Ged Grimes, Charlie Burchill, Cherisse Osei, Gordy Goudie, Jim Kerr, Berenice Scott, Sarah Brown
They were playing a âtougher than toughâ Glasgow venue called The Terminal One in the late summer of 1977. âWeâd drunk as much cheap wine and taken as many pills as we could for Dutch courage and were waiting to play,â Jim recalls. âThe promoter said, âLads, youâre on after the next single, but itâs okay, itâs eight minutes longâ.
âOur response was, âEh? Eight minutes? Singles are three minutes, what are you on about?â
âThen we heard this incredible noiseâŠI was transfixed. I said âWhatâs that?â It was a synthesiser. Immediately I said, âPunkâs finished! Weâve got to get oneââ
The pulsing hypnotic 12-inch mix of Summerâs I Feel Love, produced by Georgio Moroder, changed the face of pop forever. âIt was like the Velvet Underground doing disco,â he says, still in awe. âAnd she was singing in an Arabic scaleâŠâ
Self-deprecating singer Jim and publicity-shy guitarist Charlie, both 63, formed the world-conquering Simple Minds soon after, playing their first gig at Glasgowâs Satellite City in January 1978.
Sixty million plus album sales later, the band are still cherished for enduring hits like Donât You (Forget About Me), Alive & Kicking and the sombre 1989 chart-topper Belfast Child.
It wasnât an easy ride. In 1980, Peter Gabriel asked them to support him on his 30-date European tour.
âWe were booed off every night bar one and had all manner of stuff thrown at us. Turin, in Italy, was particularly bad,â says Jim shaking his head. âBut even when we were getting heavy abuse, I remember thinking, weâll be back.â
And he is. Home is in the idyllic cliffside town of Taormina, Sicily, where Jim owns a boutique hotel. He drinks his morning coffee and looks out over the Med and the ice-capped peak of Mount Etna. He writes for a couple of hours then drives to the local market on his Vespa to stock up with fresh veg and lentils. Later heâll meet up with Charlie, still his closest friend and neighbour.
The bandâs line-up in Canada in 1981
They were eight when they met after Jimâs family had relocated from the Gorbals to a tough council estate in Toryglen, Glasgow. Charlie recalls, âThey were still building our estate, so there was lots of material hanging about so that became a playground for the kids. I met Jim in a sandpit…â
Stepping on a rusty nail stopped Kerr from seeing Bowieâs Ziggy Stardust tour when he was 13 and working part-time as a cleaner in a butcherâs shop. Instead, the first concert he went to was âPeter Gabriel in Genesis â the first thing I saw was a guy with a foxâs head on.â
Gabriel turned out to be probably the nicest man in rock. âPeter Gabriel is a lovely guy, he let us play big venues and treated us well and all we did was wait until he went on stage so we could steal his food. âWhatâs that? Camembert? Who ****ing eats that?â.â
Of Charlie, Jim adds, âWeâre the best of pals. I drive him crazy; we usually have one tremendous ruck every year where itâs borderline violence, and by the next day weâve forgotten it. Sometimes youâre not on the same page.â
Charlie agrees. âJimâs constantly getting ideas. We will have just finished a six-month tour and at 7am the next morning the phone rings and heâll say, âYouâd better get started on the new albumââŠâ
Their latest, the brilliant life-affirming Direction Of The Heart, includes Vision Thing, an exuberant tribute to Jimâs late father Jimmy, a former builderâs labourer with the gift of the gab, who died in 2019.
Simple Mindsâ 1979 debut album went Top 30 but their breakout record was their fifth, 1982âs New Gold Dream â the first of six platinum-sellers â which spawned their first hit, Promised You A Miracle.
âIt was a sound we could claim for our own,â says Jim. âBefore we were like a bad version of Ultravox or Magazine.â
It was also a vibrant electro-explosion of optimism in the dark days of the early 80s when Europe was in turmoil.
âIt was still hungover from the student revolution,â says Jim. âSo gigs were targets for the Red Brigade or Baader Meinhof. We played Marseilles and the place was full of teargas. In Paris, a bomb went off in a synagogueâŠ
âOur early records were written in the back of a van with that going on around us. In parts of Germany, the dark [Nazi] imagery our dads and grandads spoke about was there in the background.â
Kerr recalls a grim university gig in the wilds of Canada. âWe realise itâs a Halloween gig; most of the people are dressed in Ku Klux Klan outfits so we get the hump right away. Then when we were on stage, a guy dressed as a spaceman was shooting us with a laser gunâŠWe came off early.
âWe were sitting in the dressing room and thereâs angry banging on the door and so we open the door and itâs the promoter â dressed as Dracula â swearing and saying âIâm going to sue youâ.
âHe ended up being our best pal, taking us on to a clubâŠâ
Jim and Charlie are the only constants in the band, who now include singer Sarah Brown, keyboardist Berenice Scott and dexterous drummer Cherisse Osei.
The palsâ first combo were called Johnny & The Self-Abusers.
Jim and Charlie performing in Spain last July
âItâs all been downhill since,â says Jim. âIt was that exciting. Landmark gigs are nothing compared to the thrill of those first dates â flying by the seat of your pants.
âPeople ask how I got my stage moves; it was from avoiding bottles coming out of the dark in Glasgow.â
Their first-ever gig was in 1977 in a church hall that doubled as a working manâs social club. Charlie recalls, âWe played Waiting For My Man to a room full of baffled orphansâŠour whole set was covers of the Velvet Underground and Roxy Music songs, kind of glammy rock; Jim played keyboards then.â
âPunk changed the music scene completely,â Jim says. âFor the first time, you could stay local and build up a following. I remember we kept hearing about The Skids this band in Dunfermline we thought they canât be that good, so we went on a mission to spy on the competition and they blew us away! They were fantastic. We were very quiet in the van going back to GlasgowâŠâ
They went on to open for bands like The Jam, Generation X, and Siouxsie & The Banshees. âExciting times,â says Jim. âThe lunatics had taken over the asylum. Kids had a voracious appetite [for punk] they were queuing around the block for us.
âPeople went mental for us and that was the oxygen we needed.â
Did you think forty years later youâd still be going? âI didnât even know people who were forty! My parents werenât forty.â
Punk opened the door for a new breed of eccentrics, he says. âBilly McKenzie on Top Of The Pops, Human League at the top of the charts, The Bunnymen, The Cure, ABC, Trevor Horn⊠a lot of imagination and some great pop musicâŠIâd like to think we were part of it.
Magazine sensational, the first great post-punk band.â
When they finally appeared on Top Of The Pops for the first time in 1982 the experience was bittersweet. âWeâd made it but we were skint,â says Charlie ruefully. âYou think youâre a pop star but youâve got no money. It wasnât until the seventh album that we felt we had a career.â
Last year they sold their publishing back catalogue to BMG for undisclosed millions.
Their most prestigious gig was in 1985, when they played Live Aid in front of 90,000 at Philadelphiaâs JFK Stadium, with 1.9billion watching around the world.
Jim had taken his father, who vanished backstage and was eventually found chatting to a man called Bob, surname DylanâŠheâd been singing him Scottish folk songs.
The Simple Minds went on to tour for Amnesty International and played twice Nelson Mandela. The only decorations Jim remembers growing up with the picture of Lenin his father had on the wall, and one of Jesus his mother put up in opposition.
Now a grandad, Kerr has been married twice â to the Pretendersâ Chrissie Hynde (1984â90) and actress Patsy Kensit (92â96) â and has a grown-up daughter and son. Heâs been with his Japanese businesswoman partner Yumi for two decades.
Jim has loved Italy since he went there on a school trip to Rimini at 13. âI had the notion Iâd want to come back when Iâm an old codger, well Iâm a codger nowâŠâ
Train-driverâs son Charlie, 63, enjoys early morning walks and collecting guitars and keyboards. âI got my first acoustic guitar at 13, I nicked it from my brother.â
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His two older siblings exposed him to a wealth of influences â Robert Krieger (The Doors), Hendrix, Steve Howe (Yes), then Mick Ronson.
He rates his contemporaries, the late Stuart Adamson of the Skids and Magazineâs John McGeoch, and lives in hope that these troubled times will inspire a new breed of fiery guitar bands.
âEverything is so formulated now; itâs gone back to the days of Tin Pan Alley.â
Jim describes the pair as âCatholic boys with a Protestant work ethicâ. He once said, âI want to achieve greatness.â
âI still do,â he says. âWe didnât want to be average, thatâs for sure!!
âYou want to be great for the people who grew up loving you.
âI also said I wanted to be in a great live band â not a good one, a great one. And that we wanted to take it around the world and try and get a life out of this. Itâs still my ambition. We take pride in this thing weâve invented.
âWeâre incredibly fortunate, but weâve worked hard.â
*Direction of the Heart is out now on BMG