Simple Minds return to Atlanta, kicking off busy summer concert season

Caption

Jim Kerr (left) and Charlie Burchill cofounded Simple Minds with friends in 1977 in Glasgow, Scotland. The band performs at Atlanta's Synovus Bank Amphitheatre at Chastain Park on June 7, 2025.

Credit: Dean Chalkley

The John Hughes movie, The Breakfast Club, featured “Don't You Forget About Me” as its theme song, a record that put Scottish rock group Simple Minds at No.1 on the Billboard charts in May 1985. The band has surpassed 1 billion streams, sold 60 million records worldwide, released its latest live album in April and over the years played in Atlanta venues including the Fox Theatre in 1986, the Buckhead Theatre in 1995, and the Tabernacle in 2018.

With its string of hits including “Alive and Kicking,” “Sanctify Yourself,” “All the Things She Said,” and “See the Lights,” the group is returning to Georgia on June 7 for its biggest gig here yet at Synovus Bank Amphitheater at Chastain Park. The band is also the subject of a 2023 documentary released in North America this month called Everything is Possible featuring the song, "Your Name In Lights."

Simple Minds' Jim Kerr spoke with GPB’s Kristi York Wooten about the songs and the memories.

Jim Kerr on the band’s 40-year relationship with “Don’t You Forget About Me”

Well, it's mind-blowing. I mean, not only was it mind-blowing, the initial success, as you say, was 40 years ago. The song has appeared in other movies, the song that's just taken this life of its own. And so definitely, back then, we thought, "Oh, this should be a good bridge before our new album," which came out about six months later, Once Upon a Time. It'll be good, MTV like it, so we'll get on there, it'll be great, all that stuff, but we had no idea that it would be [this big]. I tell you the problem we've had between the making of the song and the success of the song.

We feel really guilty, not only because we didn't write it [producer Keith Forsey did], but we did it in like three hours. I mean, we actually did it to get the record company off our back. We thought, "Yeah, people might like it and maybe it'll be one song among many in the movie," because we didn't know. Maybe it'll a B-side. B-sides were a big thing then. But when we plugged in and started to play, it is fair to say, you know that thing you see in movies where people start sticking their head around the studio door and go, "That's good"? That’s special. But we had no idea that it would have this sort of monumental legacy, you know, that the song seems to have within the original generation and subsequent generations.

On the 40th anniversary of performing at Live Aid in July 1985

It’s another one that I recall so much about as though it was 40 weeks ago, never mind 40 years ago. First of all, there was a great excitement. Again, no one knew that 40 years later you could probably have a toss-up between Woodstock and Live Aid — although they were different things —as the most historical rock gigs ever. Would that be true? Probably. No one knew that on the day.

I guess then there was, with that generation and those artists, [the fact that] idealism was a big part of who you were and what you did. And certainly a lot of the people who influenced us and people who, you know — from Peter Gabriel, obviously Springsteen, going back to Woody Guthrie, Willie Nelson — yeah, it was politics, but I see it more as they were writing the songs of their time. There were the issues of the day for people … I mean things like “woke” and all that those words didn't exist, but there were just people that sometimes wanted to write about something more than their own fantasies and desires.

Do I think Live Aid could happen again? No, music doesn't have that currency now. Not just music, but the way people take in things now, everything's in sort of its own silo. I mean, you know, Taylor Swift could be playing in Glasgow. The stadium would be sold out for nights on end, but you could live in Glasgow and not know anything about it. And Glasgow's not even a big, big city. You couldn't do that when Michael Jackson came, because, you know, that was a real superstar because then, we all listened to the same things. Everything now is so [disparate] — and I'm not saying this is good or bad; it's just the way it is. I liked the way it was because that's what I knew. But music, art, doesn't quite have that currency anymore, that galvanizing reach.

On the activism of musicians in the 1980s and 1990s and writing Simple Minds’ anti-apartheid song “Mandela Day”

Well, I guess, you know, we were a product of our times. We were a product of the place we were brought up in. We're a product of the people who brought us up. And I don't know if you're born with the empathy gene or it's fed to you. But as an artist, I just felt at a certain point, once you've grown up a little and you've traveled and you have seen things firsthand, to me there was a point where at the bottom, it still has to be entertaining. You know, like when Prince wrote “Sign O' The Times,” in three or four verses he brought up a real picture of America at that time. Not an entirely, how could I say, positive picture, but it was all wrapped up in a pop song. That was the key.

I mean, if it's just sort of agit prop, that's a bit dull. When Steven Van Zandt did “Sun City” [a protest anthem against apartheid involving dozens of the chart-topping musicians of the day], arguably the greatest thing about it was the riff. Man! What a fantastic rock riff. It made you want to punch the air, no matter what the cause was. So, you know… I say, for some people the world ends at the bottom of your street. For other people, that's where it begins. And depending which type you are, things are gonna bleed into your artistic vision and your beliefs.

On what five decades of songwriting taught him

It's like the song is never finished. It's never finished. Even the great ones, you think later on, ‘I could see how this could have been.’ The other general thing I would say is as much as we've written hundreds of songs, one of the things that keeps us doing it is the intrigue. There's a mystery there. Yeah, there are certain technical things, you know, there's a few tricks you might learn, but there's still this unknown thing. Why does it work? Why does it not work? When does it? Why do some songs seem to land on your lap, out of nowhere, where others take years to find the missing piece. So, it teaches you that patience is a virtue. All of it. So I think rather than say I learned that from a song, I would say I learned all that from being a songwriter.

On making music videos in the 1980s

Well, I can tell you that [the embarrassment] it's usually to do with the videos because the videos we were never really in control of. It was very much potluck. And obviously, like most people, sometimes you look back and think, "Oh my god, ridiculous." But we have a song, “All the Things She Said,” which I think is one of our best songs, but the video, I'm not so sure. And one of the things was I have a fear of birds. And we turned up that day.

My dad had this bird house when I was young and they would fly all over your heads and I, the wings and all that stuff freaked me out. So I have a certain phobia with birds. And of course that video, I had to hold at least two, if not three, you know, really scary looking. birds, and I was terrified. I can still see the look on my arm as I'm holding it, trying to look cool and tough and heroic. I was terrifying. That was embarrassing.

On the four Simple Minds songs he’d share with future generations

We start our live set with “Waterfront.” It's just a song that gets … you don't even have to know it … but the pulse of the song gets the place jumping up and down. So you want to start with that. It's a song written about the river that goes through our city. And that's where we're from. So that would make sense. “Alive and Kicking" — I say that with some humor. We wouldn't be alive and kicking [without it], but the spirit of that song and the message, it would be good to put that in. We've got a song … and it's funny because people always say — I've got a friend, he loves Simple Minds, but he said to me, my favorite song is a track called "Theme for Great Cities," which is an instrumental. And I said, "Well, thank you very much. It's your favorite song and I'm not even on it!" But he said, "Yeah, but you did come up with a great title for it." It is a great theme. Oh, definitely that.

Oh my God, and as a last one, let's just say the favorite song that we played two nights ago, which goes back to 1981. It's a song called “Sons and Fascination,” and what I loved is when we played it, a lot of the audience that night wouldn't have known it, but it's got such a strong vibe, and we've got a whole thing going on with the production, the lights, the imagery, it is special. The last time we would have played that song in America would have been 1980, when we would've been playing about 20 people, so that was a nice thought.

On returning to Atlanta

Atlanta was always great to Simple Minds, we always look forward to it, and we're guaranteed we'll give our very best.