WE HAVE... SIMPLE MINDS!

WE HAVE... SIMPLE MINDS!

FEATURES

Craig Lee

Deja vu time.

I’m sitting in the conference room on the A&M lot. I’m about to meet Mr. Simple Minds himself, Jim Kerr. I don’t know if I’m sitting in the same chair, but this is the exact same room where I met and talked with Kerr a few years ago. At that time the guy was this young Scottish upstart, brimming with excitement over his new album (New Gold Dream) and his new marriage (do we need to remind you the guy’s married to Chrissie Hynde? OK, we’ll remind you.)

It turned out to be a very gracious, warm interview, and I came out of it thinking I had had this great talk with a young visionary. Then, the next day, I pick up a few other magazines and see the exact same quotes—even the same story about how, as a teenager, Kerr and his bandmate, guitarist Charlie Burchill, hitchhiked to London to see the Sex Pistols, only to wind up, two weeks later, outside a train station in Milan, Italy with no money. Well, I think at the time, maybe the guy’s done one interview too many. However, since that time, I always wondered if maybe Kerr was a bit more calculated than what met the eye.

’Course that was then and so on. Jim Kerr is a lot, lot older, if not in age, then in emotional energies expended over the last two years. There is an imperceptible difference in the Jim Kerr that’s greeting me in that same conference room, a difference that comes from finally cracking the American market in a big way, from playing huge events like Live Aid and doing tours to support Amnesty International. Add to that the publicity attending the marriage and the subsequent birth of a daughter and the fact that enquiring minds want to know if Jim and Chrissie are getting along. Other career-watchers want to know if Simple Minds’ hits like “Sanctify Me” infer the kind of religious allegiances that Jim and Tammy would have no problem with. And with U2 the big cheese of the year, can Simple Minds, also optimistic arena rockers making bigger than life gestures in the service of some sweeping utopian vision, be far behind?

As he walks into this same room, Kerr’s restive, a bit fatigued, wanting to be accommodating and friendly—but there’s a strain, a bit of tension that was nowhere to be found in the man of a few years back who was still pursuing his golden dreams.

Still, big visions die hard and Simple Minds have just released their first live album, Live In The City Of Light, recorded in Paris and chock-full of those technoscope panoramas these not so simple minds love to engage in. The album looks as if it might be Simple Minds’ biggest record yet, having entered the British charts at #1.

“There were lines at most of the European record shops the day it came out,” Kerr states, a tinge of excitement and pride in his voice. “In fact, I was in Edinburgh the day it came out; there was a bank holiday on Monday, and I was walking down the street. I forgot the album was coming out. I saw this humongous line outside the record shop and I thought, ‘What’s going on?’ Then it dawned on me—it took me back, I couldn’t believe that people would line up for a record. After all, the shop’s open all day. There were these young kids that had jumped school and these other people that had jumped college—it was great. Usually when a record comes out, I’m on tour and the first time you see it is when someone brings it backstage and we go, ‘Is this it? So I guess it’s out, guys, what’s the big deal?... ’ But seeing the lines was great and it really reminded me of what it’s all about—people being excited.”

That sense of excitement is why there’s a live album at this time—a record and a retrospective Kerr feels is long overdue. “It’s been a challenge for the last four or five years,” Kerr says. “I defy any other band to say they’ve done more gigs than us in the last five years, unless it’s James Brown, The Hardest Working Man In Show Business.’ I must be the second hardest. We’re a live band first and foremost. The only qualm I have with this album is that it is our first live album—I think it should be our second, there’s been so many phases of this band, so many songs to cover.”

At the same time as the live album came out, Virgin re-released Sisters Feelings Call and will soon re-release Sons And Fascination, albums the band recorded many years ago. Some people in the Simple Minds camp are not particularly pleased that there’s no sticker on the album alerting the fans that the record’s a reissue.

“I’m not ashamed of those records,” Kerr says. “I think they have a lot of charm. I want people, if they want to buy them, to be able to have access to them. But the story should be told—I’m sure most American fans already know that they’re old, but then again, if you’re in Indiana, you might not know. I heard the record recently for the first time in three years while I was doing a photo session—I heard ‘In Trance As Mission’ and I thought two things: ‘That’s stunning! How did we do that?’ and ‘We’ll never be able to do that again.’ It sounded beautiful. It’s really beautiful music. I hope we can come up with that thing on our next album, actually.”

There are no new songs on the live album. Not that there should be, you understand, but the record biz runs on fairly rigid guidelines these days and the fact that there’s no “new” Simple Minds product to be pushed has some radio people grumbling in Kerr’s direction. He’s not buying it.

“We never tried to write new songs,” he says, slightly exasperated. “We just tried to capture the essence of the band. We’re getting a lot of flak from radio, saying it would be a lot easier for them to push the record if we had a new song. I’ve heard every excuse a programmer can use: ‘Oh, Pat Benatar put a new song on her live album!’ Next year is the year for new songs.”

For that very purpose, Kerr and his band recently bought some property in the Scottish highlands where they plan to headquarter themselves and write an extensive body of work, instead of just churning out eight songs specifically for an album. “From that we’ll get something great, something special,” he confidently states. “I’m sure it will influence us— it’s in the country but it’s not a laid-back kind of thing, it’s very rugged there; harsh winds, isolated but fantastically beautiful. I’m just not very impressed by the city.”

I’m trying to be diplomatic here, but as a former Simple Minds admirer, I’m not overly impressed by what the band’s been doing lately. In fact, if I bought both the new live album and the reissue I’d probably throw my taste vote in the direction of the old stuff. The most imaginative and inventive Simple Minds records breathe with a special, perhaps slightly rarified sense of time and place and atmosphere and mood, whereas these days the band seems like it’s moving towards a harder-edged, more commercially pliable sound—moodiness for the masses.

Kerr knows what I’m talking about and he’s naturally a tad defensive. “There was a mundane thing with the last studio album, Once Upon A Time," Kerr admits before quickly adding this disclaimer: “I liked the last album as much as anything we’ve done. But it was mundane in that we knew what we wanted when we went in to record it—which is normally not our course. What would be mundane for everybody else was exciting for us. These ethereal washes and landscapes and stream of consciousness lyrics—we can do them till the cows come home! We can do an album a week like that, because we love it, it’s second nature to us, we can do it with our eyes closed. But to go in with a producer wanting everything upfront, including lyrics, was a challenge. Plus, we were conscious of kicking the door open, conscious and pissed off that we wanted ‘New Gold Dream’ and ‘Sparkle In The Rain’ to have had the same success, conscious that we did this effortless song, ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’ and it went to #1.”

As “Don’t You...” sped up the charts, interviewers at the time could find Kerr grumbling about the fluke success of the song. Some might have said this Simple Mind was biting the hand that was feeding him. Later on Kerr recanted, claiming the record had done the band some good. How does he feel about the whole thing in retrospect?

“I’m very precious about it,” Kerr states. “It’s a Catholic guilt kind of thing—you think you’ve got to sweat blood for success, and die on the cross to have a hit. And we did that song in one day—I didn’t have any words at the end so I went ‘La la la la la la’—and it goes to #1. But I’m not naive—the record company and the movie company got behind it with a sledgehammer, put a lot of money behind it. It was kind of the acid test for the record company—they said ‘Well, the country does like the tone of Simple Minds, they do like this guy’s voice, they’re not some quirky British band.’ As they say, never look a gift horse in the mouth. And that’s what that song became to us. It’s a song that essentially didn’t have a lot of meaning and I feel we gave it some last year with the Amnesty thing—we changed it to ‘don’t you forget about them,’ the prisoners of conscience. We were into it like that—the song was our bastard child and we made it our own.”

The band also made Amnesty international their own. As befits a group that once used Celtic crosses for symbols, this is as much a crusade as a pop commodity. Amnesty, apartheid, animal rights, nuclear disarmament: this is the world that Simple Minds plays to, and Kerr is only too quick to point out he’s concerned about the state it’s in.

“I’m interested in ecology right now,” he says. “That’s an end-all, a be-all, just the way we’re messing up the planet. Even human rights seems small potatoes compared to that. It’s like trying to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. The world is in such upheaval—here you got the acid rain, pollution in Europe from Chernobyl—if you don’t get involved, someone’s gonna mess it up for you. I love this idea of life. I’m 28 just now and I’m a father and I feel responsible. If you’ve got an opinion you’ve gotta formulate it and voice it, especially in the job I’ve got. I’m aware of that big microphone that comes your way if you’ve got a Top 10 hit. Suddenly you get to be on prime time news in America. You can sit and talk about your haircut, or Pepsi-Cola, or you can say, ‘Hey, check this out!’

“The Amnesty International thing came to me one night,” Kerr remembers. “I laid awake thinking, ‘well we can do this, we can do that for them’ and I didn’t know what the result would be. And now, two months ago, we get the word that a guy who’s been in prison for 14 years in Sri Lanka is getting out, only because we were strong enough to believe it. And the cynics will tell you it’s just a dream. But dreams are very powerful, especially dreams that you can inch forward.”

Maybe that’s the secret to the impact of Simple Minds: the power of lucid dreaming. Kerr agrees: “A guy in Germany was knocking me for dreams once. I said ‘What, have you got no dreams? I pity you.’ From the aborigines to the Aztecs to the Indians, dreamtime is very real, very vital. There’s people who dream and people who sleep.”

And do Kerr’s dreams include how far his band has gone in terms of mass acceptance? Does he view himself as a major success? And if so, where does a band go after they’ve reached the top?

“I love hearing our songs on the radio and it’s a thrill getting that acceptance, getting in the charts,” Kerr observes, “but success—I will not accept that word. When I was in Dublin recently I saw Lou Reed opening for U2. Lou Reed is success. The guy’s been doing it for 25 years and maybe he hasn’t had all the gold discs and stuff but that’s really not important. I don’t connect ‘success’ with a Lou Reed or a Van Morrison. Compared to them, we’re just babes in the woods.

“I’ve read pages and pages written about U2 this year,” Kerr continues, “and everyone’s missed the most vital thing, for me, about them. The most exciting thing about a band like them, or us, is the potential. The potential is so great still. Why did the Who get gradually worse? Because it was tied in with concepts of success and the lifestyles and habits connected with it. In every other art you get better—OK, you take dives here and there is gradual slide sort of thing? there this gradual triangle sort of thing? And we have those bands to learn from— they didn’t have big industry, they created it. We have so much to write about and so much to do. I can become a much better singer, a much better songwriter.”

Well, I think to myself, Monsieur Kerr may not have the old sparkle in the eyeball, but he’s certainly got his convictions. And a whole lot of faith. It’s this question of faith that’s been preoccupying certain factions out there ready to lump Kerr and company in with what they idealistically perceive as some kind of religious rock movement. I throw out the bait to Kerr and mention how I saw Simple Minds in a recent article that would have them and U2 and Lone Justice as harbingers of the new Christian rock. Kerr’s not going for it.

“Larry Miller from U2 said that he’d rather avoid people who call themselves Christian,” Kerr says with a slightly bemused tone. “With us, I’m interested in all the books: the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita. Obviously there’s that background thing and we were brought up with the Calvinistic attitudes and the symbols are there. I believe in a higher echelon, I definitely do, but I’ve never come out and named my God, ’cause I don’t have one creed. But I certainly believe in more than these four walls. I am interested in philosophy—it’s just that people’s interpretations confuse me, their own interpretations of a book and I have my own interpretation.”

Yes, Mr. Jim, but you can’t blame people for rushing to conclusions when you have crosses adorning your artwork and logos.

“We used a Celtic cross and those crosses have been there before Christianity. They’re ancient symbols. It’s a framework: Van Morrison and Bono have it, that kind of churchy thing. The whole thing with the Western thing is that we cannot connect spirituality and sexuality and that’s where it’s weird for me, because for me they go hand in hand.

“I went to mass in Northwest Africa in January, a Catholic mass,” Kerr continues. “I hadn’t been to a Catholic mass for 14 years. I went for the atmosphere. It was like a Simple Minds concert—I thought the roof was going to blow off. None of the wrath of God business, it was very compassionate. There was a physical, embracing, uplifting kind of celebration going on. If that’s the way it is, then count me in. But this fire and brimstone stuff, forget it.”

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10

I suggest to Kerr that maybe people should stop confusing faith with dogma. “That’s brilliant,” he exclaims. “Can you say that I said that?” Sure, Jim, sure. But only if we can drop the theology for a moment and get down to some real pressing issues: mainly what most of Mr. and Ms. John(ette) Q. Public really want to know: how’s the wife? Actually, I really don’t think it’s any of my business, but what the hell, the guy’s a public figure, so I put out a gentle feeler: how do you make a rock ’n’ roll marriage work?

“I don’t know,” Kerr says with an honestly confused look on his semi-angelic puss. “We do see each other, but we need space. But it’s tough. It’s getting incredibly tough. I don’t advise anyone to do it unless you’re up for a great challenge. It’s high-pressured. Some days it works, some days it doesn’t work. I think of us as more as soul-mates.”

Uh, maybe it’s time to move along here. I’m not looking for bedroom stories (though Kerr confesses that Chrissie has nightmares about animals being carved into meat). But I can’t help but wonder how Kerr gets to explain this crazy, mixed-up world to his daughter, how a person who winds up as a surrogate spokesman for thousands of fans relates plagues and poverty and poisoned water to his own flesh and blood.

“The funny thing was seeing this kid being born,” Kerr recalls, “because the day before she was born, something happened in the news I didn’t like, and normally I manage to rise above it, but I couldn’t help but think, what a fuckin’ state to be born into! I was worried about the times. And then I was there when she was born, and she just burst through, it was like she had this thing, she was saying This is my time! My fate, my destiny! I was chosen to be born just now. Don’t worry about me.’

"I was in Glasgow last week with my 16-year-old brother,” Kerr continues, “and I was asking him what it was like to be 16, ’cause when I was 16 I used to think that things were as far gone as they could be. He’s 16, he’s got unemployment on one side of him, he’s got heroin on the other side of him—in Glasgow you’ve got 12-year-old kids on smack. He’s got AIDS there. You’ve got to be incredibly sophisticated to deal with this stuff. And he’s not any privileged type or anything. But he says ‘I love being 16. I’ll deal with it.’ And in some ways it’s the same thing with me and my daughter. I am responsible, but only to a certain extent. And my brother, my daughter, they will find their own path.”

As will, presumably, those throngs of kids flocking to see Simple Minds paint the big picture. Kerr may not know his audiences personally, but he knows one thing about them: “They want more. I don’t know what it is, but they want more than what the newspaper is telling them. They don’t want dreams, they don’t want lies. I don’t know if it’s an energy thing we have—maybe because it’s too easy to be nihilistic, too easy to be pessimistic. There’s no thought involved.

“The main line we’ve ever written in a song that could be used as a line or anthem is in ‘Promised You A Miracle,’ when we say ‘everything is possible.’ I’m amazed at the potential in people and often they don’t realize that potential. I didn’t know my potential—I was running, I tripped over, and now I’m here.”

I’m starting to realize that maybe my original assessment of Kerr was off. I think the guy is still very, very aware of who he is and what’s happening around him. A guy in a big band with a garage-band mentality, a self-taught musician who went from sleeping in an Italian train station to playing the biggest concert of his life to 80,000 people across the street from the same place less than a decade later. Kerr tells me, “I’m not afraid of the big picture. A lot of people are intimidated by that, they think if you’re like that you have a pompous nature. I don’t think so—I’m just not afraid of it. I don’t feel minute and miniscule. I love the glory of it, the splendor, the color.

“Somebody recently asked me, “What does your band stand for? We don’t have one manifesto and stuff, but I know what I would like us to stand for. Life. Both in an ecological sense and a human sense, even an animal sense.”

Well then, here’s to life, Jim. And here’s to performers with the courage to make a difference in that life. As I leave, I tell Kerr how I had met him in that room two years ago. “Well, come back in two more,” he says with a grin. “I need people to keep me on my toes.” You got a date, Jimbo.