walking upstream…
Simple Minds
photo: manfred menken · cc by-sa 2.0 ↗Simple Minds
Formed from the ashes of Glasgow punk band Johnny and the Self-Abusers in 1977, Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill's Simple Minds spent their early records — full of icy synthesizers, motorik rhythm, and art-school posturing borrowed from their glam and art-rock heroes — building toward a widescreen, string-laden sound of their own. By the mid-1980s they had scaled that same architecture up into arena-filling anthems like "Don't You (Forget About Me)" and "Alive and Kicking," trading post-punk austerity for a big-hearted, stadium-sized grandeur without ever quite losing the coldwave chill underneath.
the sound in question
1985
Don't You (Forget About Me)Simple Minds
walk the tributaries ↓
David Bowie1970s · Art rock / Glam rock
Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill bonded as teenagers over David Bowie and Roxy Music records, and when their first band Johnny and the Self-Abusers split in 1977, the surviving members took their new name from a Bowie lyric — "he's so simple minded, he can't drive his module" from "The Jean Genie." That glam-era love of theatrical reinvention and alien remove carried straight into Simple Minds' own arty early records.
listen: upstream & here
1972
The Jean GenieDavid Bowie
1979
Life in a DaySimple Minds
listen forSet the strutting, self-consciously cool sneer of "The Jean Genie" against the debut single "Life in a Day" — both ride a swaggering glam-rock riff while the singer holds the audience at a cool, theatrical distance.
Roxy Music1970s · Art rock / Glam rock / Pop rock / Sophisti-pop
Roxy Music's art-school hybrid of synthesizer texture and glam theatrics was part of the same record collection that shaped the teenage Kerr and Burchill, and it surfaces directly in Simple Minds' early singles, which pair similarly skittering synthesizer lines with a cool, detached vocal delivery pitched somewhere between pop and performance art.
listen: upstream & here
1973
Do the StrandRoxy Music
1979
Chelsea GirlSimple Minds
listen forListen to the queasy, synthesizer-warped groove of "Do the Strand" and then "Chelsea Girl" — both build a jittery, artificial-sounding pulse under a deadpan vocal, trading conventional rock guitar for something stranger and more machine-like.
The Doors1960s · Psychedelic rock / Rock
The Doors were another band the young Kerr and Burchill wore out on record, and their organ-driven, hypnotic sense of atmosphere resurfaces in Simple Minds' early instrumental excursions, which favor a similar trance-like repetition over conventional verse-chorus songwriting.
listen: upstream & here
1967
Light My FireThe Doors
1981
Theme for Great CitiesSimple Minds
listen forThe extended, droning organ vamp that carries "Light My Fire" toward its instrumental break shares its hypnotic patience with "Theme for Great Cities" — both let a simple keyboard figure repeat and mutate for minutes at a stretch instead of resolving into a chorus.