Jim Kerr

I was into the 'Dennis The Menace' comic strip long before I got into music, and it still makes me chuckle.

We have audiences within our audiences who only care about the greatest hits - but new material brings vitality to the set, and should stop you calcifying and being a museum piece.

What it boils down to is that we look for a melody and we look for a lyric, and we look for an atmosphere and an emotion, and we try to concoct a song out of all of those ingredients.

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.'

Like everyone else, when you start out you must begin from a position of being completely unknown. No option.

Mandela Day' was done in half-an-hour.

Our big songs were all songs that were never meant to be.

We did all those memorable iconic gigs at The Barrowlands and Ibrox and I remember Tiffany's because it was the first time my dad came to see us.

We had this thing that hometown gigs were the best and the worst because there was this unbearable pressure.

I'm a kid from housing estate in Glasgow.

For any band to make it in America is a colossal challenge and very few do because it takes time and so much money to tour endlessly.

For us every gig is a responsibility. We don't want people seeing us then saying, 'They're not as good as The Proclaimers.'

I got into incense the first time I visited Japan with Simple Minds in the 80s, now I stock up every time I go back. There's an otherworldliness about these little cedar wood sticks - which Samurai warriors used to cleanse the spirit - that just helps you 'escape.'

I try not to be one of these dads who foists their innate good taste onto their children.

I don't like to look back. But those occasions with zeros on the end are a good opportunity to reflect.

I want to be a better singer.

I want to improve.

We're honored - honored that we've been part of something that certainly, in terms of '80s pop culture in America, people have embraced.

In the case of 'Walk Between Worlds,' I'm happy to say that it was one of those records that when we were working on it, we would go home at the end of the day with smiles on our faces. We felt it was good work and every song we worked on, they seemed to connect.

If you're in a band, you can dress like a daft teenager for as long as you like. In fact, it's expected of you!

The concert stage is where Simple Minds do their best work, it is where we forged our live reputation.

We have always been a big success as parents and I get on well, always have, with my exes - and had to because there were kids involved. Obviously they've had their own lives and their own marriages, as I have, but there's a knowing closeness. They are still family, really.

I don't think you are ever prepared for success with bands like Simple Minds and U2. It wasn't until your fourth or fifth album that you really got that big-league success. It doesn't happen overnight, so you get used to it.

Like most classic bands, we only do an album every three or four years but that leaves a lot of down-time. And I don't like down time.

I love playing shows and travelling - but I'm not about to cart myself around the world with inferior product. I just won't do it. I don't need to do it.

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.

It's really easy to talk about U2, but there are very few bands that have that talent and all that intelligence, and I think when they came to the start of the '90s, when all the bands that had broken through in the '80s were about to find it tough, they regrouped and brought in an extra brain.

When we decided we wanted to do something, we did it 100 percent. When we decided we wanted to make it big in America, we did it.

When you go though the door to the big league, your band is no longer your band. I wouldn't want anyone to feel sorry for us. We'd worked and we'd gone for it. We were pretty gung-ho. I liked our attitude.

We just knew that we wanted to be in a band. We wanted to be in a great live band and we wanted to take it around the world.

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.'

You know, one minute you're in fashion and then you're completely out of fashion, but if you hang around long enough and don't get desperate, suddenly you become 'classic.' You see that happening all the time.

Glasgow - don't get me wrong, I love Glasgow, but in the '60s and '70s the city was on its knees. It was kind of bankrupt. It was pretty monochrome.

Especially in Europe - the States also, where you've got that landmass - but in Europe cultures and landscapes change within a hundred kilometers, and there's worlds within worlds. Within those worlds, there's good things going on. Within those worlds, there's tragic things.

I really believe that if people put everything they have into something, they can really surprise themselves most of the time.

I think it's because of dreamers that the world turns.

I'm good at getting good stuff out of people.

I'm a natural-born enthusiast.

I only want to play shows if I think we are going to sound good and I only want to release albums if I think we have something to say and we are doing it decently.

Singing about universal love, peace and freedom is one thing, but it's important to do something if you can.

Being in the studio for the first time was a daunting process. I didn't know what the engineers did. A mix? What's a mix? We didn't know what we were doing, but fortunately, we knew people who did.

I never find myself sitting down to write a song with a goal or an attitude that I'm trying to express. The words bring out the attitude in me.

I think within our music there is a real strong idea of search, search for identity, search for place, search for time, search for love, search for knowledge.

By 1980, we'd been round Europe three or four times, and our eyes were wide open.

I would never apologise for trying too hard.

I was happy living in a high-rise council estate in Glasgow up until our sixth album.

When I'm touring, everything is so structured and I'm surrounded by people all the time, so I love walking on my own in the open air in the countryside.

There is never going to be a band like The Who again.

I get wound up by bad manners on public transport.

My first-ever game was at the 1966 World Cup. The old man was a bricklayer's labourer, on a job in the north-east of England. One weekend the rest of the family went down to see him and he took me off to Ayresome Park, Middlesbrough for the Soviet Union versus North Korea.