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Alive & Kicking
In love with Bowie, Roxy Music
and Neu! Simple Minds turned their own chilly soundscapes into
a run of chart-busting singles and albums, capturing all the pomp
and bombast of the 80's along the way.
John Aizlewood - 'Q Magazine Special
'The Story Of Electro-Pop' January 2005 (UK)
It wasn't quite the beginning, but
the first minute of the first track of the first album is a good
place to start. In Simple Minds' case, it's Someone. As if caught
mid-chorus, Charlie Burchill's watertight guitar swirl gave way
to Mick MacNeil's keyboards, which set up teenage singer Jim Kerr
to smash home the first verse, which begins, mysteriously, "Ruby
says she does not dream". Before 60 seconds have passed there
is time for a chorus which begins, as all choruses should, "Whopopopopopoppop..."
Fabulous. It wasn't quite the '80s, but Simple Minds were already
ajead of their time.
Glasgow had lost its musical way in
the late '70s. With the exception of The Skids, punk had largely
passed Scotland by. When Johnny & The Self Abusers appeared
in 1977, they may have been cartoon punks with a cartoon singer
in Jim Kerr, who wore sunglasses in the dark, but because they
emerged into a vacuum they were not quite as other bands. Although
Kerr and his childhood pal Burchill had fallen in love with David
Bowie and Roxy Music, their punk heroes were Patti Smith and The
Velvet Underground.
Following a demo tape that reportedly
sounded a "bit like The Sweet", Johnny & The Self
Abusers fluked themselves a deal with Roger Armstrong's Chiswick
label. On the day Saints & Sinners, their first and last single
(recently exhumed as a Simple Minds encore) was released, they
spilt. Kerr, Burchill, drummer Brian McGee and bassist Tony Donald
demanded a new name. "Johnny & The Self Abusers sounded
like Big Dick & The Four Skins to me," said Kerr, not
unreasonably.
The re-branding was inspired by Bowie's
"so simple minded" phrase in The Jean genie, their horror
of a band name starting with "The" and Iggy Pop's The
Idiot. Simple Minds it was, then shortly before Christman 1977,
Simple Minds advertised for a keyboard player. Instead, just in
time for their first gig supporting Steel Pulse in Glasgow, they
decided to recruit another guitarist, Duncan Barnwell.
Finally, in March, the keyboardist
arrived. Mick MacNeil had once appeared on Junior Showtime in
a kilt. Now, with Donald replaced with Derek Forbes, the new electro
direction could assert itself.
In October, journalist Ian Cranna reviewed
Simple Minds for NME for their first national review. "You
know that band everybody's been waiting for?" he gushed,
"Well here they are. It's hard to recall the last time I
witnessed such an exciting yet thoughful new talent." Perceptively,
Cranna highlighted the pivotal relationship between Kerr and Burchill.
Clearly the singer who sand to cure his stutter and the rather
awkward guitarist/violinist were in it for the long haul. A month
later, Barnwell had been sacked and Simple Minds had a deal. As
1978 became 1979, their debut album was beginning to take shape.
Sort of.
Their label, Zoom/Arista, vetoed the
band's first production choice John Cale. Instead they were mated
with Magazine's producer John Leckie, taken out of their natural
Glasgow habitat and dumped in Amersham and then Abbey Road. Released
on 15 April 1979, Life In A Day was compared to Roxy Music, Magazine
and Cockney rebel. Leckie had smoothed out some of the rawer edges,
while MacNeil had become musically dominant. The introduction
to Someone was - in more ways than one - only the beginning. Sleek,
stylish, enigmatic and packed with strident melodies, at one glorious
sitting Simple Minds became contenders. To everyone's astonishment,
the album reached Number 30 but, not for the last time, Simple
Minds disowned their output, declaring it too obvious a homage
to their influences.
Around this time Kerr began listening
to Dusseldorf duo Neu! who had left Kraftwerk in 1971. Minimal,
harshly rhythmic but quietly melodic. Neu! were Krautrock in excelsis.
Inspired, Kerr and Burchill embarked on a frenzied burst of writing.
Before the year was out, a second leckie-produced (the band had
fancied Gary Numan) album would be out too.
Real To Real Cacophony was a curve-ball.
Where the debut shone brightly, this scurried away in the darkness.
The Neu! influence underpinned the whole project, but the album
went far beyond plagiarism. Tellingly, they refused to let Zoom/Arista
hear the work in progress. Veldt and Scar were bug-eyed slabs
of paranoia, but Film Theme and Changeling pointed the way forward,
while Factory ("Elevators just don't crash/The answer lies
within/Elevators! Elevators!") was their first truly great
song.
Real To Real Cacophony was, noted a
label executive, "the most uncommercial album Arista has
ever released". It didn't chart, but Simple Minds had become
a fully fledged electronic band. Better still, their musical adventurism
had attracted the attention of Kerr's hero, Peter Gabriel, who
paid for them to support him on tour.
If there was nothing Arista could have
done for Real To Real Cacophony, they ruined Empires And Dance,
effectively a Kerr tour diary. "I was 20, and I looked around
me. We had the talent always to be in the place where the neo-Nazis
exploded another bomb. Bolonga, a synagogue in Paris, a railway
station in Munich. Don't tell me anything like that could leave
you unmoved." First, Arista failed to ensure that the gloriously
commerical I Travel - Kerr's belated realisation of the genius
of Donna Summer's I Feel Love - was a hit. Then, as Empires &
Dance began to sell, they failed to press sufficient copies and
momentum fatally stalled.
Defiant, they left Arista and signed
to Virgin, who introduced them to Steve Hillage, an ex-hippy working
as an informal in-house Virgin producer. he understood Simple
Minds and was prepared to work as hard as they were to release
two new albums (Sons & Fascination and Sisters feeling Call)
in one package in September 1981.
The 15 tracks are among the zenith
of Simple Minds' electro period: cold yet luscious, unemotional
yet curiously moving. The collection reached Number 11, but Sweat
In Bullet, Love Song and The American could not give them the
single they so desperately needed.
Three drummers were used on their next
album, New Gold Dream (81,82,83,84) including the formidable Mel
Gaynor, who had previously played with The Nolan Sisters. Although
still electronic-based, the new songs luxuriated in warm, opulent
textures that broke fresh ground for the band. "There's a
richness to us, a hugeness," proclaimed Kerr. "Euphoria
probably isn't the right word, but what am I going to call it?
Grace? Majesty? Momentum?"
New Gold Dream (81,82,83,84) delivered
two Top 20 singles, the UK album charts and a hint of the US.
"Every band has a holy grail," explained Kerr, "and
I suppose that album was ours. The people who liked that record
connected with it in a special way." Some said Simple Minds
had compromised. "It's knowing when and how to compromise,"
explained Kerr. "I love winners, I love success."
Having tapped into the commerical mainline,
they made Gaynor a permanent member and employed producer Steve
Lillywhite, on Bono's recommendation, for 1984's Sparkle In The
Rain, the first of their five British Number 1 albums. Two years
later they achieved their commercial peak with Once Upon A Time,
their only US Top 10 album and home to three UK Top 10 singles:
Alive & Kicking, Sanctify Yourself and All The Things She
Said. Their American great leap foward was spawned by a rare cover
version, Keith Forsey and Steve Schiff's Don't You (Forget About
Me). Taken from the film The Breakfast Club, it reached Number
1. Churlishly, Kerr disowned it and it never appeared on a Simple
Minds album. "As soon as it started to sell and people got
immense enjoyment from it I didn't want to say, This is a piece
of crap and we could do it with our eyes closed..." but he
couldn't help himself. Simple Minds' faustian penance is to be
forever doomed to play it.
Aided by some magnetic stadium shows,
not least at the US Live Aid, these albums helped define a decade:
bold, brash, heroic, but often sensitive. Although the link to
the past was tenuous, it was never quite sundered and at their
best Simple Minds created lusious, widescreen musical pictures,
fuzzy at the edges, sweeping of sound and intent, all underlaid
with genuine mystery.
Their fame was almost perfect: all
the cash and none of the hassle. "I was never interested
in world domination," said Kerr, "I'd rather leave that
to people like Hitler. But there's probably not a country in the
world that hasn't heard our music, yet we can walk down any street
unnoticed."
Even so, after Once Upon A Time, the
decline was rapid. Its successor, 1989's Street Fighting Years,
topped the UK charts but peaked at 70 in the US. They parted company
with MacNeil, Forbes and longterm manager Bruce Finlay, while
Kerr swapped one showbusiness bride (Chrissie Hynde) for another
(Patsy Kensit). "I have," he said, "come out of
both relationships with no axe to grind whatsoever."
Musically, too, they began to flail.
Kerr marooned jimself in heartfelt but clumsy anti-apartheid politicking.
Disastrously, he pretended to be Irish on a career-killing version
of Belfast Child. Like sharks who die if they stop swimming the
exhausted Simple Minds stood still and lost touch. By 2001, they
were winnowed to Kerr and Burchill, without a major deal and reduced
to Neon Lights, a covers album. These days, Kerr prefers to spend
his time constructing a hotel in Taormina, Sicily.
Nobody used to cite Simple Minds in
despatches, but the change began in 2001 when Raven Maize sampled
Theme For Great Cities on their hit The Real Life. This year's
5CD Silver Box - everything previously unreleased - also marks
something of a rehabilitation.
"We can honestly claim to be one
of the great bands," claimed Kerr. "It's like with cars.
You have new, old and classic. We're somewhere towards classic."
New Gold Dream (81,82,83,84)
'The album was shot through with
sky-gazing ambition'
John Aizlewood - 'Q Magazine Special
'The Story Of Electro-Pop' Edition Essential Albums' January 2005
(UK)
Few bands slogged their way through
the late '70s with such Stakhanovite zeal as Simple Minds. An
album on Virgin had followed three on Zoom/Arista. Yet all they
had to show for it were some glowing reviews and an intimate knowledge
of every two-bob venue in Europe. That Virgin debut, Sons And
Fascination, did reach Number 11, but arguably only because it
included a free second album, Sister Feelings Call.
Underterred, Simple Minds went, as
the title of their breakthrough suggested, for gold.
Although shot through with sky-gazing
ambition, Kerr's dreamy quest lacked the brutal certainty of Thatcherism.
He told Smash Hits: "I'm not sure what I'm searching for,
Is it a theory? Is it a person? Is it a God? Is it a pair of shoes?
Out went the tundra landscapes so influenced
by Neu! and Magazine, replaced by a warmer, more expansive and
intelligent sound. in 1982 Kerr described it as "ambient
dance music" and was delighted when one writer spotted rhythmic
similarities with the work of American avant-garde composer Philip
Glass, a favourite of the band. Before the album was released,
the uplifting Promised You A Miracle had given Simple Minds their
first Top 20 single. The album peaked at Number 3 in late 1982.
It was also greeted by some of the best reviews of their career,
with NME's Paul Morley describing New Gold Dream as "majestic
and triumphant".
Someone Somewhere In Summertime opened
proceedings in magisterial fashion. Charlie Burchill's Edge-like
guitar descended across Mick McNeils textured keyboards, creating
a ravishing sense of wonder. The title track is even more epic,
a sweeping ride born from Kerr's almost spiritual optimism. Back
in 1982 Kerr explained, "There's a line in the Werner Herzog
film, Fitzcarraldo: Only dreamers can move mountains. I thought
that was great. Dreamers have got a bad reputation, people say,
He's a dreamer, he'll never do anything. You actually need courage
to dream." Big Sleep merged desolation with ethereal synthetics,
the shimmering Hunter And The Hunted featured improvisation from
jazz giant Herbie Hancock, Kerr's naive, romantic vision illuminates
Colours Fly & Catherine Wheel, and the delicate anthem Glittering
Prize gave Simple Minds their second Top 20 hit.
Although Someone Somewhere In Summertime
failed to breach the Top 30, New Gold Dream (81,82,83,84) stayed
on the UK charts for a year. Finally the album reached 69 in the
US. Soon, America would be Simple Minds' for the taking - even
if 1984's more conventional Sparkle In The Rain and it's massive
follow-up, Once Upon A Time, would alienate some of their original
fanbase.
Mastermind
Mark Allen meets a mind whose
time has come
Mark Ellen - 'Smash Hits' April 29th
- May 12th 1982 (UK)
Among the residents of a plush hotel
in London's Lancaster gate is a frail, slightly-built Glaswegian
with a shock of black hair dangling over his eyes. He's dressed
in a sombre grey sweater and enormously baggy light grey trousers
tapering to a pair of immaculate laced brogue shoes.
Somehow, he doesn't quite fit in.
In fact, Jim Kerr gives the distinct
impression that he's never really fitted in anywhere. What immediately
strikes me, as we settle down to a tray of hotel tea, is that
he looks alarmingly old for his twenty-two years. He could possibly
pass for thirty two. The furrows in his brow are so pronounced,
I tell him, you'd think he must have spent his entire youth frowning.
"I probably did, come to think
of it," he says, quite matter-of-fact. "Glasgow being
the sort of place where being a hairdresser was about the only
form of self-expression, I used to think: 'I'm not destined for
this.... for the Cortina and The Attractive Girlfriend'. If people
asked you what you did and you said: 'I write words', they'd say
'Are you queer? Are you weird?'"
Then he embarks on a colourful tale
about his early teens, which implies that a lot of these comments
he rather brought upon himself.
"I was always trying to draw attention,
much like Japan do now. Going to concerts dressed up in the whole
Glam thing - this was before Bowie was really big
- y'know, big boots, mascara, painted nails. The next day I'd
be working on my building site to try and get enough money to
go hitch-hiking round Europe and i'd notice I'd still got a trace
of this nail varnish on. And I'd be terrified these giants, these
bears, that I worked with would discover it!
"Other than that," he adds,
"I was perfectly normal."
These days, Jim says, he feels no great
desire to dress up off stage. He bumped into Mick Karn a while
back, down at Virgin Records, and couldn't believe the state of
him. "He had all the gear on!"
Lessons, however, have clearly been
learnt from sharing a record label with bands such as Japan and
the Human League. Much like Simple Minds themselves, both spent
a good three years in the twilight of near-total obscurity before
- almost overnight, it seemed - leapfrogging right into the charts.
And now Jim Kerr's boys seem firmly
set on the same course. It's no surprise to find that their overall
attitude - as with the other two - has been in for a servicing.
And it's paying dividends.
Personally, I've never much cared for
Jim's compositions up until now. They seem a gloomy, almost dirge-like,
and mostly lacking in force and direction. But the new single
"Promised You A Miracle" - the band's biggest seller
to date - is something altogether different. Something of a classic,
in fact.
As Jim so succinctly puts it: "I
was listening to the radio at the end of last year and just thought:
'We're never on the bloody thing!' We put all this energy and
enthusiasm into the band. Surely the more people who hear it,
the better."
The quintet immediately set to work
to create a more durable sound - "something that hits you
but wasn't as jarring as our old ones". It's interesting,
incidentally, that Jim's an ardent admirer of the "draughtsmanlike"
approach of Martin Fry. As he so rightly says: "ABC sound
great whether you hear them on the biggest disco or the tinniest
speaker. They draw your attention.
"I was half-way through writing
the song," he recalls, "when I thought: 'this isn't
us'. Then I thought: 'hang on a second, what isn't us?' What a
terrible state to have got into if Simple Minds are all tied up
in a box and finished."
The single sounds a lot more optimistic,
I suggest.
"Well, exactly. We are what we
take in. I don't get up at eight in the morning and play Joy Division.
I play Diana Ross or something. I thought: 'From now on we do
absolutely anything we feel, at any risk, and if we lose friends
well that's too bad. We can make new ones'."
The other crucial point about the song
is that you can actually understand the words (well almost). They're
obviously about, as Jim says, "a He/She affair". I never
had a clue what he was on about in the past.
"Me too," he smiles. "Sometimes
I think: 'Yeah, that's me and the things I see. The turmoils,
the struggles, the hopes or the failures.' Other times I think:
'That's not me at all. I wouldn't expose myself like that. I'm
too shy.'
"I don't attach too much importance
to the words. If they sound attractive and make a coherent picture,
then great."
Part of the new Simple Minds policy
is the result of their having come to terms with the whole process
involved in getting singles into the charts. Jim happily admits
that the band spent their first two-and-a-half years living from
gig to gig, from LP to LP, occasionally releasing the odd album
track as a 45 "because it might have a bit of a chance."
Matters were hardly helped by the appallingly
inept way the band were handled at their last port of call, Arista
Records. The label's bosses - experts all - saw one Simple Minds
concert and hit upon the preposterous plan of splitting the band
up for a year and packing Jim off for some mime lessons with the
legendary Lindsey Kemp. "He did it for David (Bowie), he
did it for Kate (Bush), he can do it for you," was their
reasoning.
Things got worse, apparently, when
Arista generously allowed the band a budget of £30,000 to
record their "Empires And Dance" LP and then initially
only pressed up 5,000 copies to put in the shops.
"It was ridiculous," Jim
says. "We've got a cult following of 30 or 40 thousand that
buy all our records. Anyway I've probably got about 8,000 friends!
"We feel confident about doing
things for Virgin - like colour photo sessions - because we now
recognise the need for them.
"It's the same with letters from
fans. I see the need for that too. No matter who they're from
- young or old - they all want a piece of your heart ultimately.
Before, it all seemed like a throwback from the past, like the
girls running after The Beatles. And you thought: 'Why?' 'Cos
you never saw what happened when they met. It was just like band
looks pretty and girls scream after them and buy their records.
"Now, I'd rather much rather have
an attractive girl sitting listening to our music, tapping her
feet, than get on the front page of a music paper."
Quite some change of attitude, you'll
agree. The person behind it all, though, says he's little different.
Asked if he feels he fits in any better
nowadays, Jim shakes his head slowly. No, he says, maybe because
he still gets too nervous about things. He hates going to the
cinema because of all the crowds and noise. For much the same
reason, he says, he'd rather take an eight mile walk than go on
a bus.
And he never knows what to say to people
who happen to recognise him in the streets.
"It's strange the way they gate-crash
into your life for two minutes and then disappear," he says.
"Somebody told me today that once you've done Top Of The
Pops there's no peace." He sighs in a resigned sort of way.
"It'll have to be the raincoat, hat, sunglasses and false
beard, I'm afraid...."
New Gold Dream (81,82,83,84)
CMJ New Music (US)
It's wonderful to see this Scottish
quintet signed to a major American label! Favorites on the alternative
charts since 1979, Simple Minds' A & M debut maintains the band's
danceable beat and lyrical prowess. Like Echo & The Bunnymen,
the Cure and Teardrop Explodes, Simple Minds present a rather
dam, threatening and sinister sound without ever really sounding
dark, threatening or sinister. In fact, their sound is somewhat
light; it features an hypnotic rhythm which entrances the listener.
Top cuts: "Promised You A Miracle" (the single), "Glittering Prize"
and the title track.
New Gold Dream (81,82,83,84)
MacKenzie Wilson - All Music Guide
(US)
One of Scotland's finest imports, Simple
Minds deliver a strong synth-reared release on New Gold Dream.
This album harks the darker side of the band's musicianship, and
such material alludes to their forthcoming pop-stadium sound which
hurled them into rock mainstream during the latter part of the
'80s. They were still honing their artistic rowdiness, and Kerr's
pursuing vocals were still hiding. But Simple Minds' skill of
tapping into internal emotion is profound on songs such as "Someone,
Somewhere in Summertime" and the album's title track. But the
dance-oriented tracks like "Promised You a Miracle" and "Glittering
Prize" are lushly layered in deep electronic beats - it was only
a matter of time for Simple Minds to expound upon such musical
creativity which made them a household favorite through the 1980s.
The Prize Guy
Mark Cooper - 'Record Mirror' 4th
September 1982 (UK)
Jim Kerr is sitting in the bay window
of a hotel in Portobello, his head surrounded by a halo of sunlight.
Jim is smiling and the two frown lines on his forehead have all
but vanished. He is enjoying a change of heart.
"When I saw U2 on television recently,"
says Jim, leaning forward, "I saw the same look in thier
eyes when they were playing as I've seen in ours in our live videos.
We both look transfixed and yet transported, as if we'd seen a
vision. All the recent pictures I've seen of myself, I'm standing
with my arms open where I always used to be fists clenched, arms
crossed, holding myself in."
Suddenly, Simple Minds have relaxed.
Of course they've worked hard this year, travelling round the
globe, promoting 'Sons And Fascination',' celebrating their first
English hit, 'Promised You A Miracle.' Yet it's not exhaustion
that shows on Jim Kerr's face but enthusiasm.
The old caginess has gone and in it's
place stands a more human, heartful Simple Minds. The evidence
is there, shimmering throughout the joyful current single 'Glittering
Prize,' and shining throughout the varied moods of the imminent
album, 'New Gold Dream - 81, 82, 83, 84.'
What on earth has happened? Where are
the intimidating Euro-boys of old? Have the Human League taught
Simple Minds to 'open their hearts' or are these mentions of U2
and the crosses on the new album's cover indications of another
rock 'n' roll conversion? Readers, I think we should be told.
Jim, about the crosses.... "Firstly,
I simply like the image, it pleases me. I used to wear a Communist
hammer and sickle but not because I'm a communist or
anything like that - I simply like the shape. In the past, Simple
Minds have always been associated with the darker side of things.
I think we encouraged the associated because it made us seem profound.
But there's always been other sides to our personalities and we
haven't allowed them to come out."
Up to now, Simple Minds' music has
tended to explore a single mood with a relentless brilliance that
verged on bullying. They stunned and impressed but they rarely
moved me. Suddenly, in 'New Gold Dream,' they've conquered their
fear of feeling and come our shining.
"Last year was pretty successful
for us," says Jim. "We played all over the world and
sold a lot of albums but we were being ignored by the radio. If
you listened to our albums all the way through, they were all
on one level, all the songs with the same intensity. When you
heard us on the radio, on John Peel or someone, for some reason,
we'd sound jarring...
During the course of this year, Simple
Minds made some basic decisions. They wanted to be heard on the
radio - they wanted to make records that could touch a variety
of human emotions and, lastly, they didn't want to repeat themselves.
"Sons And Fascination' was the
end of an era for us. We'd pursued those images and atmospheres
as far as they would go. If we'd have gone on, we'd have been
repeating ourselves."
Determined not to do that, Jim and
the band, took a long hard look at themselves and decided to come
out into the open.
"The funny thing," muses
Jim, "is that when you're prepared to show your weakness
or your emotion and no longer hide behind a strength that you
don't really possess, people believe that you're strong! People
are intimidated by you because you've had the strength to show
your emotion instead of hiding behind a 'strong' front."
Simple Minds' bombastic dance music
had taken them to a pretty pass, as Jim realised when they were
recording 'Miracle': "We got about half-way through and I
said, 'Wait a minute, this isn't Simple Minds! Where's the crashing
drums and the groaning bass?' Then I realised what I'd said and
wondered, 'is this what we've become? Who said Simple Minds had
to have one sound?'"
Once 'Miracle' was a hit, the predictable
cries of sell-out were immediately to be heard: "'Miracle'
was a spring record, the first sign of a new hopeful mood. Once
we were in the charts, we had letters from fans who said' 'You're
not going to change, are you, and become stars? You're ours and
you won't be ours anymore if a lot of people like you... And I
realised that those people had never understood me, never been
close to me, and they wanted us to go on being the same."
If new pop has resulted in the triumph
of a large amount of cynical and defensive music (ABC spring immediately
to mind), it has also caused a number of unfocused energies to
direct themselves and find their feet. Simple Minds havn't sold
out, they've simply found their stride. I mention to Jim that
it was a pleasure to see himself and the Bunneymen stepping out
of the underground and into the charts. Jim tells a story that
is indicative of the state into which British 'progressives' had
got themselves.
"One time Charlie and I were in
this bar in New York and the only two other people in the place
were two of the Bunneymen. We'd always liked their music and we
were going to go up and talk to them....In the end we said, 'No,
you klnow what they're like, we'll only make prats of ourselves..."
"Then we went to see them when
we were both in Sydney; one of their friends came over and invited
us backstage. We didn't want to go - I hate all that backstage
stuff - but she insisted and it was great, we did have a lot in
common. They said, 'We were going to come up and talk to you in
New York but we chickened out, we just said to ourselves, 'You
know what they're like!'"
If the old Simple Minds made metal
music, the new soul of the group lies in human emotion. With this
in view, the Minds were delighted to hear that Stevie Wonder had
been seen in LA, playing 'Miracle' maybe 10 times over, lifting
up the needle and putting it on again. There's confirmation from
the master!
The Minds have discovered their hearts
and, with producer Peter Walsh, a new simplicity. They're beginning
to be able to leave out a few ideas, instead of throwing them
all in to show they've got brains.
Their chart success comes from confidence,
not calculation: "All it's taken is just five minutes more
care," says Jim. "It's not that we've chosen to work
with some trendy producer like Trevor Horn who's turned us into
pop. We'd rather be at number 13 for six years than at number
one for six months. I hate pap, I hate Dollar and I always have."
Far from making pap, Simple Minds'
new album shows signs of maturity - a hopeful confidence in emotion
and a fidelity to the drama of their material that makes the heart
swell. Back to that cross....
"There's always been a side of
Simple Minds that's been concerned with faith and hope and joy.
I'm not talking about specifically Christian notions, as U2 might
but I think the best music does uplift and give a sense of joy.
Like them, we have an interest in giving, not getting."
Jik Kerr, like SImple Minds' music,
has a fascination with appearances - the look of a cross, the
shape of a hammer and sickle, the feel of a European city - and
a love of what lies beneath. It is Simple Minds' new golden dream
to bring these together and grab the glittering prize itself,
to make the music that moves: "In the last few years, we've
got to the stage where you've got intelligent people who've got
it all covered. They've got good style, strong atmospheres, interesting
images but no real songs or melodies. We want to write songs that
interest, that capture atmosphere and which have the real stone,
the diamond beneath."
New Gold Dream (81,82,83,84)
www.leonardslair.co.uk (UK)
So often in music, artists produce
their most thoughtful and mature work in their later years. But
equally so artists can produce their best material in their fledgling
careers and then seek to over-egg the pudding later.
Simple Minds definitely fall into the
latter category. 1982's 'New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84)' is often
considered to be their masterpiece; more tuneful than their earlier
work but also subdued enough to please the faithful. Heralded
by a trio of top quality singles, 'Someone Somewhere In Summertime',
'Glittering Prize' and 'Promised You A Miracle' were amongst the
best of the '80s, Charlie Burchill's guitar parts were memorable
without being bombastic and the keyboards promised hopeful escapism.
The remainder of the album is not quite
up to this standard but is at least atmospheric; 'Big Sleep' even
finds success in mixing cheap keyboard motifs with slap bass.
Their later career - which lest we forget is still a going concern
- witnessed them trying to emulate U2 when really they were much
better at being The Comsat Angels on this evidence.
(3 out of 5)
New Gold Dream (81,82,83,84)
www.directpopmusic.com (US)
80s rock musics Holy Grail - this is
as good as gets. You might be tempted to laugh at some of the
song titles on this record - "Colours Fly and Catherine Wheel";
"The King Is White And In The Crowd"; "Somebody Up There Likes
You". Ive heard these being described as nonsensical, but until
the recording "Space Face" (on their 2002 album "Cry"), nobody
- not even the Minds themselves - were able to recreate any measured
ballads like "King Is White" and "Colours Fly", totally in a class
of their own.
"Somebody Up There Likes You" is a
haunting instrumental which amazingly has failed to make it onto
any of the recent endless barrage of Chillout compilations that
have appeared over the last 2-3 years. Shocking, because "Somebody
Up There..." is probably the best chillout track ever recorded.
There was the faultless "Promised You
A Miracle", of course (no detail needed), and of course the emotive
"Glittering Prize" (which, incidentally, boasts an ingenious video
featuring computerized gold plated graphics). You need a new word
to describe this record - it really IS that good!!!
New Gold Dream (81,82,83,84)
'Glasgow Kisses - Classic Albums
Re-Visited'
David Stubbs - 'Uncut' Magazine May
2002 (UK)
Nineteen-eighty-two, the year of Simple
Minds' sixth and best album, was one of the greatest in music
history. There was a thriving Club Culture, fed by the subversive
narcissism of the new romantics, and across the water an explosion
of synth-funk innovation, from Larry Levan's The Peech Boys to
Afrika Bambaataa, all of which fed the sensibilities of popists
introverts New Order and Scritti Politti. The year also saw ABC's
The Lexicon Of Love, The Associates' Sulk and, the third in that
great trilogy of impossibly romantic, untoppable new-pop albums,
Simple Minds' New Gold Dream (81,82,83,84).
From theire raucous beginnings as Johnny
And The Self Absuers, Simple Minds had been liked to refinement
and a sense of the epic by a love of groups like Chic, but also
by Eno, Roxy Music, Neu! and La Dusseldorf. They swiftly rejected
the glum and parochial chrysalis of punk in order to find a sound
that straddled the biggest and best of America and Europe: cinematic,
transcendental, the stuff of distant dreams rather than gloomy
quotidian realities - and if that sounds 'apolitical', remember
this is the sort of 'politics' pop is very often, most effective
at.
With Empires And Dance (1980), featuring
'I Travel', it was clear that Simple Minds had listened to the
right German groups, watched the right European movies, read the
right texts as they inter-railed across the continents. As brilliant
a musical transcription of their experiences as it is - check
the slide projection effects of '30 Frames A Second' - you can
make out the joins of their influences.
With the follow-up albums, 1981's simultaneously
released Sons and Fascination and Sister Feelings Call, Simple
Minds broke another punk taboo. Not only did Jim Kerr talk in
interviews of his love of Genesis (circa The Lamb Lies Down On
Broadway) but they hired Steve Hillage, the ultimate prog hippie,
as producer. For those more interested in the credible than the
incredible, this was heresy. Kerr's pomp baritone, meanwhile,
bristled with vaulting, epic ambition. But so it might with tracks
like 'The American', 'Theme For Great Cities' and 'Seeing Out
The Angels', Simple Minds were on the point of achieving a unique
synthesis of pop, prog, punk, funk and avant-garde.
Come New Gold Dream and Simple Minds
enjoyed critical worship and every prospect of a vast, dawning
fan base. If they wanted to take over the world, there were plenty
willing to hold Kerr's coat: "Anything is possible..."
Indeed.
For the cover art, the Minds eschewed
the oblique modernist tendencies of previous sleeves for a typeface
and aura suggestive of some rekindled mediaeval mysticism. Had
the contents been less than brilliant, more impertinent attention
might have been paid to this conceit.
As it was, New Gold Dream glistened
like a grail from it's opening chimes. On 'Someone Somewhere In
Summertime', Michael MacNeil's keyboards are reminiscent of Abba's
'Dancing Queen' (according to a mischievous Paul Morley, the best
new music was "post-Abba rather than post-punk") as
Kerr hints at a shimmering and elusive fictional or authentically
imagined state of environmental ecstasy: "Moments burn, slow
burning golden nights, once more see city lights...". 'Colous
Fly And Catherine Wheel' equally twists and flickers and falters
- grammar and sequence collapse to great effect. "Great times
attack inexpensive thrills... catch a boy fell falling in love
fell falling.." In conjuction with the intricate interplay
between MacNeil's keyboards and guitarist Charlie Burchill, there's
a perfect, dazzling sense about these non sequitars.
'Promised You A Miracle', which became
the band's first hit single, makes what has come before it seems
like small fireworks. "Promises, promises as golden days
break wondering." What's so great about this track, and indeed
'Big Sleep', isn't just it's combination of stinging riff with
delicate mosaic musical colouring, but it's subtle rhythmical
patterns, which are a feature of the whole album. There's no programming
on New Gold Dream (though credit must surely go to producer, arranger
and engineer Peter Walsh). Instead, three drummers were used,
Mike Ogletree, Mel Gaynor and on 'Promised You A Miracle', former
Skids drummer Kenny Hislop. Interwoven with Derek Forbes busy,
funkified bass, the rhythms never tumble to 4/4 earth, seeming
to dance and shape-shift in mid-air, like the aurora borealis.
Following 'Somebody Up There Likes
You', a golden, dawn-breaking instrumental follow-up to 'Theme
For Great Cities', which was generally the opener for gigs around
this time, comes the title track, in which all of the pent-up
energy of the album is finally unleashed with full-on locomotive
optimism, a sort of celestial bullet train. "Crashing beats
and fantasy, setting sun in front of me" - it's as close
to anthemic as the album gets, a chant for the New Pop Class of
1982 who didn't know that Howard Jones and Nik Kershaw, were around
the next corner.
'Glittering Prize' teeters gracefully,
a stately but snowblinding display of the jumbled motifs on New
Gold Dream - clear skies, dreams, romantic moments that are both
perfect but transient and uncertain. It's these last qualities
that distinguish Simple Minds from U2, whose open-air, sanguine
tendencies, while bracing, lack intricacy or nuance.
With 'Hunter And The Hunted', the album
begins to draw to a close and cast long shadows. "Kyoto in
the snow but heaven's far away," sighs Kerr, who even alludes
to "the side effects of cruising at the speed of light, the
side effects of living in temptation," as if aware of the
impending mortality of the moment captured on the album. Yet in
the autumn of it's 40-odd-minute life, it seems more beautiful
than it's springtime promise, as encapsulated in guest player
Herbie Hancock's magnificent, meandering solo - kudos to the lateral
thinker who got him on board.
Finally, there's the oblique and inconclusive
'King Is White And In The Crowd', with it's surreal mix of Simple
Minds' influences, from Eno to Abba to Krautrock, and the sense
that the much-vaunted concept of perfect pop is both fleeting
and fragile - or 'powerful and transient'. MacNeil's decaying
synth tones, the measured rhythmical pace and Burchill's fire
fly guitars all amount to a dignified fade-out into the dying
light, leaving questions and ambiguities still hanging in the
dark, electric air.
After New Gold Dream, Simple Minds
gigged incessantly and became addicted to stadium crowds. The
Steve Lillywhite produced Sparkle In The Rain (1983) had it's
moments, but after 1985's 'Don't You (Forget About Me)', a song
not written by them but for the film the Breakfast Club (it had
already been rejected by Bryan Ferry), the Minds' golden sound
lapsed into turgid, leaden parody. The political consciousness
of 'Belfast Child' (1989) and Amnesty International campaigning
did them more credit but seemed to lend a pious starch to their
sound.
In a sense, though, the decline that
followed New Gold Dream was the point. New Pop was only ever a
glimpse, not a sustainable proposition - a break in the clouds,
a shaft of sun. The moment may have passed but, 20 years on, New
Gold Dream sounds as pristine and out of time as when it was first
released.
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