| Simple Minds |
|
| Background information |
| Origin |
Glasgow, Scotland |
| Genre(s) |
Rock, New
Wave |
| Years active |
1978 to present |
| Label(s) |
Sanctuary |
Simple Minds is a rock band
from Scotland,
which had its greatest worldwide popularity from the mid-1980s to the
early-1990s. The band, from Glasgow's Southside, produced a handful of
critically acclaimed albums in the early 1980s, and later went on to
produce some politically inspired and critically praised work.
Simple Minds has had a string of successful hit singles over
the years, and the band is known for its number-one worldwide smash, "Don't You (Forget About
Me)", from the soundtrack of the John Hughes movie The
Breakfast Club.
Founding members Jim Kerr (vocals)
and Charlie Burchill (guitar), along
with drummer Mel Gaynor, are the core of the band,
which currently features Mark Taylor on keyboards
and Eddie Duffy on bass
guitar.
|
Contents
- 1 History
- 1.1 Life
in a Day
- 1.2 New
Wave experimentation
- 1.3 The
"New Romantics"
- 1.4 1985-1986:
The Breakfast Club and worldwide success
- 1.5 The
late 1980s: political activism
- 1.6 The
1990s: decline and reinvention
- 1.7 The
2000s: creative rebirth
- 2 Personnel
- 2.1 Current
line-up
- 2.2 Additional
members
- 2.3 Former
members
- 3 Discography
- 4 External
links
|
History
Life in a Day
Charlie Burchill and Jim Kerr formed a punk band in 1977 that
was heavily influenced by Lou Reed, and after one unsuccessful single
as Johnny & The Self Abusers, they shuffled
the line-up to include former Abusers Brian McGee on drums and Tony Donald on bass guitar, the latter
of whom was quickly replaced by Derek Forbes. In addition, keyboard and
synthesizer
player Mick MacNeil was also recruited. The
band's name was changed to "Simple Minds", which was taken from a line
in the David Bowie song "Jean
Genie": "...so simple-minded, he can't drive his module."
Simple Minds' commercial first album, Life in a Day,
took a cue from fellow Post-Punk forebears Magazine,
and was somewhat self-consciously derivative of the late-70s punk boom,
with AOR crossover potential not
unlike that of The
Cars. Life in a Day was exactly the kind of item
the band's label, Arista,
wanted to promote.
New Wave experimentation
While still categorisable as 'rock', Simple Minds' second
release, Real to Real Cacophony,
had a darker edge, and announced some of the New Wave experimentation
that would become the band’s trademark sound over the next two albums.
These innovations included the occasional use of unconventional time
signatures, and minimal structures based around the
rhythm section of Forbes and McGee.
The next album, Empires
and Dance, was a far more radical departure,
and signaled the influence of Kraftwerk, Neu! and similar European artists. Indeed,
during this period Simple Minds promoted themselves as a European band,
not a Scottish or UK band. Many of the tracks on Empires and
Dance are extremely minimal, and feature sequenced keyboards.
McNeil's keyboards and Forbes' bass became the main melodic elements,
and Burchill's guitar was heavily processed. With this album, Kerr
began to experiment with non-narrative lyrics. While not consciously
so, Empires and Dance was essentially Industrial
in its aesthetic, and preceded by a couple of years the Industrial-pop
crossover of Cabaret Voltaire's
album The Crackdown.
The band's label, however, demonstrated little enthusiasm for such
experimentation, and in 1981 Simple Minds switched from Arista to Virgin.
Simple Minds' first release on Virgin was actually comprised
of two albums--the Steve Hillage-produced Sons
and Fascination and Sister
Feelings Call. The latter album was initially
included as a bonus disc with the first 10,000 vinyl copies of Sons
And Fascination, but it was later re-issued as a separate
album in its own right. (For the CD release, it was paired on a single
disc with Sons And Fascination--at first with two
tracks deleted, but on later issues, in full.) Sons and
Fascination perfected the formula that began with Empires
and Dance, and showcases the band’s musicianship during their
most prolific period. Indeed, the band’s musical virtuosity set their
orientation somewhat toward the realm of progressive
rock, and distanced them from the flippancy of many other New Wave
musicians. The album impressed Peter Gabriel enough that he
selected Simple Minds as the opening act on several European dates,
which increased the band's visibility. "Love Song" was an international
hit (reaching the Top 20 in Australia) and the instrumental "Theme For
Great Cities" proved so enduring a composition that it was later
re-recorded in 1991 as a B-side to the single "See the Lights". These
minimalist, dance-oriented compositions--like those of Neu! before
them--were examples of Man-made Trance well before Trance
itself.
The "New Romantics"
Simple Minds' sixth studio album, New Gold Dream
(81-82-83-84), released in 1982, was a
significant turning point for the band. With a slick, sophisticated
sound thanks to producer Peter Walsh, Simple Minds were soon
categorised as part of the New Romantic outgrowth of New Wave
(along with Duran Duran and others), and
the record generated a handful of charting singles including "Promised
You a Miracle" and "Glittering Prize", which both hit the UK Top 20 and
Australian Top 10, continuing the band's early success in that region.
In addition, jazz keyboardist Herbie Hancock performed a synth solo
on the track "Hunter and the Hunted."
Despite the success of the album, some early Simple Minds fans
criticized the band's more commercial orientation. While some tracks
("Promised You a Miracle", "Colours Fly and Catherine Wheel") continued
the formula perfected on Sons and Fascination,
other tracks ("Someone Somewhere in Summertime", "Glittering Prize")
were undisguised pop. The album's direction no doubt was influenced by
the departure of drummer Brian McGee, who had tired of touring. The
album features three different drummers, Kenny
Hyslop, Mike Ogletree, and Mel
Gaynor, who would thereafter become the permanent drummer.
Soon after leaving Simple Minds, McGee joined the synthfunk
group Endgames, considered at
the time to be a supergroup due to the pedigree of its founding
personnel, which included former Berlin Blondes bassist David Rudden
on lead vocals and bass and ex-Zones leader Willie Gardner as
guitarist and backup vocalist. Endgames would end up releasing its most
successful album (1982's Building Beauty) and doing
its second Peel Session with McGee as
their drummer.
The formula that had defined Simple Minds' New Wave period had
run its course, and the next record, Sparkle
in the Rain, was a complete departure.
Produced by Steve Lillywhite, who also produced
U2's first three
records, Sparkle in the Rain
is an aggressive, rock-oriented album in much the same vein as U2's War.
Some long-time fans along with a number of music critics accused Simple
Minds of brazenly stealing their new sound from the Irish foursome--a
curious assertion, given that U2 frontman Bono was quoted in the official Simple Minds
biography The Race is the Prize as saying the
"glorious noise" sound and feeling achieved on the Simple Minds album
was one to which his band aspired. It may be more accurate to
characterize this period as one in which both bands were mutual
admirers. The eventual result of this shift in musical direction gave
rise to hugely successful singles like "Waterfront", which hit number
one in a few European countries and remains one of the band's signature
songs to this day, as well as "Speed Your Love to Me" and "Up on the
Catwalk."
1985-1986: The
Breakfast Club and worldwide success
Despite the band's newfound popularity in the UK and Europe,
Simple Minds remained essentially unknown in the US. The movie The
Breakfast Club changed all that. Released in
early 1985, this Brat Pack drama from writer/director John Hughes was a
box-office smash and made household names of many of its young stars,
including Molly Ringwald, Judd
Nelson, Anthony Michael Hall, Ally
Sheedy and Emilio Estevez. It also broke Simple
Minds into the US market almost overnight, when the band achieved their
only number-one US pop hit with the film's opening track, "Don't You (Forget About
Me)". Ironically, the song wasn't even written by the band, but by Keith
Forsey, who offered the song to Billy Idol and Bryan
Ferry before Simple Minds agreed to record it. The song soon
became a chart-topper in many other countries around the world.
Taking advantage of their newfound popularity, Simple Minds
released their most unashamedly commercial record, Once Upon a
Time, which was tailored specifically to appeal
to the stadium-rock sensibilities of American audiences. Reviled by
some long-time fans yet embraced by millions of new listeners and
critically well-received, the record reached number one in the UK and
number ten in the US, even though "Don't You (Forget About Me)" was not
included. The band made it clear in interviews prior to the album's
release that they would not include the song, believing that it would
devalue the rest of the album, which they felt could stand on its own
merits.
Once Upon a Time would go on to generate
four worldwide hit singles: "Alive & Kicking", "Sanctify
Yourself", "Ghostdancing" and "All The Things She Said", the latter of
which featured a cutting-edge music video directed by Zbigniew
Rybczyński that used techniques later employed in music videos for Pet
Shop Boys and Art of Noise. Because of
Simple Minds' powerful stage presence and lyrics that trafficked in
Christian symbolism, the band was once again criticized by some in the
music press as a lesser version of U2, despite the fact that both bands were now
heading in different musical directions. However, the two groups were
well-acquainted with one another, and Bono joined Simple Minds onstage
at the Barrowlands
in Glasgow in 1985 for a live version of "New Gold Dream." For Once
Upon A Time and its subsequent world tour, the band also
featured Robin Clarke as an
additional lead singer, and she was heavily featured in Simple Minds'
music videos at this time as well.
The late 1980s: political
activism
To document their successful worldwide Once Upon a
Time tour, Simple Minds released the double-live set Live In The City of Light
in 1987, which was recorded primarily over two nights in Paris
in 1986. Following the lead of other socially conscious bands,
including U2, Simple Minds' tour promoted the work of Amnesty
International.
Inspired by Peter Gabriel, with whom
they toured in the early 1980s, Simple Minds headlined a series of
concerts throughout the US and Europe in 1988 with numerous other
politically minded artists (including Gabriel) known as "Freedomfest,"
designed to highlight the evils of apartheid in South
Africa. The band wrote the song, "Mandela Day", specifically for this
series of concerts, and the song would appear on their next album.
After this lengthy period of touring, Simple Minds finally
went back into the studio and recorded the politically charged and
distinctly radio-unfriendly Street
Fighting Years, which was released in 1989.
Ironically, the first single from the record, the six-minute opus
"Belfast Child" based on the traditional Celtic folk song, "She Moved Through the
Fair" was the band's first and only number-one hit single in the UK.
The album shot straight to number one and received glowing praise,
including a rare five-star review from Q
Magazine. However, in the US, it was another story entirely. Street
Fighting Years received a scathing review in Rolling
Stone, which blasted the band for the positive
lyrical refrain in "Mandela Day", which proclaimed "Mandela's free,
Mandela's free," even while Nelson Mandela was still in prison in
South
Africa (The song ultimately proved prophetic, as within a year, Mandela
was released from prison and apartheid was dismantled soon afterwards).
"This is Your Land" was chosen as the leadoff single for the US, and
even with guest vocals from the band's idol Lou Reed, the
single failed to make a mark on the pop charts. Then, after a concert
in Brisbane, Australia in late
1989, keyboardist Mick MacNeil quit the band, citing
health concerns. That year also marked the first and only time the
group headlined Wembley Stadium solo, [1] where they were supported by
fellow Scottish bands The Silencers and Texas.
The 1990s: decline and
reinvention
In 1991, Simple Minds returned with a much more radio-friendly
collection of their political concerns, Real Life,
which was critically well-received on both sides of the Atlantic.
Unfortunately, Real Life had the misfortune of
being released in the same year that grunge broke through to the mainstream. Nirvana
was now the band of the moment, and even U2 radically changed their musical direction with
Achtung
Baby. Unfortunately, the highly-polished
pop/rock of Simple Minds was now considered passé by most of the
record-buying public. As a result, "See the Lights" would be the band's
last Top 40 pop single in the US.
As the 1990s progressed, Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill became
the only active members of Simple Minds, so the duo decided to go back
to what made them popular ten years prior as a way to spark new
interest in their music and prove that Simple Minds was still relevant.
The band hired Keith Forsey, the force behind "Don't You (Forget About
Me)", to produce their next record, which returned to the uplifting
arena rock of their Once
Upon a Time days. Echoing that period, Kerr grew his hair
long once again, and the band released Good News from the
Next World in 1995 to good reviews but weak
sales, at least in the US. In the UK and Europe, however, the response
was much more positive, with the album generating the two pop hits
"She's a River" and "Hypnotised."
Three years later, after being released from their contract
with Virgin Records, Simple Minds decided
to musically reinvent themselves once again, this time reaching back to
their Kraftwerk-inspired, early electronic pop days. Derek
Forbes returned after a 16-year absence along with drummer Mel
Gaynor, who became a full-time member from this point forward, and the
resulting album, Neapolis, was an
interesting if uneven work, which charted poorly and received mixed
reviews. However, it is notable for being the only Simple Minds album
released by Chrysalis Records, who refused to
release the album in the US, citing lack of interest. As a further nod
to Simple Minds' European musical heritage, the music video for "Glitterball,"
the album's leadoff single, was the first production of any kind to
film at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao,
Spain.
After the disappointing reaction to Neapolis,
things became even more challenging for the band. In 2000, Simple
Minds' next studio effort, Our Secrets Are The Same,
originally slated for release in late 1999, became mired in lawsuits
when EMI
declined to release it, and became further compromised after it was
leaked onto the internet. As a stop-gap measure, and as a way to
acknowledge their musical debt to artists that inspired the band in its
early days, Simple Minds released the cover album Neon
Lights in 2001, featuring the band's
reinvention of songs from artists as varied as Patti
Smith, Joy Division and Kraftwerk.
However, music critics wondered if this was the last gasp from a band
that had run out of ideas. A 2-CD compilation "The Best Of Simple
Minds" was released soon after, and this at least repaired some of the
damage that the largely unacclaimed Neon Lights' had caused.
The 2000s: creative rebirth
Simple Minds forcefully countered that concern in 2002 with
the oddly-titled Cry.
Although the album didn't sell in great numbers in the US, Simple Minds
felt confident enough to mount a North American leg of their Floating
World Tour (named after the instrumental track which closes Cry),
their first in seven years. Although the venues were small compared to
the larger venues they consistently sold out in Europe, the concerts
were well-attended by passionate, long-time Simple Minds fans, many of
whom brought their teenage children along with them. In a nod to the
recent influence of trance and techno
music, the band used those stylings to update their very early tracks,
including "New Gold Dream," "The American," and "I Travel," the latter
of which had not been performed live for several years.
Finally released in 2004, Our Secrets Are The Same
was called "Some the Simple Minds best music in twenty years" by the
Guardian newspaper in London and is the final disc in a five-CD
compilation entitled Silver Box,
composed mostly of previously unreleased demos, radio & TV
sessions and various live recordings from 1979 to 1995.
Simple Minds' latest album, Black
& White 050505, released in 2005, was
previewed on the band's official website for several weeks prior to its
release, then later toured throughout Europe, the Far East, Australia
and New Zealand to support the album in the first three quarters of
2006. Although Black & White 050505
generated some of the most positive reviews for a Simple Minds record
in many years, and the first single, "Home," received airplay on
alternative rock radio stations in the US, the album did not make a
significant impact on either side of the Atlantic, and as of early
2007, has still not been officially released in North America. Despite
this response from some international website sources and a few UK tabloid papers
the album failed to reignite the Chart success of old and the
mainstream media generally ignored the album or gave it a number of
poor or indifferent reviews.
2007 sees the band's 30th Anniversary, and so far a brief but
evidently successful tour of Australia & New
Zealand is going ahead, as guests of INXS, while Burchill & Kerr will
perform a set at the forthcoming 40th anniversary tribute to Glasgow Celtic's
famous Lisbon
Lions European
Cup winning team.
Personnel
Current line-up
- Jim
Kerr - Vocals
- Charlie Burchill - Guitars,
keyboards
- Mel
Gaynor - Drums
- Eddie Duffy - Bass guitar
Additional members
- Mark Taylor - Keyboards
- Andy Gillespie - Keyboards & programming (studio
based)
Former members
- Tony Donald - Bass guitar (1977-1978)
- Derek Forbes - Bass guitar (1978-1983
& 1997-1998)
- John Giblin - Bass guitar
(1985-1988)
- Malcolm Foster - Bass guitar (1989-1995)
- Robin Clarke - Vocalist (1985-1986)
- John Milarky - Guitars, vocals, saxophone (1977)
- Alan MacNeil - Guitars (1977)
- Duncan Barnwell - Guitars (1978)
- Brian McGee - Drums (1977-1981)
- Kenny Hyslop - Drums (1981-1982)
- Mike Ogletree - Drums (1982)
- Mark Schulman - Drums (1994-1995)
- Jim McDermott (formerly of Kevin McDermott Orchestra) -
Drums (1997)
- Michael MacNeil - Keyboards
(1978-1989)
Discography
Please see the Simple Minds discography
for listings.
External links
| v • d • e Simple
Minds |
| Jim Kerr | Charlie
Burchill |
| Mel Gaynor | Andy Gillespie | Eddie
Duffy |
| Discography |
| Albums (mk.1): Life in a Day
| Real to Real Cacophony
| Empires and Dance
| Sons and Fascination/Sister
Feelings Call |
Albums (mk.2/3): New Gold Dream
(81-82-83-84) | Sparkle
in the Rain | Once Upon a
Time | Street
Fighting Years |
Real Life
| Good News from the
Next World | Neapolis
[UK release] | Our Secrets are the Same
| Neon Lights | Cry
| Black & White 050505 |
Live and Compilations: Themes
For Great Cities 79/81 [US release only] | Celebration
| Themes
- Volume 1: March 79 - April 82 |
Themes
- Volume 2: August 82 - April 85 | Themes
- Volume 3: September 85 - June 87 | Themes
- Volume 4: February 89 - May 90 |
Live in the City of Light
| Glittering Prize 81/92
| Glittering Prize 81/92
[US version] | The Promised
[European release]|
The Early Years 1977-1978
[withdrawn] | The Best Of Simple Minds
| The
Best Of Simple Minds - Night Of The Proms Edition
| Early
Gold | Silver Box
[5-CD boxed set] [UK release] |
