Simple Minds: Frontman Jim Kerr is simply happy to be back on tour

Euphoric, sing-along choruses filled with wonder and hope made such venues the perfect space in which to enjoy music from Jim Kerr’s band.

They are back, post-Covid, with a month of shows, including a headline at Birmingham Resorts World Arena on April 7. Frontman Kerr is simply happy to be back. “After the past two years, there’s a sense of relief. We live our lives through the band and we didn’t know if we’d ever be back. When Covid was at its worst, there were times when it flashed through our mind that we’d never be back.”

That transition into the nation’s biggest venues was a natural step – and the only way to sate demand for a band that became gargantuan.

“We’d be doing two or three nights at theatres and then the arenas would be wanting us to play. I didn’t know if we had the songs that worked there. I’d seen bands in arenas where their popularity had put them there and maybe it wasn’t quite their place. For us though, it worked in that format. We then had to work out how to build a show to go with it. I guess we got pretty good at it.” And yet for all of their success, Simple Minds are a band that remain intrinsically humble. Kerr, for his part, is one of the nation’s most charming and articulate interviewees.

A man with a sense of perspective who knows how hard his band has worked and how fortunate it has been, he’s lived through an extraordinary arc as Simple Minds became the nation’s biggest band, drifted into a wilderness that saw albums stall at number 141 on the charts before making an exceptional return to the stages that they formerly graced with no little style.

“We know what it’s like to play in front of 135,000 and we know what it’s like to play a birthday party. Wherever you are playing you have to deliver. When you are in the heart of the song, you just want to deliver.”

And deliver they have. Simple Minds have been on a roll for some time, though there’s no doubting that 2014’s Big Music, through 2016’s Acoustic and 2018’s magnificent Walk Between Worlds have represented something of a renaissance.

A new record will follow soon and Kerr’s enthusiasm for it is palpable. “We are just about to finish off what will be the next record. I would say this, of course, but I think it follows on from Big Music, Acoustic and Walk Between Worlds. People who think those worked well will enjoy the next one.”

Perhaps the greatest surprise for Kerr is that he’s fallen in love with his band as though as were still a kid.

Having endured the ups and downs that is life in any ultra-successful rock band, he’s found peace and happiness with the place he’s at.

“I think there’s been a space in our life for it again, not just because of Covid, but as mature men.

“When you start a band, there’s nothing else in your life. You’re not married, your band hasn’t done well and the band’s not a business.

“You’re at that point before all of that extra stuff comes your way. If you’re fortunate enough to do well, you get all of that extra stuff coming along, which takes time to deal with.

“So when you start, you’re working with a full tank of gas. Five years later, you have so many other things in your life.

“If you fast forward to now, all our kids have grown up and we have room again to continue doing what we do. You need the space in your life to give it your full commitment and that’s the space we’re in. The pressures of life that other people have, we don’t have.

“We don’t have financial pressures so we can be artists and commit. We can go in there five days a week and review things on a Saturday for a few hours.

“Other people might wonder why we’re doing it because records don’t sell. People think we could just play live. But this is who we are and it’s what we do.”

The band’s success through the 1980s into the 1990s was on another level. Though they marked out their class in their first five albums, it was the sixth, New Gold Dream, that helped them to break into the mainstream. Released in 1982 and achieving platinum status, it showcased the band as serious contenders.

Yet the way in which they became part of the world’s consciousness in the years that followed was truly remarkable.

Sparkle In The Rain gave them a number one hit, Once Upon A Time went triple platinum and also provided a top ten hit in the USA, while that streak continued through Street Fighting Years and into 1991’s Real Life.

And though leaner years followed – as they do for all bands – the band’s willingness to stick to their guns meant they avoided the nostalgia circuit and punched through that era before the stunning upturn that has come around during the past decade or more.

“Our past will always be there. Those were the glory days. But we want to add impetus to that story by adding new chapters.”

And for Simple Minds, those chapters have to be really, really good. “You can’t just do a new record for the sake of it. You’re also fighting your own past.”

Kerr looks back to the start of the millennium when it could have gone either way for the band. Their 2000 record, Our Secrets Are The Same, was not released by Virgin.

In 2001, Neon Lights didn’t even break the top 100. The band were in a rut, playing small clubs and finding themselves on the rock track. How are the mighty fallen.

“We didn’t have a record deal, we’d been dumped, nobody was listening to our music any more. We could have knocked it on the head.

“We didn’t want to be punch boxers so we had a choice. Were we going to try and get the engine going again and turn the car round in the right direction – because that’s a big thing as well and we’d lost a lot of confidence. It was hard to work out.”

There was only one sensible answer and the band decided to commit. “We knew we had to take it for a lot more miles. That’s been the mentality since then.”

The success of their 2016 acoustic project was a boon, though in many ways it simply served to show the quality of their songs.

“We would never have thought an acoustic thing would work for us. We’d been asked a million times and thought it wouldn’t work for us. But, my, it worked great. That tide of confidence comes and goes. Sometimes you get some luck and you’re up for it again. We have luck, we have good management, so we learned to hang in there and not get desperate and do stupid stuff.”

Which brings us to the here and now. Their January single, Act of Love, was a great success and they’re back on the road with a slew of arena dates.

Kerr adds: “For me, if it’s a good set, you want to play new songs, you want to play songs that the fans expect and you want to play songs that interest us.

“We play 24-25 songs each night. We rehearse and get tight on between 35-40 so that on any given night, of the 25, you could say about 16 of those are always in it and then the others are up for grabs, out of that pool of 35 or 40 songs. In our mind, we’ll have either/or songs. You want to hit the nail on the head. You want a few songs the crowds expect, a few obscure songs that the hardcore relate to, a cover version that will excite people, something that’s up to date and it’s that thing that covers all the boxes.”

There’s a maturity and recognition that life has been kind, that Simple Minds’ hard work has paid dividends.

“The first thing we think is that we feel very fortunate to only have the opportunity to do what we did but to do it when music was the lingua franca of the world.

“The Beatles made it so and for the next 20-30 years after that, music was the most important thing, even more than the movies.

“Nothing culturally was bigger than Michael Jackson or Live Aid. Music now is like a utility, it comes down a pipe. You have the whole history of music on your phone. That’s great. But I’d have rather been in the period that we were in when it really was that much more potency. That’s how I feel about it. I feel very grateful. It would be churlish to want more.”

Humble and extraordinarily talented, Kerr has reached a good place in his life. It’s no less than he deserves.