FANS of Simple Minds have been tuning into Sky Arts to see the Glasgow band perform their classic 1982 album, New Gold Dream, in a one-off concert at Paisley Abbey.
The critically acclaimed album gave rise to three of the group's most celebrated singles - Promised You A Miracle, Glittering Prize, and Someone, Somewhere (In Summertime) - and reached number three in the UK album charts.
Peter Walsh, who produced New Gold Dream, views it as the album on which the band's "real songwriting" began. Quoted in Themes for Great Cities, Graeme Thomson's biography of Simple Minds (now out in paperback), he said: "They had laid the foundations on the album before [Sons and Fascination/Sister Feelings Call, 1981] but I think on New Gold Dream they recognised what it takes to write a pop song and do it in your own style".
Jim Kerr told the Evening Times in 1992: "That was the album where we came into our own. We still had our influences, but something new was growing through them". Colleague Charlie Burchill added: "The songs were less quirky and the whole sound was more cohesive".
The Paisley broadcast (which will be released on various formats on October 27) came a few days after another landmark in the Simple Minds story - the 38th anniversary of their performance in front of 100,000 people at Philadelphia's John F. Kennedy Stadium during the epic Live Aid concert, in 1985. Millions of viewers worldwide saw them perform three songs - Don’t You (Forget About Me), Promised You a Miracle, and a new track, Ghost Dancing.
Here we look at several moments from the band's career, in words and pictures.
The band's roots can be traced back to Johnny and the Self-Abusers, an act that surfed the punk-music wave in 1977 before breaking up in two. One faction consisted of John Milarky and Alan McNeil; the other of Jim Kerr, Tony Donald, Charlie Burchill and Brian McGee on the other.
Simple Minds, pictured in 1979. That was the year in which, after teaming up with manager Bruce Findlay, they released not one but two albums: Life in a Day, and Real to Real Cacophony. The line-up was Charles Burchill (guitars, violin/sax and vocals), Derek Forbes (basses and vocals), Brian McGee (drums, percussion and vocals), Michael MacNeil (keyboards & vocals) and Jim Kerr (lead vocals).
As Graeme Thomson observes in Themes from Great Cities, the band "did not stop spinning" between the spring of 1979 and the autumn of 1982, releasing six albums in three-and-a-half years. Empires and Dance followed in 1980, Sons and Fascination/Sister Feelings Call in 1981, and New Gold Dream in 1982.
As the band's own history, narrated on the official website, has it: "The band assumed a global presence with New Gold Dream (81,82,83,84), their first UK Top Ten album, in 1982. With songs like Someone Somewhere (In Summertime) and Glittering Prize, the album added a sense of lyrical exaltation that chimed with the optimistic musical spirit of the time. In Promised You A Miracle, a single influenced by the funk and rap the band were hearing on New York radio, it also contained their first ‘pure pop song'."
New Gold Dream had been a landmark album in the band's progress to global stardom, and the follow-up, Sparkle in the Rain (1984) consolidated their position as one of the world's biggest bands.
As Jim Kerr himself once put it: "The decade known as the 80’s had witnessed our group emerge from being a little group with a passionate local following in Glasgow, gradually rising all the way into the big league of popular music, becoming one of the top bands of a generation along the way".
Jim Kerr on Simple Minds' greatest hits tour and new single
Sparkle in the Rain was, as the band's history says, "a more rock-orientated record characterised by the singles Up On The Catwalk, Speed Your Love To Me and Waterfront.
"Their first UK chart-topper, it pushed the band onto bigger stages, where they found themselves sharing the spotlight with their contemporaries U2 – sometimes quite literally, with U2’s Bono joining them at the Barrowland in Glasgow and Croke Park in Dublin".
Those were the days - Simple Minds in Glasgow
Simple Minds played the Barrowland venue several times, and filmed the video for their hit single, Waterfront, there in November 1983. The band "lip-synched and mock-played 'Waterfront' seven or eight times for the cameras before they disappeared", notes Thomson. The 700-strong audience had won free tickets via a giveaway on Radio Clyde.
The next studio album, Once Upon a Time (1985), also topped the UK album charts, even though there was no space on it for Don't You (Forget About Me), which had been a number one hit in America after it appeared on the soundtrack to John Hughes's film, The Breakfast Club. The album yielded four hit singles: Alive and Kicking, All the Things She Said, Sanctify Yourself, and Ghost Dancing.
The band, with Kerr and Burchill as the only surviving original members, has continued to be one of the world's biggest live draws, as anyone who saw their open-air Edinburgh show last August will testify. Their most recent album, Direction of the Heart, released last October, was a critical and commercial success.
It's interesting to see how Jim Kerr himself views New Gold Dream in the context of the band's development. In a video clip posted on Twitter to tie in with the Abbey concert, he says: "One of the great things about the timing of the success of New Gold Dream was the fact that it didn't happen overnight, the fact that it took years.
Simple Minds' Ged Grimes shares his 'best bits' of Scotland
"I mean, now, you wouldn't get the chance. If you don't have a hit after a couple of records, you're out the door. But back then you were allowed to develop. I mean, looking back on the footage now, and there's some great footage of Newcastle, when you look at the reaction in the crowd, and you look at the confidence on stage - we were ready for what was coming our way".
The band has worked hard for its success and has never quite rested on its laurels.
In a Herald magazine interview in March 22, Kerr was asked how he felt about the last four decades.
Jim Kerr on Simple Minds' greatest hits tour and new single
"The first impression was gratitude", he replied. "How lucky... How many people get to live their dream? We're so fortunate to have this passion to begin with.
"A lot of people, they either can't decide what their passion is or they never really find a passion – or they do find it but somehow they don't get to make a life out of it. And we feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity that we've had.
"We also worked really, really hard. We also sacrificed a lot. At the end of the day, if you can make your life out of something that otherwise you would have done for free... What a gift".
* simpleminds.com. Themes for Great Cities: A New History of Simple Minds, by Graeme Thomson, is available in paperback (Constable, £10.99).
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