CB: "Jimmy Iovine had pushed us. Jimmy was encouraging us to focus on songwriting. A song like Alive And Kicking is tailor-made for mass consumption."

JK: "There was never a meeting where we said, 'This is what we want and this is how we go for it,' nut we did love a challenge. It would have been too crass to say, 'We're going for America.' The colleges had made the previous records in the US, but it was like we were going to get our shot and, if we were, we'd better get it right. Our favourite records at the time would've been big productions like that on Springsteen's Born In The USA. We were tooling up for what we had previously failed at. We were good at getting what we wanted. We lost things along the way: Charlie and I grew up with our cult bands and we knew what it was like when we lost them. But we went for the deal - with a certain ambilvalence, it must be said. We must be the only band who had a No. 1 hit in America (Don't You (Forget About Me) and didn't include it on the following album."

Record Collector Interview
Record Collector #364
July 2009

"So far, so good then. Except that commercial glory was not matched with much critical glory. Particularly in the UK - Once Upon A time was given the cold shoulder by a whole host of journalists, who all felt that Simple Minds had seemingly become "too big for their boots." That we were being far too audacious etc., by courting what they believed was apparently a "sell-out" to American tastes. For them, "the rot" had somehow set in with the number one success of Don't You (Forget About Me). Their logic seemed to be that the more popular we became, the poorer we became as artists. And who were we to deny them their opinions - to which they were - and still are - entitled to?"

"Then again, you are not likely to see any written opinions about anything from most of those journalists who seemed to delight in taking a (metaphorical) axe to our art back in those days. The reason is that just about all of them are no longer in the journalistic profession. Their own careers petered out within a decade or so afterwards, even sooner in many cases. Sadder still, most of their publications that they wrote for are now in the great publishing graveyards. All just about went out business already a long time ago, their reputations now little more than an increasingly distant footnote within a faded history of pop culture. (I miss so many of those publications. I grew up reading them religiously, on a weekly basis. Simple Minds also owed plenty to them for the front page exposures etc. Some critics I valued as much as artists almost. Especially those that could articulate to me why I should love a record so much.)"

"No longer Alive And Kicking then? Plenty would alternately vouch that Simple Minds most certainly are? We in turn would thank them for that."

"I coincidentally heard two tracks from Once Upon A Time on radio during these past two days: All The Things She Said and Alive And Kicking respectively. What can I tell you? More than 3 decades later they struck me as still sounding like great, big, powerful, pop songs. Full of melody and with a creative vision that I reckon was hitting on some kind of peak."

"As for the live versions of those songs that we play with full heart every night on tour? Those anthems that never fail to leave audiences jumping up and down, as they sing their hearts out while accompanying us?"

"Well, how right it was of us to follow our muse back in 1985. To pursue the creative vision and style behind those songs that feature on Once Upon A Time."

"And how courageous likewise, to pay little attention to the naysayers when they were tripping over each other to declare that Simple Minds had chosen the wrong path."

"Same as it ever was!"

Jim
23rd October 2018