Review: Simple Minds’ Jim Kerr & Charlie Burchill, Citizens Theatre

Things were different in the 1970s, according to Jim Kerr. “The acid dealer in Toryglen was the milkman. On a Friday he’d always have acid.”

Kerr and Charlie Burchill have just written a book about their decades in the band Simple Minds. On Sunday evening they came to the Citizens Theatre in their hometown to talk about it; a conversation that took in punk rock gigs in Shawlands, Live Aid, meeting Nelson Mandela, the aforementioned acid trips in Toryglen and also in Notting Hill (the latter tale also involved the two of them trying to break into the Russian Embassy and a night in the cells) and a potential ending for the band.

For a duo who have been on some of the biggest stages in the world they said they were a little nervous. “We’ve never done anything like this,” Kerr said at one point. You wouldn’t know it. Kerr is a patter merchant, a storyteller, a well-practised raconteur. Burchill less so, but he offered a brusque - you might say brutal - honesty. “It’s more like an evening of Jack and Victor,” he said almost as soon as he came onstage. And after a lengthy set-up for a question from the evening’s host Billy Sloan he answered with a singular “Naw”.

As Kerr noted, this was “the Kenny Dalglish school of answers.”

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What followed was a fond recollection of favourite stories, well marshalled by Sloan who was, of course, on hand for many of them, in front of a Glasgow audience who had grown up with the band. Some of them even featured in the stories. At one point Kerr was telling a story of their punk days in the band Johnny and the Self Abusers, only to then tell us that the titular Johnny and his girlfriend Sheila, both of whom featured in said story, were in the theatre.

Over two hours Kerr and Burchill ranged over 50 years in music, a journey that took them from Toryglen to international stardom via perhaps the biggest gig in pop music history, Live Aid.

Simple Minds played the Philadelphia leg of that concert. Kerr’s main memory of that day was that he was wearing the wrong trews. “I remember on the first verse thinking, ‘Jim Morrison wouldnae have worn these trousers’,” he admitted.

There’s a photograph by the acclaimed rock photographer Anton Corbijn taken from behind the band on that day, he also recalled. “I’ve got an arse like a police horse,” Such was the nature of the evening, a good-natured wander through all the band’s yesterdays.

Jim Kerr & Charlie Burchill - 'Our Secrets Are The Same'(Image: Little Brown)

Did we learn that much about the friendship of these two men over these two hours? A little, but you probably have to read the book, co-authored with Graeme Thomson, to get to the heart of that. But we did get a glimpse of an ending for Simple Minds. Kerr spoke at length about the fact that they are getting older, that they both have good lives in Sicily and would like to take the time to enjoy them more.

“We certainly have no intention of stopping playing,” he pointed out, but he was realistic about the fact that neither of them are getting any younger. “I get up in the morning and for a while I’d look in the mirror and go, ‘f***, I look like my granda.’ Now I look like my granny,” he admitted “It’s not going to go on forever,” Kerr concluded. “And Charlie,” Sloan asked, “have you in your quieter moments thought about a life without Simple Minds?” Burchill returned to Dalglish mode. “Naw.”

To be continued then. For the foreseeable future at any rate, Simple Minds are alive and kicking.