Simple Minds | New Music And Songs | Simple Minds About Simple Minds Best known in the U.S. for their 1985 number one hit "Don't You (Forget About Me)" from the film The Breakfast Club, Scotland's Simple Minds evolved from a post-punk art rock band influenced by Roxy Music into a grand, epic-sounding pop band along the lines of U2. The band grew out of a Glasgow punk group called Johnny and the Self-Abusers, which featured guitarist Charlie Burchill and lead singer Jim Kerr. The inaugural 1978 lineup of Simple Minds featured a rhythm section of Tony Donald on bass and Brian McGee on drums, plus keyboardist Mick McNeil; Donald was soon replaced by Derek Forbes. Their early albums leaped from one style to another, with Life in a Day consisting mostly of dense, arty pop songs; critical acclaim followed the darker, more experimental art rock of Reel to Real Cacophony and the Euro-disco of Empires and Dance. The group began a transition to a more accessible pop style with the albums Sons and Fascination and Sister Feelings Call, originally issued together and subsequently split up.

New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) became their first chart album in the U.S., and the tour-shy McGee quit owing to the group's burgeoning popularity, eventually being replaced by Mel Gaynor. Following the Steve Lillywhite-produced Sparkle in the Rain, Jim Kerr married Pretenders lead singer Chrissie Hynde (the two groups had toured together). After Bryan Ferry rejected the opportunity to sing "Don't You (Forget About Me)," Simple Minds almost did so as well; Kerr was dissatisfied with the song's lyrics, which he regarded as formulaic. His change of heart gave Simple Minds their only American chart-topper, and the song later became an international hit as well; however, Kerr's feelings about the song remained ambivalent, and it did not appear on the follow-up album, Once Upon a Time. The album went gold and reached the U.S. Top Ten in spite of criticism for its bombastic, over the top approach. A live album and the uncompromisingly political Street Fighting Years squandered Simple Minds' commercial momentum, however.

By the time the group returned to more personal themes and its straightforward, anthemic rock on 1991's Real Life, personnel changes and audience loss left the group's future viability in doubt. They weren't totally deterred, however. Kerr and Burchill trudged on, releasing Good News from the Next World in 1995, while the single "She's a River" received moderate airplay. A short tour of North America soon followed, but Simple Minds' direction also quickly faded. They needed a break to clarify their own personal stance in music. Derek Forbes returned for 1998's Néapolis, but that, too, wasn't strong enough to sustain Simple Minds' newfound creativity. Their famed pop songs had diluted a bit; however, the new millennium proved poignant. Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill signed to Eagle Records in early 2001 and constructed their first covers album, Neon Lights, later that fall, paying tribute to Patti Smith, Neil Young, David Bowie, and others. In summer 2002, Kerr and Burchill issued Cry, Simple Minds' first batch of new material since 1995's Good News from the Next World.

Our Secrets Are the Same, an album that was intended for release in 2000, saw official release in 2003. An extensive reissue program and live recordings followed. Black & White, a new studio album, appeared in 2005, and the charting Graffiti Soul in 2009 (which saw the return of original drummer Mel Gaynor to the fold). Simple Minds accepted a spot at London's iTunes Festival that year and issued a digital EP of their performance. After a global tour, Simple Minds returned with Big Music in 2014, an album that included two songs co-written with Chvrches' Iain Cook. A stripped-down set called Acoustic arrived in late 2016, featuring acoustic reworkings of many of the band's hits. ~ Steve Huey, Rovi Simple Minds on Apple Music To preview a song, mouse over the title and click Play. Open iTunes to buy and download music. Biography Best known in the U.S.

for their 1985 number one hit "Don't You (Forget About Me)" from the film The Breakfast Club, Scotland's Simple Minds evolved from a post-punk art rock band influenced by Roxy Music into a grand, epic-sounding pop band along the lines of U2. The band grew out of a Glasgow punk group called Johnny and the Self-Abusers, which featured guitarist Charlie Burchill and lead singer Jim Kerr. The inaugural 1978 lineup of Simple Minds featured a rhythm section of Tony Donald on bass and Brian McGee on drums, plus keyboardist Mick McNeil; Donald was soon replaced by Derek Forbes. Their early albums leaped from one style to another, with Life in a Day consisting mostly of dense, arty pop songs; critical acclaim followed the darker, more experimental art rock of Reel to Real Cacophony and the Euro-disco of Empires and Dance. The group began a transition to a more accessible pop style with the albums Sons and Fascination and Sister Feelings Call, originally issued together and subsequently split up.

New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) became their first chart album in the U.S., and the tour-shy McGee quit owing to the group's burgeoning popularity, eventually being replaced by Mel Gaynor. Following the Steve Lillywhite-produced Sparkle in the Rain, Jim Kerr married Pretenders lead singer Chrissie Hynde (the two groups had toured together). After Bryan Ferry rejected the opportunity to sing "Don't You (Forget About Me)," Simple Minds almost did so as well; Kerr was dissatisfied with the song's lyrics, which he regarded as formulaic. His change of heart gave Simple Minds their only American chart-topper, and the song later became an international hit as well; however, Kerr's feelings about the song remained ambivalent, and it did not appear on the follow-up album, Once Upon a Time. The album went gold and reached the U.S. Top Ten in spite of criticism for its bombastic, over the top approach. A live album and the uncompromisingly political Street Fighting Years squandered Simple Minds' commercial momentum, however.

By the time the group returned to more personal themes and its straightforward, anthemic rock on 1991's Real Life, personnel changes and audience loss left the group's future viability in doubt. They weren't totally deterred, however. Kerr and Burchill trudged on, releasing Good News from the Next World in 1995, while the single "She's a River" received moderate airplay. A short tour of North America soon followed, but Simple Minds' direction also quickly faded. They needed a break to clarify their own personal stance in music. Derek Forbes returned for 1998's Néapolis, but that, too, wasn't strong enough to sustain Simple Minds' newfound creativity. Their famed pop songs had diluted a bit; however, the new millennium proved poignant. Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill signed to Eagle Records in early 2001 and constructed their first covers album, Neon Lights, later that fall, paying tribute to Patti Smith, Neil Young, David Bowie, and others. In summer 2002, Kerr and Burchill issued Cry, Simple Minds' first batch of new material since 1995's Good News from the Next World.

Our Secrets Are the Same, an album that was intended for release in 2000, saw official release in 2003. An extensive reissue program and live recordings followed. Black & White, a new studio album, appeared in 2005, and the charting Graffiti Soul in 2009 (which saw the return of original drummer Mel Gaynor to the fold). Simple Minds accepted a spot at London's iTunes Festival that year and issued a digital EP of their performance. After a global tour, Simple Minds returned with Big Music in 2014, an album that included two songs co-written with Chvrches' Iain Cook. A stripped-down set called Acoustic arrived in late 2016, featuring acoustic reworkings of many of the band's hits. ~ Steve Huey Top Albums Don't You (Forget About Me) by Simple Minds Songfacts Songfacts This was featured in the 1985 movie The Breakfast Club. Directed by John Hughes, it featured many members of the "Brat Pack," including Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald, and Judd Nelson.

The song is so associated with The Breakfast Club, that it is often used in movies or TV shows any time they reference the movie, often with a parody of the iconic ending shot where Judd Nelson throws his fist in the air (perhaps the most famous freeze-frame in movie history, although Rocky 2, where Rocky and Apollo are frozen mid-punch, is also up there). Examples include the TV shows Scrubs, Psych, 30 Rock and Family Guy, and the movies American Pie and Easy A. In the 2001 film Not Another Teen Movie, which even features a cameo by Molly Ringwald, the version in the movie was performed by Sprung Monkey. Keith Forsey and Steve Schiff wrote this song specifically for The Breakfast Club. Forsey, who also co-wrote "Shakedown" for Beverly Hills Cop II and the title song to Flashdance... What a Feeling , was in charge of the music on The Breakfast Club.

Schiff had been a guitarist in Nina Hagen's band and co-wrote one of her biggest songs, "New York / N.Y." Forsey and Schiff wrote a few other songs for the film as well, including "Fire in the Twilight" by Wang Chung and "Didn't I Tell You" by Joyce Kennedy. "Don't You (Forget About Me)" was the only hit from the soundtrack, but it was a big one, rising to #1 in the US. Simple Minds had been around for five years and developed a strong following in England when this was released. The song was much more bombastic and radio-friendly than their previous material, which alienated some of their core fans, but gave them a breakthrough hit in the US, where it was by far their biggest hit. It is one of the few Simple Minds songs that they didn't write themselves. According to Keith Forsey, Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music was his first choice to record this song, but Ferry turned it down. Forsey was also a big fan of simple minds, so he tried to get them to record the song by delivering a cassette demo to the band.

At the time, Simple Minds was gaining traction in the UK, with with three modest hits from their 1984 album Sparkle in the Rain: "Waterfront," "Speed Your Love to Me" and "Up on the Catwalk." In the US, however, they had no luck, in large part because their US record company, A&M, didn't promote them. An A&R guy at the label named Jordan Harris tried to rectify that by having them record this song (The Breakfast Club soundtrack was on A&M), but the band wanted nothing to with it because: 1) They didn't like recording songs they didn't write. 2) Jim Kerr didn't like the lyric (especially the "vanity... insecurity" line). So why did the band record it? They simply changed their minds. They met with The Breakfast Club director John Hughes and got a screening of the film, which put the lyric in better context. Forsey visited them in Scotland, and they got on well. While there, he convinced them to give it a go, and they recorded the track in a few hours at a studio in London.

Jim Kerr didn't think this song was up to snuff when he heard the demo, but looking back on it, he's thrilled with its impact on pop culture. "The song and the film are almost iconic to certain generations, especially in America," he told us in 2014 . "So it's great when things come together and work so well. It's been a pleasure to see how much joy that song gives to a lot of people. This got a ridiculous amount of radio play, partly because it was played on both rock and Top 40 stations. It continues to get played on classic rock, modern rock, and even Top 40 radio stations as a solid recurrent with a huge recognition rating - when songs are tested by stations to determine if audiences like them, this consistently does very well, which keeps it on the air. The prom scene in the 1986 John Hughes movie Pretty in Pink was shot to this song, which might explain why the dancing doesn't follow the music of the song that was used: " If You Leave " by OMD.

Andy McCluskey of OMD told us: "The song had to be 120 BPM cos that's the tempo of 'Don't You Forget about Me,' which is the track they actually shot the prom scene to. Unfortunately, the editor obviously had no sense of rhythm because they are all dancing out of time in the final film." The song's co-writer Keith Forsey took over as drummer for The Psychedelic Furs in 1984 and produced their album Mirror Moves that year. When John Hughes found out that Forsey wrote "Don't You (Forget About Me)," he delved deeper into The Psychedelic Furs and discovered the group's 1981 song " Pretty In Pink ." He made that the title song to his next movie, which was released in 1986. This gave The Furs a huge career boost and a surprising hit. Despite the band's then-popularity in the UK and Europe, back in 1985 Simple Minds remained essentially unknown in the United States.

That changed when this song gave them a foothold; their next album, Once Upon a Time (which didn't include "Don't You (Forget About Me)"), scored with the #3 hit " Alive And Kicking ." A few minor hits followed in America, but their stronghold remained the UK, where they topped the chart in 1989 with " Belfast Child ." Jim Kerr, the group's lead singer, was married to Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders when this came out. He was later married to the actress Patsy Kensit, who divorced him and took up with Liam Gallagher of Oasis. Molly Ringwald released an album of standards in 2013 called Except Sometimes, which featured a cover of this song. Ringwald wanted to pay tribute to John Hughes and integrate her past by covering the song. In 2005, the punk rock band Yellowcard recorded this live from the MTV Video Music Awards as part of a 20th anniversary special for The Breakfast Club. Clips from the movie were shown during their performance.

>> Suggestion credit: Charlie - Las Vegas, NV Season 7 American Idol winner David Cook recorded a cover of "Don't You (Forget About Me)" as the farewell song for the 10th season of the reality television music competition. The song was chosen by American Idol creator and Executive Producer Simon Fuller and made available for sale on March 8, 2011. Cook told The Hollywood Reporter : "When I was approached about that song, my first thought was how iconic it is. Every time I hear that song I think of Judd Nelson on the football field with his fist in the air. How do you make it your own without completely bastardizing the original? It was an interesting experience. I'm extremely happy with the end result. It was a lot of fun to record. We got Kenny Aronoff on drums and Neal came in and helped cut some of the guitars. With Matt Squire's help - he was on board as a producer - we went in, had fun with it and tried not to worry about the inevitable pressure associated with that song.

It was a huge honor." The song's "la-la-la" coda is a case of a placeholder becoming the actual lyric, as neither Keith Forsey nor Jim Kerr could think of actual words that made sense. The music video was directed by Daniel Kleinman, who also did the clips for Paula Abdul's "Knocked Out" and Wang Chung's "Dance Hall Days." Oddly, there was no footage from The Breakfast Club in the video, which takes place in a large room filled with the band members and various television monitors. Simple Minds were never huge on MTV, which had moved away from British acts and were more interested in artists like Madonna and Prince. It was radio that made this song huge in the States. 30 Facts About Don’t You (Forget About Me) 30 Facts About Don’t You (Forget About Me) Home » 80s Songs » 30 Facts About Don’t You (Forget About Me) Posted By Mark Dursin on Mar 11, 2015 | 6 comments Thirty years ago, a Scottish band– relatively unknown in the U.S.–made a request to the world. And thirty years later, the world is still honoring it.

“Don’t You (Forget About Me)”– that’s all Simple Minds asked of us in February 1985, when their signature song from the film The Breakfast Club first debuted. And so far, we haven’t forgotten: the song and the film have been permanently etched into our pop-culture consciousness. And so, in honor of the song’s thirtieth anniversary, here are thirty facts about the creation and legacy of “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”… 30 Facts You Might Not Know “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” the only number one song in the U.S. for Simple Minds, was written by Keith Forsey and Steve Schiff. Forsey, the music composer for The Breakfast Club, was no stranger to film soundtracks: in 1984, he won an Oscar for co-writing “Flashdance… What a Feeling.” He is also the writer (with Harold Faltermeyer) for Glenn Frey’s “The Heat Is On,” from Beverly HIlls Cop. To get a feeling for what kind of music the film required, Forsey read The Breakfast Club script and watched the actors on the set.

According to several accounts, he was particularly inspired by the scene where Brian, Anthony Michael Hall’s character, asks the others if they’ll still be friends after their stay in detention is over. (Sample dialogue: “I was just wondering, um, what is gonna happen to us on Monday? When we’re all together again? I mean I consider you guys my friends, I’m not wrong, am I?” Sample lyric from the song: “Will you recognize me?

Call my name or walk on by?”) According to Susannah Gora, author of the book You Couldn’t Ignore Me If You Tried, the song was originally called “Won’t You (Forget About Me),” but Forsey changed it to the more optimistic “Don’t You.” By the time filming wrapped, Forsey and Schiff still hadn’t found anyone to record “Don’t You.” (The duo did record a demo– which director John Hughes liked so much he used it for the opening scenes, when the students first arrive for detention.) In her book, Gora reports that Forsey wanted Bryan Ferry, of Roxy Music, to sing the song; unfortunately, Ferry’s father died right before a scheduled meeting between Ferry and the Breakfast Club The meeting never took place, and the Ferry plans quickly fizzled. Armed with the demo and clips from the film, co-producer Michelle Manning and music supervisor David Anderle spent several weeks shopping the song around London– to no avail. No one was interested. Singers who passed on the song include Annie Lennox and Cy Curnin of The Fixx.

Legend has always put Billy Idol on that list as well, since Forsey had produced Idol’s Rebel Yell album and co-wrote the title track. But in a February 2015 SPIN Magazine article, Forsey claims he never offered it to Idol. Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders was interested in the song, but she eventually had to say no; the song would have required a video, which Chrissie didn’t want to do, since she was pregnant at the time. However, she did offer up the services of her husband Jim Kerr– the lead singer of Simple Minds. Simple Minds had formed in 1977 and had recorded several albums by 1984 (including New Gold Dream and Sparkle in the Rain); however, they had not enjoyed any success in the United States.

Fun Bowie Fact #1: The band took the name Simple Minds from a 1972 David Bowie song, “The Jean Genie.” (Line: “He’s so simple-minded, he can’t drive his own module.”) Fun Bowie Fact #2: In 1980, Bowie and Jim Kerr sang backing vocals for the Iggy Pop song “Play It Safe.” Fun Bowie Fact #3: The Breakfast Club opens with a David Bowie lyric, from the song “Changes”: “And the children that you spit on/ As they try to change their worlds/ Are immune to your consultations./ They are quite aware of what they’re going through…” Songwriters Forsey and Schiff were very keen on having Simple Minds perform “Don’t You.” (Schiff told SPIN he was a “huge fan” of Simple Minds in the early 80s.) Unfortunately, Jim Kerr was not so keen on the idea, for several reasons: he didn’t want to perform anything the band didn’t write; the song was too much of a deviation from their style; and he just plain ol’ didn’t like the song.

(In fact, Kerr told SPIN that Forsey and Schiff’s demo “blew none of us away, to put it mildly.”) Ultimately, the other Simple Minds members convinced Kerr to do the song, believing it would help them break into the American market. The band subsequently met with Forsey in a Wembley studio and recorded the song in three hours. Kerr was able to overcome his “Simple-Minds-doesn’t-record-other-people’s-stuff” stance by adding two signature ingredients to the song: the hey-hey-hey-heys; and the la-la-las at the end (which were improvised on the spot). The film The Breakfast Club was released in February 1985, and the song “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” reached the top of the U.S.

Billboard charts on May 18, 1985, supplanting Madonna’s “Crazy for You.” “Don’t You” stayed #1 for one week before it was overtaken by Wham!’s “Everything She Wants.” The song’s success made Minds a world-wide sensation, and the band started playing for huge crowds, including the 100,000 who jam-packed Philadelphia’s John F. Kennedy Stadium for Live Aid in July 1985. Simple Minds performed three songs at Live Aid: “Ghostdancing,” “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” and “Promised You a Miracle.” Still, the band has had a complicated relationship with its most popular song. Forsey told SPIN he felt Simple Minds were initially a “bit embarrassed” by the song’s success. And according to author Susannah Gora, singer Jim Kerr once told a Rolling Stone reporter that he “wanted to vomit” every time he played it. Simple Minds left “Don’t You” off their next album, Once Upon a Time, released in October 1985.

The album included the songs “Sanctify Yourself,” “All the Things She Said,” and “Alive and Kicking” (which went to #3 on the U.S. Billboard charts). Simple Minds and Anthony Michael Hall had a reunion of sorts in November 1985, when Simple Minds played Saturday Night Live for the first (and only) time; it was the season premiere of SNL, and it was also the first episode that featured Hall as a cast member. Despite this Breakfast Club connection, Simple Minds did not play “Don’t You” that night. (Fun Fact: At seventeen years old, Hall– who only lasted one season–was the youngest cast member in the history of SNL.) Chrissie Hynde and Jim Kerr divorced in 1990. They have one daughter, Yasmin Paris Kerr, who was born just one month after The Breakfast Club was released. “Don’t You” has enjoyed quite the legacy. For example, producer Jim Vallance (on his website) acknowledged that the title of Glass Tiger’s “Don’t Forget Me When I’m Gone” (released in 1986) was “not-too-subtly lifted” from the Simple Minds hit.

As an aside, the group Breakfast Club– most famous for the 1987 song “Right on Track”– was NOT named after the John Hughes film. In fact, the band was formed in the late 1970s and thus predated the film by several years. According to imdb.com, “Don’t You” has been featured in the films American Pie, Along Came Polly, Easy A, and Not Another Teen Movie; and on the TV shows Scrubs, Futurama, and 30 Rock. In 2011, actors James Roday and Dule Hill recorded a parody music video of the song to promote the season premier of the show Psych. Moreover, the song that no one wanted to record back in 1984 now has been covered over and over again. For example, Billy Idol– who apparently did not decline the song back in the 80s, even though everyone says he did– ended up recording a version of “Don’t You” in 2001…. In 2011, David Cook recorded a version to be the “So-Long!-Farewell!” song for American Idol cast-offs….

In 2012, the song was covered on an episode of the Nickelodeon show Victorious; the episode, called “The Breakfast Bunch,” was a parody of the film. Also in 2012, the film Pitch Perfect featured a cover of the song. … In 2013, Molly Ringwald– Claire Standish herself!– recorded a jazz version of the song for her debut studio album, Except Sometimes… And in 2014, Blaine, Sam, and Tina covered “Don’t You” on a Season Five episode of Glee. In 2009, a Canadian documentary team released a film about John Hughes entitled Don’t You Forget About Me. That same year, on August 8, John Hughes died. In 2014, Simple Minds released their 16th album, Big Music. This month, the band is embarking on a tour of Europe. Let’s hope they don’t forget to sing “Don’t You (Forget About Me)!” The Music Video Works Consulted I used multiple sources to find information for this list, but two were particularly useful: Gora, Susannah. You Couldn’t Ignore Me If You Tried.

New York: Three Rivers Press. 2010. Unterberger, Andrew. “Slow Change May Pull Us Apart: The Oral History of Simple Minds’ ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me).’ SPIN Magazine. February 24, 2015. Simple Minds Bio | Simple Minds Career | MTV New Wave Best known in the U.S. for their 1985 number one hit "Don't You (Forget About Me)" from the film The Breakfast Club, Scotland's Simple Minds evolved from a post-punk art rock band influenced by Roxy Music into a grand, epic-sounding pop band along the lines of U2. The band grew out of a Glasgow punk group called Johnny and the Self-Abusers, which featured guitarist Charlie Burchill and lead singer Jim Kerr. The inaugural 1978 lineup of Simple Minds featured a rhythm section of Tony Donald on bass and Brian McGee on drums, plus keyboardist Mick McNeil; Donald was soon replaced by Derek Forbes.

Their early albums leaped from one style to another, with Life in a Day consisting mostly of dense, arty pop songs; critical acclaim followed the darker, more experimental art rock of Reel to Real Cacophony and the Euro-disco of Empires and Dance. The group began a transition to a more accessible pop style with the albums Sons and Fascination and Sister Feelings Call, originally issued together and subsequently split up. New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) became their first chart album in the U.S., and the tour-shy McGee quit owing to the group's burgeoning popularity, eventually being replaced by Mel Gaynor. Following the Steve Lillywhite-produced Sparkle in the Rain, Jim Kerr married Pretenders lead singer Chrissie Hynde (the two groups had toured together). After Bryan Ferry rejected the opportunity to sing "Don't You (Forget About Me)," Simple Minds almost did so as well; Kerr was dissatisfied with the song's lyrics, which he regarded as formulaic.

His change of heart gave Simple Minds their only American chart-topper, and the song later became an international hit as well; however, Kerr's feelings about the song remained ambivalent, and it did not appear on the follow-up album, Once Upon a Time. The album went gold and reached the U.S. Top Ten in spite of criticism for its bombastic, over the top approach. A live album and the uncompromisingly political Street Fighting Years squandered Simple Minds' commercial momentum, however. By the time the group returned to more personal themes and its straightforward, anthemic rock on 1991's Real Life, personnel changes and audience loss left the group's future viability in doubt. They weren't totally deterred, however. Kerr and Burchill trudged on, releasing Good News from the Next World in 1995, while the single "She's a River" received moderate airplay. A short tour of North America soon followed, but Simple Minds' direction also quickly faded. They needed a break to clarify their own personal stance in music. Derek Forbes returned for 1998's Néapolis, but that, too, wasn't strong enough to sustain Simple Minds' newfound creativity.

Their famed pop songs had diluted a bit; however, the new millennium proved poignant. Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill signed to Eagle Records in early 2001 and constructed their first covers album, Neon Lights, later that fall, paying tribute to Patti Smith, Neil Young, David Bowie, and others. In summer 2002, Kerr and Burchill issued Cry, Simple Minds' first batch of new material since 1995's Good News from the Next World. Our Secrets Are the Same, an album that was intended for release in 2000, saw official release in 2003. An extensive reissue program and live recordings followed. Black & White, a new studio album, appeared in 2005, and the charting Graffiti Soul in 2009 (which saw the return of original drummer Mel Gaynor to the fold). Simple Minds accepted a spot at London's iTunes Festival that year and issued a digital EP of their performance. After a global tour, Simple Minds returned with Big Music in 2014, an album that included two songs co-written with Chvrches' Iain Cook.

A stripped-down set called Acoustic arrived in late 2016, featuring acoustic reworkings of many of the band's hits. ~ Steve Huey, Rovi Simple Minds Returns to U.S. for First Time in 11 Years; 'No Cobwebs,' Promises Jim Kerr (Q&A) | Hollywood Reporter Login to download Simple Minds Returns to U.S. for First Time in 11 Years; 'No Cobwebs,' Promises Jim Kerr (Q&A) 11:00 AM PDT 10/15/2013 by Jonathan Bernstein COMMENTS Paul Cox "The band's in tremendous form," the "Don't You (Forget About Me)" singer tells THR as the group prepares to embark on a greatest hits tour. “Eleven years? That’s an embarrassing gap.” So says Jim Kerr, lead singer and mainstay of Scotland’s Simple Minds of the group’s lengthy absence from North American shores. Following the March release of hits compilation Celebrate, the band, which for the past couple of decades has revolved around Kerr, original guitarist Charlie Burchill and an ever-shifting lineup of backing musicians, aims to rectify that situation with a tour that kicks off in Los Angeles on Oct.

15. Subsequent shows reunite the group with audiences in New Jersey, Washington, Boston, Montreal, Toronto and New York. “I’m confident in saying that the band has really improved,” Kerr, 54, tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Some might say, 'Well, he would say that,' but the proof is in the pudding.” Simple Minds' original incarnation was as Scotland’s premier punk band, Johnny & the Self Abusers, who played their first gig in a Glasgow bar on Easter Monday, 1977. “When we were onstage it was mayhem,” recalls Kerr. “No one could play a note. It was just white noise. We thought, 'There can’t be anything better than this.' It took us about six months to become serious about it.” The evolution to Simple Minds saw the band gravitate toward their formative influences, David Bowie and Lou Reed. Their debut album, 1979’s Life in a Day, sounded like a pastiche of their favorite artists. “That album was a disappointment even to us,” Kerr admits. Though the follow-up, Real to Real Cacophony, was released the same year, it showcased a very different Simple Minds.

This version had a more ominous, more European, more muscular sound. The group would only build and improve with their next few albums, reaching a creative peak in 1982’s New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84), which gave them a Top Three U.K. chart peak. But while the band's European profile was high and their lush cinematic music met with critical acclaim, America showed little interest. The Steve Lillywhite-produced Sparkle in the Rain, a deliberate attempt to move in a more stadium-rock direction, changed their perception as a moody British synth act and saw them develop a growing U.S following in 1983. But what really altered the standing of Simple Minds in America was a stop-gap single intended to keep interest alive while the band worked on a new album. The single, of course, was “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” the theme song to John Hughes film The Breakfast Club. PHOTOS: Madonna: Iconic Career and Life in Pictures The band was reluctant to record a song they hadn’t written. "We knocked it back a number of times,” says Kerr.

Producer/composer Keith Forsey was such a fan of the band and so fixated on the notion of them recording his song that he flew to London to persuade them. “We liked Keith more than his song,” Kerr admits. Nevertheless, “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” gave the band its first U.S. No. 1. Although the song was not included on Simple Minds' next release, 1985’s Once Upon a Time, the album was successful enough to allay any lingering fears that the band might have been the lucky recipient of a soundtrack hit. The first single, "Alive and Kicking,” reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and, as recently as last week, ran over the closing credits of East Bound and Down. As the 1980s drew to a close, it was not inaccurate to mention Simple Minds in the same breath as U2. They were both arena-filling acts whose set lists contained plenty of anthems. They both tended toward the self-important, and they both had charismatic frontmen with growing messiah complexes. When the next decade rolled around, U2 significantly changed the way they approached making music and the way they wanted to be perceived.

Simple Minds made no such changes. Their music remained epic, but their appeal waned. Kerr’s interests have diversified in recent years. He was active on the board of Glasgow soccer team Celtic FC and opened Hotel Villa Angela in Taormina, Sicily. But Simple Minds -- whose 40th anniversary is only a few years away -- are still capable of drawing crowds in Europe. And they're hoping America hasn’t forgotten about them. J im Kerr talked to THR about his band’s return to American soil, comparisons with U2, longevity and the state of his knees. It’s been a while. It’s embarrassing for us in respect of the people in the States and North America who like the band and have hung in with us. We’ve got it all to make up to them. The band’s in tremendous form. It’s not like we sat in some plateau and now we’re coming off the shelf and we’re shaking off the cobwebs like old football players who haven’t played in ten years. STORY: Mega-Producer Steve Lillywhite Looks Back on Storied Past; Talks U2, Morrissey, Keith Richards On previous American tours, Simple Minds played arenas. How do you look back on those days?

When you go though the door to the big league, your band is no longer your band. I wouldn’t want anyone to feel sorry for us. We’d worked and we’d gone for it. We were pretty gung-ho. I liked our attitude. When we decided we wanted to do something, we did it 100 percent. When we decided we wanted to make it big in America, we did it. We had a rather amazing can-do attitude. Looking back now, at the end of the '80s, one of the things we didn’t have was endless energy. That was 13 years of nonstop recording, writing, rehearsing, touring. The wheels were staring to come off, but we didn’t know that. Y ou were compared to U2 a lot in those days. But they've since transformed themselves into a sort of self-aware ironic commentary about being in a band. You didn’t really change.

With respect to them, because they’re the greatest live band that I’ve seen, if you read the book that was out recently about The Unforgettable Fire, when they worked with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois for the first time, both of them comment about how [U2] went to them and played them New Gold Dream and said, “We want some of that." I think that speaks volumes. It’s really easy to talk about U2, but there are very few bands that have that talent and all that intelligence, and I think when they came to the start of the '90s, when all the bands that had broken through in the '80s were about to find it tough, they regrouped and brought in an extra brain. Whereas our thing was falling apart; members were leaving. You can’t compare beyond that. CONCERT REVIEW: The Go-Go's Come Home to the Hollywood Bowl With 'Totally '80s' Show These North American shows are billed as a "Greatest Hits" tour. Is it a challenge to muster up the enthusiasm to play those well-worn songs? We’re doing two sets. There’s no support and we’re playing songs from everywhere.

A song from Empires and Dance like “This Fear of Gods" or “Premonition,” there’s every chance they’ll hear that, although they’re hardly greatest hits. A good Simple Minds show to me is if the audience hears the songs they expect to hear. The hardcore will be happy they’ll hear songs they never thought they’d hear. We want to give a whole sense of the journey the band’s been on and, within that, show that there’s a chapter to come. Despite your lengthy hiatus, the biggest-drawing live acts from when you last played here are pretty much the same big-drawing live acts today. I’m trying to think why that is. It used to be every three or four years another would come through and they would be the big thing. It’s so rare now. With bands of our generation -- I sound like an old man -- it was three or four albums before you broke though, and therefore you learned your trade and you could live up to the hype. We bought into artists and their career because there were less things to do. So you immersed yourself, you became a part of a movement of people who liked the same band, you salivated at every little crumb of new information.

Music was so much more valued and precious. I was in the Apple Store in Hamburg [recently], and there as such a buzz about the place that reminded me of record stores in their heyday. The band's 40-year anniversary is just around the corner. What keeps you going? The very foundation of what we do as Simple Minds has not changed one bit. We look for a melody, we look for a lyric and an emotion. We record it, we try and get it out there...to get as many people to see it, hear it, come and experience it. That’s what we’ve been doing, andnot one bit of that has fundamentally changed. And thank God for that, because at least there’s still something in this world that makes sense to us. How are you handling the physical demands of touring? You hear me knocking on wood? I had an hour’s jog today. I’m going back out for 45 minutes tonight. I’ve got about a month to drop a couple of kilos. I’ll do it, it’ll be good. Famous last words.

Simple Minds _ Don,t You Forget About Me (HQ widestereo) - YouTube Simple Minds _ Don,t You Forget About Me (HQ widestereo) Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on Aug 23, 2012 Short background info of this group taken from Wkipedia Simple Minds are a Scottish rock band who achieved worldwide popularity from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. The band produced a number of critically acclaimed albums in the early 1980s and best known for their No. 1 US, Canada and Netherlands hit single "Don't You (Forget About Me)", from the soundtrack of the John Hughes film The Breakfast Club. They are also known for the No. 3 US hit single "Alive and Kicking" and the No. 1 UK hit single "Belfast Child".

The band has sold more than 60 million albums since 1979.[citation needed] The core of the band is the two remaining founder members -- Jim Kerr (vocals, songwriting) and Charlie Burchill (guitars, keyboards after 1990, other instruments, songwriting) -- and drummer Mel Gaynor (who first joined the band in 1982). The other current band members are Andy Gillespie (keyboards) and Ged Grimes (bass guitar). Significant former members include bass guitarist Derek Forbes and keyboard player Michael MacNeil (the latter credited as a significant band composer during the band's rise in the 1980s). The roots of Simple Minds are in the short-lived punk band Johnny & The Self-Abusers, founded on the South Side of Glasgow in 1977. The band was "dreamed up" by would-be Glasgow scenemaker Alan Cairnduff, although he left the job of actually organising the band to his friend John Milarky. At Cairnduff's suggestion, Milarky teamed up with two musicians he'd never worked with before -- budding singer and lyricist Jim Kerr and guitarist Charlie Burchill.

Kerr and Burchill, who had known each other since the age of eight, were longstanding allies. After joining Johnny & The Self-Abusers, they brought in two of their school friends, Brian McGee on drums and Tony Donald on bass (all four had previously played together in the schoolboy band Biba-Rom!). With Milarky established as singer, guitarist and saxophonist, the lineup was completed by Milarky's friend Alan McNeil as third guitarist. To expand the band's potential sound, Kerr and Burchill also doubled on keyboards and violin respectively. In common with the early punk bands, various members took on stage names—Milarky became "Johnnie Plague", Kerr became "Pripton Weird", MacNeil chose "Sid Syphilis" and Burchill chose "Charlie Argue". Johnny & The Self-Abusers played its first gig on Easter Monday, 1977 at the Dourne Castle pub in Glasgow. The band played support to rising punk stars Generation X in Edinburgh two weeks later. The band went on to play a summer of concerts in Glasgow. Development was rapid, but at the expense of unity.

The band soon split into two factions, with Milarky and McNeil on one side and Kerr, Donald, Burchill and McGee on the other: at the same time, Milarky's compositions were being edged out in favour of those of Kerr and Burchill. In November 1977, Johnny & The Self-Abusers released its only single, "Saints And Sinners", on Chiswick Records (which was dismissed as being "rank and file" in a Melody Maker review.) The band split on the same day that the single was released, with Milarky and McNeil going on to form The Cuban Heels. Ditching the stage names and the overt punkiness, the remaining members continued together as Simple Minds (naming themselves after a David Bowie lyric from his song "Jean Genie"). Category Simple Minds | Biography & History | AllMusic google+ Artist Biography by Steve Huey Best known in the U.S.

for their 1985 number one hit "Don't You (Forget About Me)" from the film The Breakfast Club, Scotland's Simple Minds evolved from a post-punk art rock band influenced by Roxy Music into a grand, epic-sounding pop band along the lines of U2 . The band grew out of a Glasgow punk group called Johnny and the Self-Abusers, which featured guitarist Charlie Burchill and lead singer Jim Kerr . The inaugural 1978 lineup of Simple Minds featured a rhythm section of Tony Donald on bass and Brian McGee on drums, plus keyboardist Mick McNeil; Donald was soon replaced by Derek Forbes . Their early albums leaped from one style to another, with Life in a Day consisting mostly of dense, arty pop songs; critical acclaim followed the darker, more experimental art rock of Reel to Real Cacophony and the Euro-disco of Empires and Dance . The group began a transition to a more accessible pop style with the albums Sons and Fascination and Sister Feelings Call , originally issued together and subsequently split up.

New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) became their first chart album in the U.S., and the tour-shy McGee quit owing to the group's burgeoning popularity, eventually being replaced by Mel Gaynor . Following the Steve Lillywhite -produced Sparkle in the Rain , Jim Kerr married Pretenders lead singer Chrissie Hynde (the two groups had toured together). After Bryan Ferry rejected the opportunity to sing "Don't You (Forget About Me)," Simple Minds almost did so as well; Kerr was dissatisfied with the song's lyrics, which he regarded as formulaic. His change of heart gave Simple Minds their only American chart-topper, and the song later became an international hit as well; however, Kerr 's feelings about the song remained ambivalent, and it did not appear on the follow-up album, Once Upon a Time . The album went gold and reached the U.S. Top Ten in spite of criticism for its bombastic, over the top approach. A live album and the uncompromisingly political Street Fighting Years squandered Simple Minds ' commercial momentum, however.

By the time the group returned to more personal themes and its straightforward, anthemic rock on 1991's Real Life , personnel changes and audience loss left the group's future viability in doubt. They weren't totally deterred, however. Kerr and Burchill trudged on, releasing Good News from the Next World in 1995, while the single "She's a River" received moderate airplay. A short tour of North America soon followed, but Simple Minds ' direction also quickly faded. They needed a break to clarify their own personal stance in music. Derek Forbes returned for 1998's Néapolis , but that, too, wasn't strong enough to sustain Simple Minds ' newfound creativity. Their famed pop songs had diluted a bit; however, the new millennium proved poignant. Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill signed to Eagle Records in early 2001 and constructed their first covers album, Neon Lights , later that fall, paying tribute to Patti Smith , Neil Young , David Bowie , and others. In summer 2002, Kerr and Burchill issued Cry , Simple Minds ' first batch of new material since 1995's Good News from the Next World .

Our Secrets Are the Same , an album that was intended for release in 2000, saw official release in 2003. An extensive reissue program and live recordings followed. Black & White , a new studio album, appeared in 2005, and the charting Graffiti Soul in 2009 (which saw the return of original drummer Mel Gaynor to the fold). Simple Minds accepted a spot at London's iTunes Festival that year and issued a digital EP of their performance. After a global tour, Simple Minds returned with Big Music in 2014, an album that included two songs co-written with Chvrches ' Iain Cook . A stripped-down set called Acoustic arrived in late 2016, featuring acoustic reworkings of many of the band's hits.

Jim Kerr of Simple Minds : Songwriter Interviews Jim Kerr of Simple Minds Jim Kerr of Simple Minds : Songwriter Interviews "I'm more liable to write a line like 'Do forget about me,'" Simple Minds frontman Jim Kerr said about their American breakthrough, "Don't You (Forget About Me)." Thanks to its unforgettable appearance in The Breakfast Club and its cross-format radio appeal, the song topped the Hot 100 in May 1985, giving Simple Minds their American imprint with a song they not only didn't write, but didn't even like. Their American success remained modest; the follow-up "Alive and Kicking" made #3 in the US, but that was the last time they hit the Top 10 Stateside. In their native UK (the band formed in Glasgow), they have fared far better, with 24 appearances on the Top 40 as they enter their 38th year as an active band. Simple Minds' 2014 release, Big Music, is another grand production, with Jim's dextrous lyrics surrounding a modern sound that incorporates many of the EDM elements found in today's hits.

Jim broke down the band's songwriting process for us and told the tales behind some of their biggest hits, including the one that brings back memories of the Brat Pack. Greg Prato (Songfacts): If you want to start off talking about the new album, Big Music, just as far as how it came about and also memories of writing it. Jim Kerr: Yeah. Big Music is a cumulative of four or five years' work. I mean, not nonstop four or five years, because over that time we've been doing a lot of touring. It's been interesting in the sense that it's been a bit of a parallel existence, because when we tour, we play the songs that the band's created through our entire history. The very nature of that means a great element of nostalgia. And that's fine. But it was always important to us to be working on a new chapter of our story. So we had this coexistence where we'd go on stage at night and it would be a blast from the past. And during the day we'd be giving our thoughts and attention to the new album, Big Music, and pushing on into the future.

Songfacts: And would you say that expectations are also high with this album due to the success of the last album, Graffiti Soul [2009]? Jim: I think expectations are always high, especially if you only do an album every four or five years. As we all know, now, trying to get people's time and attention is so hard, so you can't really coast. You've got to come up with something that will hit people instantly. That's all easy to say and talk about, but to actually do it, you've got to make it happen yourself. You can't just go with the first few ideas that come into the palm of your hands. You've really got to go in deep, work on stuff, reject stuff, go back to the drawing board, all of that. But at the end of the day, this is what we wanted to do. We wanted to create, we wanted to write music, we wanted to play music. And we're delighted that at this stage of the game we're still getting a chance to do that. Songfacts: How do you find your write your best songs?

Jim: You know what, we say that the real strong songs - some of the real great ones - just land in our lap. You get an idea and within an afternoon some of the great ones are just there. The other ones arrive and you think there's something good about them, but you find there's something missing and you say, "I've got to work on it." And that "I've got to work on it" stuff can take decades till you actually find the missing piece of the jigsaw, so you put it on the back burner. I guess what I'm trying to say, there is no one way, really. But we've been writing songs since we were 14, and it's just second nature to us when we see things and we're thinking about things. Charlie Burchill, my songwriting partner, he's the kind of guy who walks around with a guitar. If he's at home, the first thing he does in the morning when he gets up and has his coffee, he sits at the piano. He's not really writing songs, but he's seeing what's inside him. As a lyric writer myself, I can get a song idea from anywhere.

I can get it from listening to a news broadcast, something someone says. I can get it from a two-bit journal. I can pull it out of the air. Unfortunately, I can't do it on tap. If I get the idea but the song doesn't come, then it's about the hard work - rolling up the sleeves and finishing it off. Songfacts: How would you say, by and large, the songwriting works in Simple Minds? Jim: Well, it is pretty much a nucleus. Charlie Burchill, who I mentioned, my guitar player, he and I have known each other since we were eight years old. It's our band. But the people we work with, the rest of the band, also contribute. 1984 was a big year for Jim: Simple Minds released their #1 UK album Sparkle in the Rain (produced by Steve Lillywhite), and he married Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders (they had a daughter, Yasmin, the following year; the couple divorced in 1990). Charlie and I can work anywhere. In the old days we'd go to the rehearsal room and knock things around and stuff.

Now I can be on the other side of the world, Charlie will send me an MP3, and say, "I was messing around with this last night." And I can have something back to him from the other side of the world, and say, "Actually, it made me think of this kind of melody." That's happened. But we still do it the old way, as well. We still get in a room together and he'll say, "Yeah, I've got these." Maybe we haven't seen each other for a couple of months. He'll say, "I've got about a half dozen ideas." Some of them might be fully formed, others will be a spark. And usually, I'll have a few things in my notebook that will match the atmosphere of what he's been doing. Songfacts: Who would you say are some of your favorite songwriters? Jim: Well, some of my favorite artists, the reason they're my favorite artists is because of the music they made. It is people like The Doors, and we're big David Bowie fans, that's for sure. Roxy Music... we came up in the UK glam rock period. T. Rex.

But we also love the Bob Dylans and the Leonard Cohens and the Paul Simons, Springsteen. Songfacts: Looking back at some of the songs from Simple Minds, if you just want to talk about either the memories of writing it or also the lyrics, let's start with the song "Honest Town" off the new album. Jim: Now, that was a pleasure to write. It was beautiful to write, but it came out of pretty tough circumstances. My mother passed away four years ago, but a few weeks before I had come back to Glasgow to spend time in the house with her and my father, and she had been doing very poorly. Then all of a sudden, one day she came downstairs, fully dressed. She had a spark in her eye, and she said, "I want to go out." And it was a snowstorm. It had been a snowstorm for days.

My father said, "You can't go out, I've turned on the radio and no one can go out unless it's an emergency." She looked at me, she said, "I want to go out." I said, "Okay, let's go for a drive." And we just went on a drive that we always do from our side of the town into the center of town. But in doing it, we passed a lot of landmarks that were important in her life: where she grew up, where I grew up, where she got her first job, where they got married, all this stuff. It was almost like a journey of her life. And as we were doing it, she was saying how happy she had been, how she had loved her life, how she'd loved Glasgow, where we're from. And she came up with the words, "Honest town." She said it was an honest town, people were great. And it became the song. So that was a song that was based on quite a sad, but in some ways happy event. She was in a great, great mood, and I'm happy that I got the chance to do it with her.

Songfacts: Backing up a little bit, what about the song "Alive and Kicking"? Jim: "Alive and Kicking" was a little more obscure when it came out. We had the music first, and it just sounded so glorious, so positive. At the time we were working in America. I remember we recorded some of it upstate in the Catskills and then we came down to finish it off. We were in New York, it was summer, Manhattan. We could feel the band was really on the verge of something, and I think that positivity and that idea of hope formed the lyrics. Songfacts: What about "Sanctify Yourself"? Jim: It came from Jimmy Iovine, who produced us. We had the riff for that. We all like gospel music and we're big fans of Sly & the Family Stone, as well. They were quite an influence on that song. Songfacts: What about "All The Things She Said"? Jim: It was an interview I'd read. I can't remember exactly what publication, but at the time, Europe was still divided - the Berlin Wall was still there.

At the time, Poland was trying to get its freedom from Russia, and there were quite a lot of Polish political prisoners in Russia. There was an interview with wives of guys that had been away for a long time, taken away, and some of the beautiful quotations that the women had used became sort of the background for that song. Songfacts: What were your initial impressions when the song " Don't You (Forget About Me) " was presented to the band, and were you keen to record it? Jim: No, we were not. It was presented in the wrong fashion. This cassette came our way. The song wasn't bad. It didn't resemble in any way the record that you know, but the melody was there, the words were there. It wasn't bad. But I've got to be honest, it didn't feel up to scratch with what we were working on of our own stuff. So we turned it down a couple of times, and they kept coming back at us, the record company, the film company. And then once we met both the producer, Keith Forsey, and the director, John Hughes, and spoke to them, we then understood the context of it and were a lot more free to the idea of doing it.

Songfacts: What did you think of the movie The Breakfast Club and how well do you think that that song fit in the film? Jim: Well, I've got to say that it fit beautifully. I don't know if it was coincidence or what, but you've got to say that it really worked. I mean, the song and the film are almost iconic to certain generations, especially in America. So it's great when things come together and work so well. It's been a pleasure to see how much joy that song gives to a lot of people. As recounted in most Iggy Pop-related books and documentaries, by the late '70s, the former Stooge was best buds with David Bowie - who either solely produced or co-produced Iggy's two solo efforts from 1977, The Idiot and Lust for Life. And while Bowie didn't produce Iggy's 1980 effort, Soldier, he did co-pen the tune "Play It Safe," and along with Simple Minds, provides backing vocals on the tune. Songfacts: What are some memories of when Simple Minds sang background vocals on the Iggy Pop album, Soldier, and the song "Play It Safe"?

Jim: Oh, god, I can't tell you how exciting that was. Can you believe no one had a camera? I mean, no one had a camera in those days. [Laughing] It's like, What?!? But the memory will always be there. I mean, it was so unlikely. The studio was in the Welsh countryside - what's the chance of meeting Iggy Pop in the Welsh countryside? What's the chance of his buddy, David Bowie, tagging along a couple of days later? And what's the chance of them knocking on your door and saying, "We need a few extra voices here"? And lo and behold, that's what it was. I've been really lucky. I've got to sing with not only two of my heroes in that case, but I also got to sing on a few tracks on Peter Gabriel's solo album [So]. And we had Lou Reed sing on our album [This Is Your Land]. These are all the guys that "heroic" is definitely the word. Songfacts: Were the sessions as wild as you would think an Iggy Pop session in the late '70s, early '80s would be?

Jim: Well, in the Welsh countryside there's not a lot of stuff you can get up to. But there was plenty of cans of beer. And at the end of the night, everyone had the munchies. I remember David Bowie eating a lot of cheese and thinking, I didn't think David Bowie would be a cheese-eating guy. I don't know why I thought that. But he was enjoying himself. January 9, 2015. For more Simple Minds, visit their official site . About the Author: Greg PratoA journalist from Long Island, New York, Greg's books include A Devil on One Shoulder and an Angel on the Other: The Story of Shannon Hoon and Blind Melon, Grunge is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music, and MTV Ruled the World: The Early Years of Music Video. Get more info about Greg's books here . You can also follow Greg on Twitter . More from Greg Prato send your comment

Question: Jim Kerr is lead singer of which band, who had 1985 hit with "Don't You (Forget About Me)"?
Answer: Simple Minds