Jim Kerr

When we were starting, the only old guys you'd see on stage were blues guys. They played every night, feast or famine, skint, rich, in fashion and out. You didn't have to ask them about their lives, their dreams, it was written on their faces: that's who they were and that's what they did.

John Hughes and his movie 'The Breakfast Club' gave us above all the thrilling opportunity that everyone who starts a band dreams of. The opportunity that is of aggregating the kind of success that enables an act to go through the door and into what is considered to be 'The Big League.'

I'm not a loner, but I spend so much time alone, even on tour.

I mean, the thing with Simple Minds is that there's many Simple Minds within Simple Minds. There was definitely an electronic art-rock phase; a lot of people associate us with the big MTV pop age. Other people you talk to and they say 'Oh, Simple Minds are stadium rock.' I'll say, 'Hang on a minute, I think it can be all those things.'