WHAT WE’VE LEARNT

One early Simple Minds song, The Cocteau Twins, provided band name inspiration for Elizabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie when they saw the band perform it at a show in their Grangemouth hometown in 1978.

Magazine may have provided the early prototype for Simple Minds, but Jim Kerr doesn’t have great memories of the two bands touring together in ’79: “They never spoke to us once. Cunts.”

Bono acknowledges the influence of New Gold Dream on the sound of The Unforgettable Fire. Thomson argues it goes further, citing the U2 singer’s pose on the cover of their 1983 live album, Under A Blood Red Sky, as being “coiled and catlike…every inch Jim Kerr in stencil”.