Here’s a very straightforward music documentary about Simple Minds – the story of five working-class lads from Glasgow who started a band in 1977, and by the mid-80s were stadium rockers up there with U2. “The most iconic and influential Scottish band in history,” is how the film’s promotional material describes them. (Fans of the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Bay City Rollers and the Waterboys may take umbrage.) Today, only frontman Jim Kerr and guitarist Charlie Burchill remain of the original lineup – and miraculously they’re still mates. And when Kerr says sweetly that their friendship is one of his greatest achievements, it looks like he really means it.
They started the band in the punk era, then switched to art rock. With his black eyeliner and creepy monk’s fringe, Kerr looked the part of charismatic frontman. In 1982, Simple Minds scored their first hit with Promised You a Miracle, and No 1 albums in the UK followed. Arena-filling megastardom came in 1985 after the release of the single Don’t You (Forget About Me), which featured in John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club. Telling the story for what is clearly the 1,500th time, the band explain they didn’t want to record the track, feeling that it was beneath them to put out a single not of their own writing.
They got their biggest gig in the same year, playing at Live Aid. What Kerr remembers from the day is being irritated with himself for wearing the wrong trousers. It’s confessions such as this that make the film: both Kerr and Burchill come across as unpretentious, down to earth and likable. Remembering the early 00s, when irrelevance beckoned, Kerr says that he learned a lot about himself in the back of a van on the way to a gig in a half empty club, driving past a stadium that he’d sold out back in the day.
Simple Minds are still going, with a less blokey lineup; their drummer now is Cherisse Osei. Not just a bunch of “jowly old guys,” laughs Kerr. You’d never catch Mick or Keith saying that.
• Simple Minds: Everything Is Possible is released on 22 December on Paramount+
