ONCE UPON A TIME IN GLASGOW…
Gill Sherry
To say that Simple Minds’ fans are excited about the band’s hometown gig on 27th June is a massive understatement. It’s their biggest UK headline show in 34 years and Bellahouston Park in Glasgow is set to be bouncing with 35,000 enthusiastic fans. But I happen to know, Jim Kerr is looking forward to it just as much.
“We did six months touring last year and we pick it up again this year for another six months. When you look down all the dates, it’s always the same, the hometown gig leaps out! I’d like to think Simple Minds attack every gig the same way. We want to give 100% and I’d like to think we do, but there’s no doubt about it, there’s a different feeling when you look down the list and you see the hometown.”
But there’s another reason why this particular gig is so eagerly anticipated by both fans and band alike.
“It’s special by its very nature, but there’s also a special pressure this time. Being outdoors, being at the park… the last time we were outdoors in Glasgow was 40 years ago. It’s just lovely to think all these years later that we’re still getting the chance to do what we do, especially in Glasgow.”
So, what can fans expect from the huge hometown show?
“There’s an added uniqueness to it in the sense that we’re going to play our most popular record, in terms of record sales, in its entirety. We’ve never played all the songs from Once Upon A Time and so, in amongst the set and the songs people would expect to hear, we’re going to play all the songs from that record. It sounds very long-winded but it’s actually quite a short record. It’s only eight songs but I think two if not three of them we’ve never played live. Certainly, for Simple Minds’ hardcore and for people who remember seeing the band back in that day… we hope to put on a great show first and foremost, but also evoke some of those memories.”
The hardcore fans he refers to will be familiar with all the band’s albums (21 studio albums, 7 Eps, 12 live albums and 10 compilation albums) five of which reached number one in the UK charts. Most will also remember that 39 years ago, in June 1986, Simple Minds played at Ibrox, just across the road from Bellahouston Park.
I’m tempted to say that things have come full circle, but Jim beats me to it. He’s talking about the band’s music, though, rather than gigs.
“There’s a new song that we did recently for a documentary. To me, it’s kind of come full circle. The band started as a new wave, art rock band. There are a lot of hashtags you could apply to Simple Minds – electro, dance rock, stadium rock. ‘Belfast Child’ was Celtic and yet, through it all… intrinsically Simple Minds.”
Although some band members have come and gone over the years, Jim and his childhood pal, Charlie Burchill, have been there since day one.
“We were obsessed with music by the age of 12 or 13. Charlie got his first guitar then, and I got my first after-school job. I used to clean the back store of the butchers, hardly glamorous but it gave me money to buy records and concert tickets… I would buy a record every week.”
The first concert Jim went to was a David Bowie gig at Green’s Playhouse in Glasgow in 1973. It was a matinee show that cost him 60 pence. He confirms at this point that Simple Minds is actually named after a David Bowie lyric from the song ‘Jean Genie’.
Simple Minds’ very first gig was in 1978 at Satellite City, above the old Apollo.
“We had just started in the rehearsal rooms in November and one of our pals said, ‘I’ve got you a gig on 17th January at Satellite City’, which was a discotheque as they called them then – what a great word! We thought it was too soon because we wanted to be brilliant at our first gig, and he said, ‘You’re not gonna be brilliant at your first gig, just get in and play, just start doing it on the road to be being brilliant’. So we did.”
At what point after that initial gig did they realise they’d actually reached the level of brilliance they’d been aiming for?
“It was different then,” Jim says. “You weren’t expected to break through with your first record, so it was about four or five albums before we really had a record that made a dent worldwide. Our success was kind of incremental which, when it came, made it more manageable.”
Their first appearance on the iconic TV show Top Of The Pops was in April 1982, a sure sign that they’d finally hit the big time.
“It was surreal. It didn’t exist back then, but that expression ‘imposter syndrome’… how the hell did we end up on Top Of The Pops? Coming from the streets we were from, the bookies would have given you more chance of being an astronaut, such was the scale.”
The band performed ‘Promised You A Miracle’, their first top 20 hit in the UK.
“We were still living at home with our mums and dads so when we went back to the housing schemes in Toryglen and people had seen us on Top Of The Pops… it was surreal enough for us, but we’ve since spoken to people who said, ‘We couldn’t believe it. You! Yous!’ Because as boys, we’d all played in the streets.”
Although that so-called imposter syndrome continued, bigger things were to come for Simple Minds.
“We were out playing every night, we learned our trade… it sounds a bit prosaic but that’s what it was like. And we were getting more profile and playing to bigger audiences at bigger venues… learning to be a pop band, a club band, a theatre band, an arena band, a stadium band. They all involved different approaches and eventually, come 1985… the most iconic rock gig ever, which was Live Aid.”
It’s the 40th anniversary of Live Aid this year and Jim says he still has very vibrant memories of what is definitely one of the highlights of his 47-year career.
“In terms of sheer scale, being the kind of gig it was, of course it’s a highlight… all those legends! We played in America which made it different for us. It was a 15-minute set, so it was a sprint more than a marathon, but the stakes were high. If you made a good impression…”
He recalls the words of the band’s manager prior to their set: “Not that we needed any geeing up, but before we went on, he said something like, ‘This is it, this is your Everest moment’.”
Simple Minds performed in front of a crowd of 100,000 at the John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, a set which was watched on television by many millions across the globe. And although the band was already enjoying worldwide recognition, performing live was a big deal.
They have, of course, played countless gigs since that huge event in 1985. Do they still get the same buzz from being on tour?
“It’s a great sense of purpose, I think we all need a sense of purpose in our lives and we are so lucky that this thing we call work, although we’ve actually never referred to playing music or playing to crowds as work… maybe travelling and some of the other sacrifices involved can feel like work, but not the actually playing. Doing this thing that we do, when it goes well, it sends people home happy, it has people jumping up and down and has people, I think – and I can say this because I still go to gigs – forgetting their problems for the day and getting swept up with the emotions that come with a live experience. And there aren’t that many of those things these days.”
He has a point. There’s nothing quite like live music. It’s the ultimate mood-booster. Singing along to your favourite song, with your favourite band… it’s amazing. Speaking of which, does Jim have a favourite Simple Minds song?
“It’s forever changing. Whenever the band is asked that, every one of them will say, ‘The first song’, because we’re away… we’ve been waiting all day to get on and play and there we are, it’s exciting, the gig’s just started.”
For Jim, though, it’s always the last song.
“For a few reasons,” he tells me. “At the last song, I’ll take a few seconds to look out and survey the scene. Usually, people are jumping up and down, you’ve swept them up over two hours, they’ve forgotten all their problems, they’re emotional. Something has happened in that room in those two hours and you’ve made it happen. There’s a great feeling of achievement. There’s also a great feeling of relief that it all worked out well. And then the other great feeling is… I get to think, what am I gonna have to eat?”
I can’t help but laugh. For sure, I will be thinking about that if I’m lucky enough to see Simple Minds live at Bellahouston Park.
“At a gig,” he continues, “I don’t eat anything for breakfast or lunch, so I’m famished! But to answer your question, I don’t have a favourite song.”
I would imagine there are simply too many to choose from but those big chart hits that we all remember will no doubt appear on the set list at each of their summer sessions, which begin in Glasgow on 27th June and end in Italy on 25th July.
“I’m fully domiciled in Sicily” Jim confirms, “getting on for 25 years now.”
Interestingly, he’s not the only member of the band to live in Italy.
“Charlie also stays in Sicily. We grew up on the same street in Toryglen and now we’re in the same street in Sicily. It’s a long street, but it’s still the same street!”
The two men have enjoyed a hugely successful career, and Jim considers himself blessed when he looks back at the band’s achievements. Not only were Simple Minds the most commercially successful Scottish band of the 1980s, they are still entertaining crowds the world over, and are now looking forward to that huge gig in Bellahouston Park.
“It was 40 years ago in Glasgow that we went into a rehearsal room for the first time as Simple Minds. Who could ever have imagined that all these decades later we’d be sitting here with me getting all enthusiastic about coming back to play in Glasgow?”
For tickets visit www.simpleminds.com/tour
