SIMPLE MINDS

Brighton Dome Concert Hall, Church Street, Tuesday, April 14

PERHAPS it is no surprise that Simple Minds’ most critically acclaimed albums of recent years came off the back of a tour revisiting their first five LPs.

“We thought the tour would be an exercise and great fun,” says frontman Jim Kerr of the band’s 2012 5x5 tour which focused on their formative albums from 1979 to 1982: Life In A Day, Real To Real Cacophony, Empires And Dance, Sons And Fascination / Sister Feelings Call and the career-making New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84).

“The world has changed, but the thing which surprised us going back was how much of the stuff sounded contemporary – almost like it had found its time again.”

It coincided with a period where Simple Minds were almost rediscovered, with the likes of Bobby Gillespie, The Horrors and Manic Street Preacher James Dean Bradfield highlighting the Glasgow band as an inspiration.

They even ended last year being presented with the Inspiration To Music award from Q Magazine .

All this fed into the band’s 16th studio album Big Music, which was released in November.

The album sees the band, now based around Kerr and fellow founding member guitarist Charlie Burchill, returning to the big stadium-filling style of their mid-1980s commercial height, while at the same time engaging with contemporary artists including Iain Cook of Chvrches.

“A few years ago a mutual friend introduced us,” says Kerr of the connection with Cook, who co-penned the single Honest Town. “He lived a few streets away from me in Glasgow. We worked together on a solo project – I’m looking forward to doing more. We wrote about ten songs, I’m not sure where they will end up.”

He admits in the writing sessions for Big Music it felt like everything was falling into place again.

“The confidence was really starting to rise,” he says. “Every time we put something on someone would walk in the room and say it sounded really good – that doesn’t always happen!

“We are always working and thinking about songs. We did realise a long time ago that to write a quality album of ten great songs you need to be working on 30 or 40 ideas for the cream to really come to the top. People don’t have time for good anymore – it’s got to be better than good.”

He found he was inspired as the band rehearsed for the 5x5 tour.

“With all the developments in technology it’s a lot easier to be on the road and still be working,” he says. “You can do stuff on the laptop.

“With our last tour I remember there was a three-week rehearsal period, when at weekends I was flying into London to write and demo new stuff. I was very much driven by the excitement of it.

“I’m not much of a runner, but I do run every day. If you haven’t run for a period when you start again it’s hard getting back into it, but you still do and it clicks. The same is true with creating music. When you sit everyday and go at it, it’s easier to break the ice.”

One theme which runs throughout the album is looking back – Honest Town is an elegiac return to the Glasgow of their youth, while Blood Diamonds sees the narrator looking back to a former relationship. The anthemic cover Let The Day Begin sees them pay tribute to old friend Michael Been of The Call who toured with the band in the 1980s and died of a heart attack in 2010.

“I think nostalgia gets a bad rap,” says Kerr. “It’s part of the human condition, and part of getting older.

“It’s important to have a sense of a journey continuing. On some of the tracks we sound like teenagers – that’s how much energy and commitment is in there.”

He finds bands like AC/DC still writing and singing about schoolgirl love a little dodgy – but admits a writer doesn’t get to choose what they write about.

“You write what is inside of you,” he says. “When you’ve lived a life you have the chance to tussle with the bigger themes we all go through.

It’s up to the artist to find a way to present them which is unique to him or her. It might be a theme which has been used a million times, but you do it your way and make it unique.”

The album title Big Music could be read as a reference to the anthemic sound running throughout the record, and which has become Simple Minds’ stock trade ever since they began filling stadia in the early 1980s with international hits Waterfront, Belfast Child, Alive And Kicking and Don’t You (Forget About Me).

But Kerr says the band was thinking more about the impact the music had on their lives over more than 30 years.

“It’s still this mysterious thing,” he says. “Even though we work with music every day we’re not quite sure why it works the way it does. It’s a fantastic puzzle.

“The thing that music brings us as fans is the emotions and feelings. Music has accompanied us through good and bad.”

One of the greatest things to happen to Simple Minds was the punk explosion coinciding with their teenage years. It allowed the band which began life as Johnny And The Self-Abusers to just have a go.

“A year or two before you had to be musically proficient and educated in music,” he says. “All of a sudden you could beg, borrow or steal a guitar, learn three chords and get a gig in the pub.

“If that chance hadn’t come along we would still be sitting in a pub going: ‘One day’.

“Punk wasn’t just about music – people decided to start their own fashion label, fanzine or make their own films. People say it’s harder now – the record labels are not there, there’s not the mentoring of rock bands.

“There’s not a pub or college circuit and the money is not there to finance five guys in a transit van.

“With the rise of the DJ, the guy strumming the acoustic guitar or the female singer-songwriter the record labels don’t have to take on five or six guys in a band.

“On the other hand if you’ve got a great track you can get it out there [on the internet], and people might find it. It’s just how do you make a career out of it?”

For Simple Minds a lot of their dedicated fanbase came from their focus on touring.

“Learning our trade we played hundreds of gigs in backwoods places in front of three men and a dog,” he says. “It all seemed pointless, but we learned how to become a real live force. Sometimes we will find ourselves playing to 2,000 people, towards the end of the year we might be in arenas.

“We like them all. Last year we were at a festival in Denmark in front of 50,000 people, but the night before we wanted to try something out so we did a gig in a place that was pretty much a pub. There’s no difference to us – you still have to make that impact, whether it’s five people or 50,000.”

And the band is still learning new sides to their trade, with this tour seeing them introduce an acoustic section.

“We get a sensational reaction to it,” says Kerr. “We had vetoed it before – we weren’t sure if the music could translate. We thought it could be boring – but we really get the energy across. There is a certain intimacy, you can focus on the lyrics and really enjoy it.”

Doors 7pm, tickets from £42. Call 01273 709709