This might be worth a watch. Overseas AWers PM me for ‘help’.
“The inspirational story of how a group of working class kids growing up in post-industrial Glasgow dared to dream. Those kids became Simple Minds, the most iconic and influential Scottish band in history.
Hidden hand events – including the punk explosion, the emergence of MTV and the impact of Live Aid – appeared out of nowhere to propel Simple Minds, not only into its existence and on to global success, but also to reboot the band.
At the very heart of Simple Minds dwells the ongoing friendship between Jim Kerr and his songwriting partner Charlie Burchill. The pair met in the shadow of a brand new Glasgow council tower block in 1967 and subsequently forged a relationship that changed both their lives in a way that neither of them could ever have imagined.
Everything Is Possible is a music-inspired human interest story imbued with social history, politics and activism. It features previously unseen family and band archive along with iconic footage from Live Aid and the Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute, and is set to Simple Minds’ cinematic songbook of hits and rarities, including I Travel, Someone, Somewhere in Summertime, Promised You a Miracle and Don’t You (Forget About Me), Alive and Kicking, Belfast Child and Mandela Day.
Alongside a series of intimate interviews with Jim and Charlie, the film features contributions from Jimmy Iovine, Bob Geldof, Molly Ringwald, Bobby Gillespie, Dave Gahan, Irvine Welsh, Sharleen Spiteri, Richard Branson, Mariella Frostrup, Muriel Gray, Jerry Dammers, Trevor Horn, Mel Gaynor and James Dean Bradfield.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0025ynx/simple-minds-everything-is-possible
This should be excellent but …Belfast Child…nooooo.
I see your Belfast Child and raise you a Sign O’ The Times.
Agreed.
But they did this which is their best song by a long way
Your favourite you mean? It’s the best on the album, but that’s not saying much. For me New Gold Dream is in another stratosphere
New Gold Dream is fantastic, as are earlier songs like The American. They lost me a bit after about 1983 though.
I find it hard to think of another band that so comprehensively just drove off a cliff in the way that Simple Minds did after New Gold Dream.
Sparkle In The Rain is not really a cliff drop. It probably was the point that they turned the car toward the cliff and pressed the accelerator though. I loved the drumming at the time but it is just so loud in hindsight and the bombast become too much.
It seems so unlikely that a drummer who was previously best known for his work in jazz funkers Central Line should be responsible for all that tub thumping.
I remember the first time I heard the title track of New Gold Dream. Having only been, at that point, familiar with the 80s stadium stuff, I nearly fell over – it’s like Elvis fronting Kraftwerk: brilliant.
That bass line, is it true they secretly got Mark King from Level 42 to do it.
No, but it is true that Tears For Fears sampled it for Everybody Wants To Rule The World.
I have picked up a bass guitar about 3 times in my life and I think I could probably do the bass line for Waterfront.
…and your point is…?
Argh… I’m not sure if I’m in a Mornington Crescent- type spiral of wit, so I may be on another plane here.
I’m basically saying that it’s one note going through the song and therefore easy to play – so why would you bring in Mark King?
Bass playing – you play what’s right, you leave out what ain’t right…
…and I now appear to be in nip, curses…
Should have had the sarcasm font on, I recently heard some bass players on a podcast making fun of how monotonously simple the bass line is in Waterfront, and joking that it would take someone like Mark King to master it.
It is not. It was the start of the end of their imperial phase.
I really enjoyed this. A good story of a couple of best mates who’ve stuck at their craft and reaped the well-deserved rewards.
They’ve had their ups and downs, and the film did skip over some of their later albums (and didn’t say much about Mick McNeil, whose keyboards, I think, were an essential part of their sound), but in their imperial phase they were, rightly, massive.
The film made me want to listen to all their albums again, which is usually the sign of a successful music documentary.
My watermark for a successful doc or biography – does it make me want to go back to the albums to see what I missed?
Will give this a watch and see what happens.
I presume this will show up on the BBC4 Friday slot sooner or later. Having mentioned Simple Minds at the 3 Arena, Dublin as my surprise second best gig of the year on that recent thread, I remembered the thread below where I shared my views on where it all went wrong for them…
Just read that thread – still an interesting read…
In my annual Spotify Wrapped thing, it turns out I played Simple Minds more than any other band – yes, even more than Depeche Mode. That’s about right because I regularly revisit NGD because the entire album is a masterpiece. The bass line to Colours Fly and Catherine Wheel is worth the purchase price alone.
And back on that thread from 9 years ago i do slag off Once Upon a Time but I keep listening to tracks from it quite regularly. I also revisit I Travel, Love Song, Up on the Catwalk, Speed Your Love to Me, Waterfront and then someone here posted See the Lights and I played that a great deal also.
I’m very interested in any form of advice re how the doco can be viewed from NZ…
Good grief! If I’d known it was as simple as posting a tune on here!
THIS!!
As I’m sure I have posted before, you can sing the words of The Wombling Song to the tune of Changeling. Jim even starts it off for you, the cheeky scamp.
“Overground, underground, Wombling free…”
Arf!
@black-celebration
Me Sir, me. I think it was me that posted See the Lights. A lovely song off a terrible album, Real Life I think.
To those six songs you’ve individually noted I’d also add Theme for Great Cities.
Is it a song though? No vocals…
@black-celebration Check your messages- I’ve sent you a link…
Thanks!
Did it work? The file is too big for the free WeTransfer, so Dropbox was the best compromise to hand – even then I’ve blown the official limit.
It’s led me to Dropbox and I’m now in login/verification email/login again carousel. Once I am in the Xmas period proper I’ll have a bit of time to work it out and get it going.
I really appreciate the link and I will let you know once I get on to it.
Thanks, Foxy, saved me a job!
I often go back to Simple Minds. The early stuff is fantastic – time has potentially diluted how different that music was but it was startlingly good. It peeked in New Gold Dream but Sparkle In The Rain was also a great album. Pretty much everything before then was ace.
Everything after wasn’t terrible – some of it was fantastic and they were, for a global band, often interesting. It must be really hard being a huge global rock band and be always interesting. Even REM couldn’t manage it.
Apparently I have bizarre taste (different thread) – but, for me, they peaked with Real to Real Cacophony!
That could be a valid point.
Brief anecdote: I took my then girlfriend to see SM, would have been at Tiffany’s in Glasgow, 1980 or 1981 – with all that implies regarding the set list. She was an “Earth mother” type: long hair, long skirts, listened mainly to Laurel Canyon music (in fact, introduced me to Joni Mitchell’s output).
I loved it, she hated it. Following a frank conversation, turned out that she also hated all my prog, Velvets, Joy Division and sundry other gloomsters.
Dear reader, we parted company shortly thereafter…ah, young love…
Is this where I get to say…?
First date: Dream Warriors.
Last date: Ned’s Atomic Dustbin.
Huh, GIRLS! I think I went out with one (actually, several), who were like that. When I realised that hippie girls were not for me, even if I thought I was a post-punk head, my relationships greatly improved. What we want is not always what we need.
I find Sparkle in the Rain to be a band making an album without too much inspiration and losing what had previously made them great. To me their music just appeared to be empty and bombastic, with meaningless lyrics. Looking back their lyrics were probably never much cop though even at their peak.
REM never came out with drivel like Mandela Day or Belfast Child [shudders].
Their level of consistency after becoming huge was pretty great, at least until Bill Berry left and there was good stuff after that too.
In my defence, I did say ‘even’ REM as the best example of a band that remained interesting. Rather than likening them to SMs.
Belfast Child would be inexcusable were it not for Celebrate/Changeling/I Travel – which is the best 12 inch single I ever bought.
Yes fair enough. I am still mad about a Hammersmith Odeon concert I saw in 1984. One of the worst I ever saw. They were much better next time in 2011 actually! Manics were supporting them at a Swiss festival and I went to see them.
This was one YouTube not long ago. I recall Sharleen Spiteri dancing around to Love Song. Bobby Gillespie expresses admiration for Jim Kerr’s arty farty look in the early days, the brave hair. It was very enjoyable all round. Jimmy Iovine is presented as someone who they did well to employ as producer but he seems a dick who shouldn’t have been involved.
I can’t encounter the words ‘Simple Minds’ without smiling at something a friend said off the cuff decades ago. ‘It’s amazing how someone can have made a career out of this (punching the air in slow motion) and shouting ‘Wow-owwwwww!” 😀 It has an undeniable ring of truth.
The three pack of Empires and Dance, Sons and Fascination/Sister Feelings Call, New Gold Dream is as good as any band of the 80s, the equal of the first three Bunnymen albums for example.
Though NGD I have long regarded as their career apex, I relistened to S and F/SFC and what an astonishing album it is. Maybe its equal, full of amazing textures, rhythms and portentous gibberish from Jim Kerr.
Absolutely agree that they dealt in mystery and abstraction. That’s what makes their early albums so alluring. The second they had a more straightforward production from Steve Lillywhite, lyrics you could hear then the mystique was lost. Compare the first 30s of Lovesong and how the drums and bass sound to the same from Waterfront. Hard to believe it’s the same band.
You could almost say they were not the same band, what with drummer Brian McGee leaving after Sons…/Sister… Mel Gaynor has a lot to answer for.
My general guide is Derek Forbes on the bass: good, anyone else: bad. Néapolis, from 1998, with Derek back in the fold, is better than most post-NGD. It sounds like it could have been on Virgin or Arista.
I have the Canadian version of S & F
Very good
Side A
No. Title Length
1. “Love Song” 5:03
2. “Theme for Great Cities” 5:50
3. “This Earth That You Walk Upon” 5:26
4. “Sweat in Bullet” 4:30
5. “In Trance as Mission” 6:50
Side B
No. Title Length
6. “The American” 3:49
7. “20th Century Promised Land” 4:53
8. “League of Nations” 4:55
9. “Boys from Brazil” 5:30
10. “Sons and Fascination” 5:23
That’s a sort of best of the two, isn’t it?
There’s also a similar USA compilation I saw on import called “Themes For Great Cities (Definitive Collection 79-81)” which has bits of Real To Real Cacophony and Empires And Dance. All very confusing!
yes
I worked with Alan McNeill, who was their manager at one point (and brother of the other McNeill). By my time he was an experimental cognitive psychologist. Give him a drink and he’d deny any rock n’roll gossip we sought the dirt on. Sadly, he died some years ago.
I always feel dutybound to defend Street Fighting Years when the Minds come up. Yes, it’s a few songs too long, and Steven Lipson’s production is a little of its time, but think it’s inherited some of its reputation for bombast from the preceding Once Upon a Time. It’s got some great songs and sustains a mood really well, much of it nicely understated. But wealthily so. A big Sunday morning album for me.
On listening to Once Upon a Time recently, it also struck me how less ‘bombastic’ it sounded.
FM- friendly, yes, but, in our current time when drums seems to be recorded in danky cupboards covered in duffel coats, a bit of reverb sounded really clear and inviting.
I loved the doco and was also struck by the friendship that is sustained throughout. Other voices from the band were lacking, but ultimately, the whole thesis is about Jim and Charlie. And as for the Italian scene in which they spent their post-fame ‘wilderness’, there would be far worse places from which to consider where and when it all went wrong!
Agree with the general sentiment (fantastic start, fall off a cliff after OUAT), but will say they are still a fantastic live propostition (as of a couple of years ago, with their fabulous backing singers helping with the heavy warbling load).
I’m just going to pop this in here: Graeme Thomson’s book, Themes For Great Cities, is fab.
Will be an interesting listen but despite being an early fan, I just lost interest after their shift to stadium rock. Empires and Dance was (and still is) one of my favourite records.
I think it all went wrong for Simple Minds when they sacked the bass player.
It was going wrong long before that, but sacking Derek Forbes was the end of any creativity.
That was a great watch.
A band I have always liked but only saw live once in the late 1980s on the Once Upon a Time tour.
The only band I ever followed from their very first gig until they were “big” and on the telly. Then I lost interest.