of this cloth that we’ve weaved. I don’t like one thing better than the other. There’s been times where things have been more troublesome or frustrating or disappointing than others, but it’s still part of us.

If you’re going to do something as long as we’ve done this, nothing goes on the up and the up and the up. That’s just life itself. Some records turned out exactly as you wanted. Others slipped through your fingers, and didn’t quite get what you had in your mind. That’s all part of it as well. I dare say John Lennon or Pablo Picasso would’ve told you the same thing.

IE: What was the last album that came out exactly how you wanted?

JK: Once Upon a Time. [laughs]

IE: With fingers crossed for the next one!

JK: Yeah!

Q&A by Jeff Elbel – Photo Gallery by Curt Baran

Thanks to Fia at Big Hassle. Material from this Q&A was quoted for a feature in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Simple Minds with Modern English and Soft Cell

Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island

Friday, June 20 at 7 PM

 

Tags: Charlie Burchill, Cherisse Ose, featured, Ged Grimes, Gordy Goudie, i Erik Ljunggren, Jim Kerr, Mark Taylor, Sarah Brown, Simple Minds, Simple Minds Chicago 2025, Simple Minds with Modern English and Soft Cell Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island

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