Simple Minds

We’ve loved seeing you all repping Simple Minds on the road this year! Tag us in your favourite merch looks 📸

Check out the full 2025 tour range, available now in the official store at... the link in bio.

“Control yourself, love is all you need.”

Sanctify Yourself - Live in Verona, 1989.

#OnceUponATime40

THE KICK INSIDE OF ME. “I grew up in Glasgow. Back then, life was loud—too loud sometimes. It was raw, rough, and it never gave you an easy ride. Yet still, when I hit the stage, it wasn’t ...serenity I found—it was fire. Every gig, every song, I played as though the ground beneath me might give way, as though it could all be over tomorrow. And so that kick inside, that drive, it never let me rest. Night after night, I poured it all onto the black stage floor, sweat and noise, until there was nothing left. And through all of it, through the chaos and the hunger, one truth held steady: nothing, and no one, meant more to me... than Simple Minds.” Jim Kerr

Pic: Simple Minds. Belfast 1984

Search: Simple Minds The Kick Inside Of Me Youtube

“Dublin, you were absolutely fabulous! It’s always a joy playing in Ireland.” - @cherissedrums

📹 Simple Minds live at Trinity College last month. Footage by @indietrent

Thank you to everyone who shared their fantastic photos from Simple Minds’ Global Tour this year! Some of the best moments from the summer are now live in a new tour gallery on the band’s ...official website.

Link in bio.

📸 @toddevision

A friendship like no other. Our Secrets Are The Same is the new memoir by Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill, telling not just the story of two rock stars, but of lifelong friends who never forgot where ...they came from—fulfilling a teenage dream to form a world-class live band and take their music around the globe.

Out October 2nd in hardback and e-book (pre-order link in bio).

Photo by @toddevision

#OurSecretsAreTheSame

Simple Minds onstage for ‘Glittering Prize’ in Newcastle 1982 as part of the band’s extensive New Gold Tour.

Taken from ‘Our Secrets Are The Same’, the new memoir by Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill.

Available to pre-order now in hardback and e-book at the link in bio.

...#OurSecretsAreTheSame

THAT LITTLE ROUND HOLE AND THAT BIT OF WOOD - THAT'S THE TRUTH!

"At home, I play acoustic all the time. That little round hole and that bit of wood—that’s the Truth. You should... always work things out on an acoustic." Keith Richards

Charlie Burchill comments. "I started with an acoustic. It's how I learned to play. Many of my heroes played acoustics, Dylan, Bowie, Joni Mitchell, Steve Harley too. I had seen them all with acoustic guitars slung around their shoulders. Looking so cool, that inspired me.
Now? I carry a semi-acoustic guitar with me, playing around with it while sitting in the hotel room during our days off. Anytime Jim sees me with it, he'll ask me to play something we both love.
'The Hammer Song' by The Sensational Alex Harvey Band for example.
Re Simple Minds Acoustic album. I had doubts. But our manager was convinced it was something worthwhile doing and I soon loved the challenge of reworking classic Minds songs within an acoustic based format."

Jim Kerr. "With no one to show us how, there was nothing else for it. We learned how to write 'our own songs' sitting on the bedroom floor, Charlie with his cheap acoustic guitar, diligently working out chords and melodies. Me with my tattered notebooks full of lyrics, copying our favourite songwriters before eventually finding a style of our own.
That is how we came to write the words and tunes for all those songs that secured Simple Minds their first worldwide record deal back in 1978.
Sure, we wanted foremost to be a great live band! But you need great songs to be a great live band, and great songs need not only melodies and lyrics, they also need inventive arrangements. So arranging songs on all those early Minds albums became mostly my job too.
Looking back a decade on from working on it, I suppose that for me the best thing about the Simple Minds Acoustic album is how perfectly the new arrangements seem to work."

"The only thought in my mind as I walk on stage is. ‘We'll soon have this place jumping up and down!’" Jim Kerr

Pic: Vince Barker

TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE!

Sensing when something is 'too good to be true' is a life skill. While I guess we are all good at something, I'm quite good at that.
Did I believe ...however that when "backing vocalist" @sarahbrownvocal first turned up in Copenhagen to sing with us, back in November 2009, that a whole 17 years later she would still be bringing both her astounding voice and stage presence out on tour with Simple Minds?
Honestly, I did not!

Apart from the fact I had no idea what the future might bring beyond the next months? The only thought in my head when I first heard Sarah singing was:
"This is one of the best voices I have EVER heard. So how come then despite touring previously with so many star acts such as Roxy Music, Duran Duran, Simply Red etc - the world has yet to know her name?"

My next thought was. "Maybe Simple Minds can make that right?"

Jim Kerr

Pic: Trent Barboza

Featuring the original album, B-sides, rarities, extended mixes, and the full Live in the City of Light concert over two discs, the Once Upon A Time 40th Anniversary 5CD box set arrives on October ...17th. It also includes a 36-page booklet with rare photos, interviews, and a track-by-track guide from Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill.

The original album will also be reissued on special red vinyl, housed in a gatefold sleeve featuring Anton Corbijn’s iconic photo of the band at Live Aid.

Pre-order both formats at the link in bio.

#OnceUponATime40