Keeping It Simple

Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill look back on the highs and lows of their 30-year career in Simple Minds Interview by Daryl Easlea

Simple Minds mainstays Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill have the easy air and affability of two long-term friends. You would suspect that had not all that ever happened they would be sitting in some old boozer, reminiscing about music and good times. Kerr is witty and self-deprecating; and fully aware that he hardly lets his amiable guitar lieutenant, Burchill, ever get a word in edgewise (What was meant to be a double-header interview ended up as 95 per cent Jim – but in a good way). We looked back at their 30-year career, with a good degree of honesty and joy.

Formed in Glasgow in 1977 after a flirtation with punk as Johnny & The Self-Abusers, the band, named after a line in The Jean Genie by David Bowie, signed to Arista through the Zoom imprint and began to release what became a string of albums. Each one was significantly different to its predecessor.

“I think we must have been too easily bored with ourselves,” Kerr assesses. “When people ask about Simple Minds, I say, ‘What Simple Minds are you talking about? Early would-be avant garde? The electronic phase? The pop? The stadium? The Celtic political? ‘There are two things about that – one, that the guys had the scope to play all that; and two, the fact that we could do all that and still be Simple Minds. …

by Daryl Easlea
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