Simple Minds frontman Jim Kerr

by Corey O'Flanagan

On "Don't You Forget About Me," the band's surprising longevity, and their latest album, Direction Of The Heart.

Charlie Burchill (L) and Jim Kerr (R)

Simple Minds have done the near impossible, releasing a series of albums over 30 years on that are vibrant and fresh but still have the indelible stamp of their creative team: founding members Jim Kerr (vocals) and Charlie Burchill (guitar). The duo have surrounded themselves with an eclectic lineup that brings loads of energy to their live shows and recordings, including the Londoner Cherisse Osei, who supplies the beats on drums.

The band formed in 1977 and in the early '80s made waves in their native UK with songs like "Promised You A Miracle" and "Waterfront." In 1985 they were tapped to record "Don't You (Forget About Me)" for the John Hughes movie The Breakfast Club. As Kerr explains, they pushed back because they didn't want to record a song they didn't write, but it ended up being their American breakthrough, going all the way to #1.

The latest Simple Minds album is another winner, Direction Of The Heart, set for release October 21, 2022. The lead single, "Vision Thing," deals with the death of Kerr's father but is hardly a downer, celebrating his 83 years on Earth with a sweet groove.

In this episode of the Songfacts Podcast, Kerr explains what it was like making a "feel-good record in the worst of times" and tells us not only how The Breakfast Club thing went down, but what they learned from it. The audio and transcript are below.




Jim's Location

I'm in the South of France. I'm in Nice. It's the end of August, so this is the peak period. I don't live here. I live in Italy, but I have friends here and our tour just finished a few days ago. It's quite a nice part of the world here just now.

I'd already arranged to have a visit and then they said to me last week, "You gotta do all this American promo stuff." And I said, "Well, maybe there's a nice little studio in Nice." And lo and behold, there was, and there is, and so that's where I'm speaking to you from.


How The Death Of His Father Impacted The Album

We were just getting started writing the initial songs of the new album, Direction Of The Heart, and we were set up in my little home studio in Glasgow. Dad lived nearby and he hadn't been feeling great, but there was nothing too alarming about it. And then a few checkups, and then the news got gradually worse. We had just started working, and he is a kind of guy who was always interested in what we were doing. He gave us the first £100 to make our first demos. Until the end he said he was still waiting to get paid by us... with interest! But that didn't quite happen.

So we had just got started, and when I say we, I mean my songwriting partner, Charlie Burchill. Charlie and I grew up in the same street together, so he knew Dad. And as we got older, to Charlie, he wasn't just Dad, he was a friend and a bit of a mentor and all that. So, this was going on and the one thing Dad was really keen on was the work continued. He didn't just want everyone to sit around being freaked out. He wanted the work to continue. So we did.

I was only 15 minutes down the road and Charlie and I, we would work in the afternoon and then I would go up and see him at night. Mom passed quite a few years previously. So those first few weeks, the first musical ideas were coming up and at the same time I'm thinking of lyrics, and I found the words coming through me for what became the album opener, "Vision Thing."

The first verse I wrote is about Dad, because he's such an influence on us and an influence on me. But as I was in the house, it gave me a chance to go through a lot of stuff up in the attic, junk you think you'll never look through. I went up one afternoon and - you know how parents are - there was a lot of stuff up there from the early days of the band like magazines and cutouts and little scrapbooks... things that I would've thought I was too cool to care about in the past but found myself really appreciating.

So this song "Vision Thing," it's got two verses. The first is about Dad and his influence, and the second verse is me looking back at the younger me. Somewhere in there, there's this celebration of life.

But certainly it set a tone for some of the songs. If I say, "Well, the opening song is about my dad who passed away during the making of the record," you would imagine some forlorn ballad, some sentimental thing, but Dad wasn't that kind of guy. The song really mirrors his spirit. It's a really punchy song.

We were playing it live just now, and even though most of the people don't know what it's about, they're jumping up and down to the rhythm of it. It almost belies the subject matter, which is a sweet spot to be, where down below you feel all this joy, but somewhere in the chords you can feel the sentimentality. We felt it was great. It was the first idea that came up and it was a gateway to the rest of the record.


Making A Feel-Good Record In The Worst Of Times

As we're starting the record, the situation with Dad comes to the forefront, and then a few months later, this whole mind-blowing, science fiction, what-the-hell turns up and the whole world found itself thinking, what is this?

This is when you really appreciate having an art to throw yourself into because you sort of escape the world for a bit when you've got an art or when you've got intense work that's all-encompassing. But once the initial thing of you can't leave the house and all that stuff, Charlie and I were able to get in a room together. It was full bubble mode. We ended up trying to make a feel-good record in the worst of times.

I've been very fortunate in my life. I haven't had to live through any wars or apocalyptic scenarios. But in our own way, this certainly was a war - it was a war of survival and a war of trying to keep your senses together and trying to keep your spirit up and trying to keep healthy. So, what a backdrop to be in. What a backdrop to find yourself trying to be creative in.


Secret To Simple Minds' Longevity

There's many things to it, but the chief reason I give, and I have to say, when I give this reason, people's immediate reaction is very candidly, they say, "No, it's not just that, you worked hard, you're talented." But I put it down to luck.

Yeah, luck. Because think about it: We were lucky when Charlie and I met each other in the street when we were kids. My mom wanted to move into the area, my dad didn't want to go there, and my mom harangued him and he said, "Well, we'll go and have a look." And the kids - me and my brothers who were eight years old - we said, "We love this place." And they said, "Mmm... OK."

In the States I think you call it a housing project, we call it a housing scheme, but it was brand new. It was 1968 and it was new tower blocks and elevators, and we thought it was the greatest thing, but they were still building it when we moved in. So, as we were moving in, Mom and Dad said, "Get out and play, we're busy here." They were moving the bits of furniture and stuff. We go down to the bottom of the street and there's three or four kids playing on what was essentially still a construction site, three or four kids playing on this sandcastle. The kid at the top's name is Charlie and he's already moved in two months. We said, "Can we play as well?" "Yeah, you can play."

Charlie's been my best friend and songwriting partner ever since. Now, is that not luck? I think that's luck right there for a start.

What else is luck? Guess what? When we're 16, this thing called punk rock comes along. No one could see it coming. Before then, the idea of forming a band and making a record, I had more chance of being an astronaut. But this thing came and suddenly, certainly in a British context, for the first time ever things were decentralized. People in Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, kids were thinking, You know what? We can give this a go. We can hustle together a bit of money to do our own little independent records, start our own independent magazines, do our own little independent movies. Suddenly, we had the keys to the madhouse where anyone could get up and give it a go. Before punk rock, that just wasn't on. So, there's great luck there.

Now, there's a million other examples, but I'll just go to one other thing. The Breakfast Club wasn't a bad bit of luck either. That was something that wasn't meant to happen. MTV, who could see that happening? Luck!

The other great piece of luck is that we were born a type where this life suited us. It doesn't suit everyone. We weren't the guys that after 10 years didn't want to do it anymore. Some people are sprinters, other people are marathon men. This life suited us - we were born the type.


The Breakfast Club And "Don't You Forget About Me"

Simple Minds didn't write "Don't You Forget About Me." It was written by Keith Forsey and Steve Schiff specifically for the film, and they wanted Simple Minds to sing it. The band pushed for one of the songs they wrote themselves.

We were young, we were a bit brattish, we were insecure. We were loving what we were doing and thinking, "Hang on a minute, you want us in 'cause you love us because we write these songs, but you want us to do your song?"

We actually had this new song up our sleeve called "Alive And Kicking" and we thought, "Why would we do someone else's song?"

We weren't even willing to listen initially. We were like, "No, we don't do other people's songs. End of story." And of course, later on it was explained, but the song was written to the script and every time they tried to make it more amenable, it sounded worse, because they would say, "It sounds really like Simple Minds," and we would be infuriated. "How dare you rip us off and then try and sell us on an idea!"

They were going, "No, no, no, it's not like that." But in the very end, when we met people like Keith Forsey, the producer and co-writer, and indeed, John [Hughes, The Breakfast Club director], we liked them so much. In Keith's case, he was pretty shrewd. He said, "You know guys, why don't we give it a little try? Take an afternoon, and if nothing happens, nothing happens. And then you've got everyone off your back. And if it does happen, who knows?" Well, who knows turned out to be pretty good.

Once we go into the studio, we don't know how to do things by half measure. Once you plug in, once stuff starts coming out of the speaker...

The band was on fire anyway. Anything we jammed on sounded great. So once we plugged in, it was, "How about we try a different start? How about we do this [makes the sound of the guitar and the intro ad-lib: 'hey, hey, hey']. Oh, that sounds pretty exciting."

Suddenly it was game-on and we weren't thinking about ourselves, we were just thinking about what's coming out of the speaker, and every time someone did something that was cool, that encouraged us more.

The thing at the end, it was a thing we were starting to do a lot live: break it down.

"Alright, break it down. What are you gonna sing?"

"I don't know, I'll just do this 'la la, la' thing, and then I'll come in tomorrow with really clever words."

Once I did it, they said, "You're not going anywhere tomorrow. It's finished."

But we were kinda looking at each other going, "It's good this? isn't it?" This is the thing with music: You can analyze it and you can come with an attitude - and bands are notorious for politics - but once you start playing and you like how it makes you feel, everything else goes out the window. That's all that counts.


Handling Sudden Success

There was a bigger problem once it started to get success. We thought, We didn't even work for this, we just jumped down there for a couple of hours and now it's #1 on the Billboard charts. Which is nonsense, because the sound we had honed for 10 years. The attitude, the spirit. We may have cut it in three hours, but it took 10-12 years to create the sound of the band, the spirit of the band.

It was a Calvinistic way of looking at it. We don't deserve this success. But there's this other thing that says, "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth." You know, take the break. Listen to all those people who worked so hard for it in the record company and people who believed in it, and the people at MTV who gave us a break and all that stuff. We owe them a ton.

Simple Minds, 2022

How Jim And Charlie Write Songs

The technology's been fantastic. Everything's a balance and you have to find your way with within it. Charlie usually goes to Thailand the first three months of the year to get out of the winter and all that, but he has a setup in Thailand and he takes his stuff with him. There's nothing better. I'll get up in the morning, "Oh, Charlie sent an mp3." I'll put it on, and I'm very lucky in the sense that usually what he comes up with, sometimes the ideas are more formed than others, but there's always a really strong atmosphere that I identify with, an atmosphere in as much as I'm conscious of the melody. There has to be a good tune.

But there's usually an atmosphere with it and an emotion, which I think, "Oh, I know what this piece of music's about." I have a book of lyrical riffs and I'll try and match the atmosphere up. Of course, eventually you've got to work with words that will scan and fit and rhyme and all that stuff.

But that's just one example. We have to be in the room, though, to really close it off. I can take it so far and I can even sing, send it to him, and then he can work it up a level, but at a certain point we need to go in the room together and really kick the tires and finish it off.

So technology is great that way. Absolutely. And for that matter, we can have Cherisse Osei put on her drums in her studio in London. But does it beat being in the room together? No. Certainly not in the backing- track stage where you really want to get a great backing track. Or indeed, Charlie will program drums and he'll have a feel, but usually he'll say, "Cherisse, can you do it like this? Now do it the way you would do it."

So the technology's been great, as it's great right now where you and I are speaking. I think this is really cool and much better than jumping on a plane and going all around, which when I was 18 or 19 of course I would love.


Recording In Sicily

When I think of the album title, Direction Of The Heart, I think of how I've been there on and off for 20 years now, and how we even ended up in Sicily. When I look back there's no rhyme or reason or real logic, it was all instinct. You go down and then you meet somebody, and then it leads to something else... all of that is fate. But why hang in there? Because we found a place where we feel good.

We didn't write any songs about the ocean or that, but we worked. In a God-awful time, we were actually in this kind of paradise, in a sense, and selfishly feeling good on a daily basis. Getting up... OK, sun is shining, blue skies, food's not bad. Let's go to work. Feeling good. And if you feel good, chances are your energies are a max and all that can only be a positive.


Simple Minds On Tour

Live performance has been our main forte throughout. It's a hell of a band, and I can say that because I'm not a musician. I know that you're not short of great bands in the States, but we give anyone a game.

October 20, 2022

Also check out our interviews with Jim Kerr from 2015 and from 2018.

Subscribe to the Songfacts podcast, part of the Pantheon Network

Further Reading:
Interview with Todd Rundgren
Interview with Crystal Waters
'80s Movies Opening Theme Songs

Photos: Dean Chalkley

More Songfacts Podcast

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Tom Bailey of Thompson Twins

Tom Bailey of Thompson TwinsSongwriter Interviews

Tom stopped performing Thompson Twins songs in 1987, in part because of their personal nature: "Hold Me Now" came after an argument with his bandmate/girlfriend Alannah Currie.

Danny Kortchmar

Danny KortchmarSongwriter Interviews

Danny played guitar on Sweet Baby James, Tapestry, and Running On Empty. He also co-wrote many hit songs, including "Dirty Laundry," "Sunset Grill" and "Tender Is The Night."

Bryan Adams

Bryan AdamsSongwriter Interviews

What's the deal with "Summer of '69"? Bryan explains what the song is really about, and shares more of his songwriting insights.

Colbie Caillat

Colbie CaillatSongwriter Interviews

Since emerging from MySpace with her hit "Bubbly," Colbie has become a top songwriter, even crafting a hit with Taylor Swift.

Johnette Napolitano of Concrete Blonde

Johnette Napolitano of Concrete BlondeSongwriter Interviews

The singer/bassist for Concrete Blonde talks about how her songs come from clairvoyance, and takes us through the making of their hit "Joey."

Al Jourgensen of Ministry

Al Jourgensen of MinistrySongwriter Interviews

In the name of song explanation, Al talks about scoring heroin for William Burroughs, and that's not even the most shocking story in this one.