Jim Kerr on how Simple Minds came back from the dead – ‘If you hang around long enough, you’re a classic’

After cult electro-pop status and Eighties smashes like ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’ and Live Aid, the band’s career took a nosedive in the Noughties. But as their biographer Graeme Thomson finds, they’re suddenly being rediscovered by a new generation

‘I don’t think we’ve ever known how to go half measures on anything, and we certainly don’t want to be half-arsed just because we’re nearly 50 years in’ (Redferns)

The life of a band that never quits is a curious thing. Over the course of 40 or 50 years, the narrative curves between struggle, success, decline, survival – and, if you’re lucky, revival.

Back in the early 2000s, long after the glow of hit singles such as “Promised You a Miracle”, “Waterfront”, “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”, “Alive and Kicking”, “Belfast Child”, “See the Lights” and huge-selling albums Sparkle in the Rain, Once Upon a Time and Street Fighting Years had faded, the air around Simple Minds was growing thin. The band had been cool once, but nothing erodes cool like massive success. And when that departs – what remains?

Simple Minds’ singer and founder member Jim Kerr remembers the dog days well. “It doesn’t seem that long ago to me that, after climbing the mountain, we were back doing clubs,” says Kerr. “We were off the grid for a long time. There was about a decade where people were asking me, ‘Is the band still going? Are you still in the band?’” He laughs ruefully. “‘No, I’m delivering f***ing bread! I’m back at the plumbing.’