Keeping it Simple
Simple Minds are alive and kicking with a new tour, acoustic album and an appearance on Strictly Come Dancing. Singer Jim Kerr tells MARION McMULLEN how they found success after ditching glam rock and punk
back then. I hadn’t ever gone further than Glasgow and we named ourselves after a London designer and Rome.
“We played our first and only concert on a wooden stage at a working men’s club that my dad went to. I think it was a kids’ Christmas party and I remember all the kids crying on the front row because we scared them.”
Jim laughs: “We got that reaction for quite a while.”
The club is now better known as Gorbals Studio and is near the high-rise estates of Glasgow’s South Side where Jim and Charlie both grew up.
They returned to their old haunt where they made their music debut to record some of the tracks for their latest album, Simple Minds Acoustic.
Giving a new twist to rock anthems like Promised You A Miracle, Alive And Kicking and Don’t You (Forget About Me) may sound like music sacrilege, but the results have delighted critics and fans alike.
Jim admits they thought long and hard about turning off the electric synthesisers and the drum machines to record acoustic versions of their worldwide hits, but TV and radio presenter Chris Evans played a crucial part in the birth o of the new album.
“Chris went really big o on our last album and w was a great supporter of it and was raving about it it,” explains Jim. “He said yo you must come on the ra radio show, everyone do does it, so we bit the bullet and the response was overwhelming.
“It was a bit weird performing in a studio at seven in the morning, but it worked.
“We did two or three songs and it led to us thinking maybe there was a way we could do an acoustic album.”
The album offers a fresh and creative look at some of the iconic songs from the band and features a guest appearance by fellow Scot KT Tunstall.
“KT Tunstall is just so great,” says Jim, “when we asked her if she would do Promised You