New Gold Dream Fades - The Rise and Fall of Simple Minds
I first heard Simple Minds the way most people probably did; in The Breakfast Club. John Hughes’ magnum opus of teen angst begins and ends with “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” a song written for the film by Keith Forsey and Steve Schiff. They offered the song to a number of artists, including Billy Idol and Bryan Ferry, but were turned down by everyone until Simple Minds, under pressure from their label, agreed to record it. The song has been both a blessing and a curse to the band. It was their first and only US number one hit and stayed on the UK charts for an incredible two years. The band, however, obviously had mixed feelings about the success of a song they did not write. This became evident when they decided not to include the track on their next album Once Upon A Time, much to the chagrin of their record label. The album was (and remains) their biggest selling record, but Simple Minds surely couldn’t help thinking that most people who bought it had probably never heard of them before The Breakfast Club. These people missed out on the band at the height of their powers. When they were a glorious mess of ideas and influences. When their sound was changing and developing so fast that they themselves could barely keep up. Unfortunately, the greatness of these early years made the disappointment of their later albums that much harder to take.
Few bands have made such an artistic leap in such a short amount of time. Within one year, Simple Minds released their debut album Life in a Day wearing their influences (Roxy Music, Bowie, Magazine) a little too plainly on their sleeve, to writing, recording, and releasing Reel to Real Cacophony, a record that could not have been the work of anyone else. Angular guitars fight with stabbing synths, creating a kaleidoscope of post-punk pop. Amongst other landmark releases of 1979 from Joy Division (Unknown Pleasures), PiL (Metal Box) and Gang of Four (Entertainment!), it’s easy to forget Reel to Real Cacophony but it’s important not to. It’s an album on par with anything released that year.
Taking their interest in electronic music further, Simple Minds changed gears again with the aptly-named Empires and Dance, released in 1980. Songs like “I Travel” and “Thirty Frames a Second” are cold slices of paranoid disco, dance music for Arctic oil rigs. It’s with this album that singer Jim Kerr began touching upon political issues in his lyrics. At this point they’re effective in their vague evocativeness, and still buried amongst other more abstract imagery, but it was the beginning of a trend that would become detrimental and just plain annoying by the time the ‘90s rolled around.
The band’s label, Artisa, were unimpressed with Empires and Dance and pressed only a minimal amount of copies, making the record difficult for fans to find. Simple Minds jumped ship and signed with Virgin, promptly releasing two albums simultaneously. Sons & Fascination and Sister Feelings Call sees the icy landscapes of their previous album begin to melt and reveal hints of the epic scope their music would soon take.
Everything came together in 1982. New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) is not only Simple Minds best album, but, in my opinion, one of the best albums of the ‘80s. The band had perfected their sound with the guitars and keyboards finally living harmoniously, creating a huge, warm, textured sound described by Kerr as “ambient dance music”. The synths now envelop the listener instead of assaulting them, the guitars sparkle, Kerr uses his voice as an instrument, content to take a backseat to the music. The lyrics are both nonsensical and perfect. Kerr admits he chose words for how they sounded and the imagery they conjured. What you get are abstract musical paintings, songs that seem to radiate light. The singer called the record “a coffee table album. They should have sold New Gold Dream in furniture stores, because it can brighten a room.” The album was their most successful yet, reaching number three on the UK charts, and garnering them the best reviews of their career.
Sparkle In The Rain continued in the vein of soaring, grandiose rock. The electronic elements are pared down in favor of more standard piano flourishes, the guitar now having won the battle of dominant instrument. Jim Kerr’s voice was now right up front too. “Speed Your Love To Me”, one of the best songs on the album, is a locomotive of exuberant energy and manages to make a line like “She would like to make a wish / Twenty-four cannot be this” sound both sad and triumphant. This was no longer ambient dance music.
It was while they were recording their next album Once Upon A Time that “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” exploded in America. Suddenly Simple Minds’ popularity was as big as their music. The first single from Once Upon A Time,“Alive and Kicking”, went to number three on the Billboard charts, they appeared at Live Aid and on Saturday Night Live, and embarked on an ambitious world tour that was documented on the live album Live in the City of Lights. Though veering dangerously close to over the top melodrama, the music was still strong, the songs sweeping and cinematic, luxurious epics that reached for the heavens and occasionally got there.
Their decline, in terms of popularity, was no doubt due to their failure to capitalize on their success. The band who twice released two albums in one year were now taking four years between studio albums and when Street Fighting Years was finally released in 1989, their commercial momentum was all but gone, at least in the US. It’s on this album that Simple Minds finally crossed the line into grandiloquent self-importance. Politically charged songs like “Mandela Day” and “Belfast Child” come off as heavy handed and preachy. Half of the songs are over six minutes long and only one is under four minutes. You can’t help but feel like they’re tying to be a sort of Scottish U2.
In Europe, however, Simple Minds were still a big name band, as evidenced in the 1989 video Live in Verona, a concert film from the Street Fighting Years tour. “Bombastic” is the word that best describes the performance in this video (although “obnoxious” is good too). Songs are stretched to absurd lengths with extended intros, outros, and interludes. Kerr insists on changing the phrasing of his vocals, over-exaggerating his voice until it borders on self-parody. Backing singers, a violinist, and percussionist are there seemingly just to fill the massive stage. The DVD release includes a concert from the 1982 New Gold Dream tour and watching both shows back to back is like watching two completely different bands. In ’82 Jim Kerr is a tip-toeing pixie, skipping around the stage in his ballet slippers and eyeliner, in ’89 he’s a twisted combination of Bono and Springteen, draping a flag around his much thicker footballer frame as he roams the giant stage in jeans and cowboy boots.
“The ‘90s sucked” said Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler and I’m sure Jim Kerr would agree with him. Grunge was a giant killer and Simple Minds were giants, if only in their own minds. Real Life was their first album without keyboardist Mick Macneil, who’s role in the band had dwindled with each release following New Gold Dream. It failed to chart in the US. Trip-hop beats were experimented with on Neapolis with little success. The album wasn’t even released in the US.
Sanctuary picked up the band in 2005 and released Black & White 050505 and the buzz at the time was that it was a return to the style of their early ‘80s records. I was pretty surprised when I finally heard the album. While it’s not on the level of their early work, it’s a definite step in the right direction. A new album entitled Grafitti Soul is scheduled for release on May 25th and I’d love for it to be great. But if it’s not I can still put on New Gold Dream or Empires and Dance and know that there will be no extended intros or jazz guitar solos or cowboy boots.
Comments
Congratulations for your in-depth analysis about Simple Minds!
As a humble fan for the last 25 years, I fully agree to your conclusion, they’re back on the track! Future will tell us if this was the right track.
Comment by Joelle from Paris — February 20, 2009 @ 8:18 am
A great summary of the history, the rise, the decline and potential resurgence in Simple Minds’ popularity. Three key things that I would add are: (1) The Albums ‘Good News From The Next World’, ‘Our Secrets are the Same’ & ‘Cry’; (2) The fact that Simple Minds remained true to their artistic development rather than commericial consideration (their early work would not be possible without this attitude); (3) The fact that (thankfully for their loyal fans) they did keep dreaming and producing - their entire catalogue is worthy of praise. The future looks to sparkle again!
Comment by The Hobliminal Ibloid from CT, U.S.A. — February 20, 2009 @ 9:34 am
Completely agree with the comments above.
I also wanted to highlight the fact that the ‘artistic resurgence’ probably started with Our Secrets Are The Same (never released as a seperate album, but included in the Silver Box and available for download), which is easily missed in overviews of the band’s output but definitely worth checking out, and Cry, which lacked commercial success but it highly underestimated.
Looking forward to the new album and what the future might hold for Simple Minds!
Comment by Lore from Brussels — February 20, 2009 @ 9:44 am
this sums it all up;
“Their decline, in terms of popularity, was no doubt due to their failure to capitalize on their success. The band who twice released two albums in one year were now taking four years between studio albums and when Street Fighting Years was finally released in 1989, their commercial momentum was all but gone, at least in the US.”
If one journalist’s opinion about Simple Minds was that they began to suck around the release of the Once Upon A Time album, then sure that is his opinion only, but, the above article is familiar and why? because it is the same one written on a multitude of websites by a litany of music writers since 1985. Sorry but that says something.
We shall see if the “belief” in the new record is “a beauty thing” (argh) or it is swept under the carpet like each album since 1998. I’d like to think the former but recent history and confidence doesn’t give me great hope.
Though one lives in it as well as NJ :)
Comment by Not Quite Alison Doody from Somewhere In North America — February 20, 2009 @ 11:09 am
Yeah, wait a second, what <i>about</i> <u>Good News From The Next World</u>? I know it’s a sort of goofy mixture of Depeche Mode sounds and U2 sounds, but “Hypnotized” seemed to fit right in when me and my friends were listening to Concrete Blonde, and Garbage, and Pink Floyd.
Comment by Joseph Kugelmass — February 20, 2009 @ 11:16 am
Good article, nice to see them getting some publicity. I think Jim Kerr would agree with a fair bit of it. Our Secrets Are The Same started the comeback, though, pity it never saw the light of day for way too long, and then it got buried. Live they are still as good as any group in the world.
Comment by Yannis from UK — February 20, 2009 @ 11:44 am
It all went tits when Mcneil left and Kerr’s mighty ego took over. That and four years between albums, record label bust ups and a live set that didnt change for 15 years making SM a great SM tribute band.
Comment by Disconnected from Somewhere in Summer Time — February 20, 2009 @ 1:25 pm
I agree losing Mick MacNeil was a HUGE blow to the band. He was an underrated, essential element to their sound. I liked some of “Good News From the Next World” but still found it to be a little too overblown. Should I give it a second chance?
Comment by Matt White — February 20, 2009 @ 2:05 pm
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Matt,
Part of me wants to say “no”—you found it overblown then, you’ll find it even more overblown now—but then I think to myself: “Self, this is Simple Minds we’re talking about. Asking them to be less overblown is like asking Bono to stop saving the whole world with his little finger.”
Comment by Joseph Kugelmass from Long Beach — February 20, 2009 @ 2:17 pm
A good write up for those who wonder “Whatever happened to . . .?” It is very similar to what I’ve read about them many times before though. Accurate in the way the band probably appears to larger audiences (never met their potential, trying to be like U2, etc.)
I guess what strikes me about the band is we’re talking about a group that has been together in different incarnations for, what, 30+ years?! I can’t think of many bands who having put out new material consistently during that amount of time always hit it out of the park. I’d liken them to Rush in that SM is a band true to themselves, true to their fans, always evolving, but always themselves. That may not put them at the top of the charts, but that has kept me and others around for 25 of those 30 years.
B&W was the first album from them that I’ve fully enjoyed since Real Life. That just tells me these guys still have a lot to offer. They’ll have my money on May 25 for sure
Comment by Dr. Strangepork from Chicago, IL — February 20, 2009 @ 8:12 pm
good story of the band you got cute guys and sexy looks and terrific videos-tori
Comment by Tori Ann Steele from USA — February 21, 2009 @ 8:34 pm
Quoting Matt: “Should I give it a second chance?
“
Answer is: yes, please do so!
Comment by Joelle from Paris — February 23, 2009 @ 3:14 am
As others have mentioned, the writer should listen to “Cry” and, especially, “Our Secrets Are The Same” before discounting Simple Minds in the late 90s/early 00s. For those like myself who still care, the band has been on a winning streak since “Neapolis” at least in terms of quality. As for the pre-stadium days, the writer should have also mentioned the tremendous interest in early Simple Minds by countless DJs and dance artists who sampled “I Travel,” “Changeling” and other songs.
Comment by darkthirty from Atlanta, GA — February 24, 2009 @ 11:57 am
I certainly agree with your thesis. Those first 7 albums are unbeatable and the arc of development and progression is unmatched by any other band I can name. That hit single destroyed the band to my ears. I saw them on the “Once Upon A Time” Tour since that was my only shot after 6 years of fandom in the US. What an embarrassment!
That album was flaccid but it was fine art next to the overweeningly pompous and dead-on-delivery “Street Fighting Years.” I liked a few tracks from Real Life. It would have made a good EP. “See The Lights” is the only great song they did in practically 10 years - still, it’s no “I Travel!” I would also call attention to “Good News” as a vital and exciting record, never mind that it only had Kerr & Burchill. That album rekindled my SM fandom and I actually wanted to see than badly on tour from that point on. “Neapolis” actually sounded like it was made by the group that had recorded “Sons + Fascination” to my ears! They got Derek Forbes back, thought tellingly, he was not given a chance to compose. The cover album “Neon Lights,” had some good ideas and some bad ones, but it was the sound of a band trying at least. I will also chime in on the vitality of “Cry!” That a album floored me with its massive influx of new ideas and allegiance to pop over stodgy rock! I travelled hundreds of miles to see the Floating World 2002 tour and it was like night & day compared to what I saw in 1986! Boring old farts in ‘86 and young turks in ‘02!
For the record, I felt that “Our Secrets Were The Same” was an album best left shelved. If I were Chrysalis and they had delivered that master to me, I would have done the same. I am actually diminished for having heard Simple Minds “heroin album.” The last one, “Black & White 050505” actually had some good bass playing on it for once in a lifetime! “Stay Visible” set the bar high but the album diminished as it progressed to its end. I’ve heard the new single “Rockets” on the Billy Sloan show and it is a success for me as it mates the propulsive drive of the last album with the more adventurous pop techniques used so well on “Cry.”
I’ve been a fan of this band since buying their single “Sweat In Bullet” in 1981. They spent nearly 10 years doing lame arena rock from 86-94. Their ‘95 album showed the spark was still there. The last ten years has seen them trying to re-connect with their mojo with mostly good results. I’m possibly a bigger fan of this band now, for having heard lots of jaw-dropping bootlegs of the group at its peak (82-84) and the loss of bassist Derek Forbes was in retrospect, a crushing blow to this band. It’s obvious his phenomenal bass riffage provided the foundations for all of their best (krautrock trance oriented) material. Their salad days (79-84) reflect songs that sound like they arose from jamming, where the boredom set in with more conspicuous “songwriterly” material from 85 onward. This doesn’t even begin to address the whole Jim Kerr political lyric issues! Though I am a keyboard guy, I didn’t feel the loss os Mick McNeill was at all critical to the band, since for me it’s all about the bass with this band. When I listen to New Gold Dream now all I can hear is the bass playing.
Comment by Jim Donato from USA — March 20, 2009 @ 8:44 am
I’m another fan of the early Minds, though Empires/Sons/Sister don’t appeal to me nearly as much as Life in a Day, Real to Real Cacophony, New Gold Dream, and Sparkle in the Rain. As for Once Upon a Time, for me, that was their U-VOX moment, when, like Ultravox, they leaped into mainstream dullness and I stopped paying attention.
(I think I first heard about them through a record review of Empires and Dance, but the first record I found was Real to Real Cacophony. Fit in perfectly with the Ultravox, Numan, Visage, OMD, and Human League I was listening to at the time. Ah, 1981…)
Comment by Howard Decker — April 6, 2009 @ 10:42 am
iv’e been a fan for over 25 years, first seen them in 1981 at the ‘barras’ and have been totally hooked ever since,i loved the days of eurotrance and i travel was the first record i ever danced to,as a fan i have bought everything released since empires and dance, my fav album has to be New Gold Dream as every track has something special to offer.i have seen over 50 gigs over the years and this is were simple minds come into there own. i have yet to see a band who can better them for sound, atmoshere, oh and the best frontman you will ever see, enough of the adulation, i would just like to say that i have listened to the new single ‘rockets ’ quite a few times and can honestly say it is fantastic, it is better than anything U2 or anyone can come up with, for all of you doubters out there, ‘LISTEN ’
Comment by hugh harkins — April 10, 2009 @ 7:49 pm
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Mr. Harkins also nailed one of Simple Minds greatest strengths. Live, at peak form, they are well nigh untouchable. Ultravox, Magazine, Japan et. al. are all exemplary post-punk bands with amazing records. Live? Not quite amazing. When SM were at their peak (82-84) I have heard simply jaw-dropping live recordings that wipe the floor with their already great records. The band loved to mutate existing arrangements live until the songs bore little resemblance to the recorded versions. Even today, without Derek Forbes, the band can really deliver. If not on the near-inhuman level of 82-84, then certainly nothing to dismiss. One clear strength they have today is that Kerr is a far better vocalist and stage presence than the gawky adolescent whose records I loved, and the fatuous jerk who was content to be Bono-lite from 86-94.
I watched the video press release hosted on SM.com this weekend regarding the new album and it has got me counting the days until May 25! Mr. Kerr has every reason for the enthusiasm he has shown while recording and mixing this new album over the last few months in his blog. It sounds fantastic! It reminds me of 1983, albeit in a contemporary fashion. This sounds like the album that I was expecting after “Sparkle In The Rain.” I can hardly wait to hear it and see them on tour!
Comment by Jim Donato from USA — April 13, 2009 @ 6:44 am
Although I am merley 14 years old I am a huge fan of Simple Minds and I can understand every single comment made about the band on this page.
In fact some of it has opened my eyes: Simple Minds lost alot of their originality when they gained US stardom and although they remained very popular into the early nineties, I beleive that their most original, talent packed music came in the early albums up until Sparkle in the Rain. (They tried pretty successfully to resist mungdainity on Once Upon a Time but how can you with such a huge amount of public pressure?!).
My favourite album constantly wavours between Sons and Fascination/Sister Feelings Call, New Gold Dream and now Real to Real Cacophony which is weird and wonderful. (I wouldn’t know about Empires and Dance because my dad didn’t but that or RtoRC) but those albums were truly original.
What is really missing from Simple Minds and their recent questto recapture that old sound (through Cry and Black and White 050505, two pretty good albums) is Mick McNeil and his complex, moody, synthesizer influences. I think his influence was partly what made Simple Minds.
I will always admire Simple Minds’ music and in fact the band’s history would make a fantastic study of modern musical culture!
Comment by Noah Law from Great Britain — April 20, 2009 @ 2:46 pm