CLASSIC ALBUM
ONCE UPON A TIME SIMPLE MINDS
DESCRIBED BY JIM KERR HIMSELF AS THEIR MOST COMPLETE WORK, THIS IS THE STORY OF THE MAKING OF SIMPLE MINDS’ SEVENTH ALBUM, THE MULTI-MILLION-SELLER THAT LAUNCHED THEM ONTO THE WORLD STAGE…
PAUL LESTER
Simple Minds’ Once Upon A Time was originally released in October 1985, whereupon it became the band’s most successful album to date, shifting two million copies in two months, reaching pole position in the UK and the Top 10 in America.
It bequeathed four Top 20 singles and launched the band on a 15-month-long world tour that made them one of the biggest attractions on Planet Earth, right up there in the stadium super-league with U2. It – and the attendant single Don’t You (Forget About Me), a US No.1 even though it didn’t appear on the album – brought them a whole different type of fan to those reared on the leftfield drones of 1979’s Life In A Day, the throbbing proto-techno of 1980’s Empires And Dance and the experimental pop alchemy of 1982’s New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84).
“There’s no doubt,” agrees the band’s frontman Jim Kerr, speaking to Classic Pop. “It was the peak of us, the commercial peak, that and Street Fighting Years [1989].
“It took until New Gold Dream for us to get major chart success,” he reflects. “We were very much a growing cult thing, a ‘cool’ thing. There were a few ingredients that made Once Upon A Time a success. One was the arrival of MTV, because it was on in every bar and living room, every public space. If we could get on there, it would be a huge platform – and we did. It brought a lot of people to Simple Minds who had no idea of what had gone on before.”
Simple Minds had been a definitive post-punk band, then a quintessential new pop group. Now they captured the state of rock in 1985.