Simple Minds' Jim Kerr talks ahead of Birmingham Symphony Hall show

He leads the most famous Scottish band of all time – Simple Minds have shipped more than 40 million records, scored five number one hits and headlined Wembley Stadium – and also owns a hotel in Sicily. But these days, Jim Kerr doesn't even get recognised when he steps out of his Glasgow flat in the city's south side. It's funny how life changes as you get older. Don't You Forget About Jim.

Jim Kerr is one of the nicest and most erudite men in rock, though some of his ex-band mates might not think so. They'll be back on the road in spring – they headline Birmingham's Symphony Hall on May 17 – but before that there's the small matter of their beautifully conceived and perfectly formed acoustic album.

Simple Minds Acoustic features 15 reworked tunes from their Imperial Era.

There's Chelsea Girl, a reimagined Don't You (Forget About Me) and Glittering Prize and there's a reworked version of Promised You A Miracle, featuring KT Tunstall, alongside a soft-strummed-but-still-ballsy Alive And Kicking. Who knew acoustic music could still sound, well, B.I.G?

Fans have been asking for an acoustic album since the dawn of time but, until now, he's manfully resisted. Simple question: what changed?

"To be honest, we've been getting asked for this kind of thing since back in the great MTV Unplugged days. It's always been in the air but one of the things that we were always trying to do was to look at new things. We're not great at looking back.

"I couldn't see us doing an acoustic album so we really weren't jumping at this until about two years ago."

"It came about when we were doing the promo for the last album, Big Music, and Chris Evans, on Radio 2, got us in. He had been a real big fan. He told us to go in and do two or three songs acoustically.

"We bit the bullet and at 7am on the morning we busked about two or three songs."

The reaction was overwhelming. Chris's 11 million listeners were Mad For It, to coin a phrase made popular by Patsy Kensit's subsequent husband. And sure as night follows day, every radio station across Europe wanted a repeat.

"After that, we did some promo in Europe, some radio and TV, and that kind of triggered everyone into it."

Two or three songs on the radio is, of course, different to recording 15 for an album. The idea of an acoustic album was duly shelved and Simple Minds got on with Big Music, their superlative 2014 offering. But while it was easy to ignore the requests to play songs for radio, it was harder to ignore requests backed with hard cash.

"We were to-ing and fro-ing and then our manager came up to us in the January and, as always, money talks. He said a promoter in Switzerland wanted us to play up a mountain. And he wanted us to play acoustically. So we thought 'great'. We thought it was worth putting that date in the tour as an experiment. So we put together a live set where we were obliged to play the big songs as well as some that people didn't expect. I guess we looked at it and thought what songs would we play? Then as we worked our way through it, the various boxes were ticked."

And so emerged Simple Minds Acoustic.

But getting one of Britain's great stadium bands to make music suited to a wine bar wasn't easy. How do you put the Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey-yeah, of Don't You (Forget About Me) on at an acoustic club? Not without reason were Simple Minds lauded for their stadium-friendly anthems.

Jim laughs. "We flitted through songs that we were sure would never work. We had always been swept away with production and a big sound. But when we just went down to the song, I didn't realise there was so much underneath."

They booked a gig in London, deciding to test their acoustic set on unsuspecting fans at Hackney Empire.

"Talk about winging it. People from all over the world wanted to see that and we'd never done it before. Talk about being in it at the deep end. We were totally vulnerable.

"At our stage of the game, to be doing things that you've never done before is a big deal. But we made it work. The one thing is, you know, the band are great. We all put in a lot of time. They guys are just great.

"There's a kind of prejudice whenever you say the word 'acoustic'. People imagine two blokes on some stool surrounded by candles. But we didn't want to be little. We've got this thing of having energy and passion on stage. The music jumps up and down. And so does the record. You'll see what I mean. It rocks. We've a helluva percussion player. People won't stay in their seats when we hit the road in spring. It's acoustic but it's a Simple Minds version, which is dynamic and atmospheric and all of that stuff."

And yet, it could all have been so different. There was a time not so many years ago when Simple Minds couldn't get arrested. They were yesterday's men. All washed up. Out of the game. They'd gone from having three consecutive number one platinum albums, followed by two that reached number two, to scratching about at numbers 141 and 80.

It would have been easier to call it a day. Jim could have spent his days at his hotel, the Villa Angela, in Sicily. Or, if performance was an itch he really did have to scratch, he could have taken one of the humungous cheques on offer for signing up to an 80s tour.

"We don't have a grudge to bear or anything. For a lot of people Simple Minds were off the radar for a long time and it's hard to get back on it when you've been off it."

So how did they do it? How did they go from being a pastiche, a parody, to becoming relevant again? How did they manage to stay in the ring when it would have been easier to take a fall?

Jim's answer is simple: "Hard work. We've worked the last 10-12 years trying to do quality stuff. A lot of people have wondered why we'd bothered. But we love our story and the position we're in and we love our catalogue. We have different types of fans and for the hardcore, they want to see the band evolving. We would calcify if we stopped being creative. We'd become your own tribute act, a museum piece.

"That's not what we are. It would be different if the ideas weren't flowing. Sometimes you get periods where it's like getting blood out of a stone. When you're young, you spend a whole day in rehearsal, that's what you want to do, as opposed to being a f****** labourer. But when it's our age, and life's been good, you think are you going to do the rehearsal room for a month or go to the beach?"

There's no prizes for guessing the answer that most bands would give. But for Simple Minds, there's only ever been one. And it's not the obvious.

"You know, we go to the rehearsal room every time. We want to raise the bar. We want the thing after Big Music to be bigger."

They're not done yet. They've weathered their commercial decline and the revolving door that many ex-band members have spun through. They've survived the internecine record company politics and the leak of new music via the internet. They've come through a loss of momentum, poor album sales and numerous other challenges.

"There was a period when the wheels came off and we were overwhelmingly written off. We're not the type to complain but it was what it was and maybe you start to believe what other people say.

"You know what, maybe you think things can't go on forever. But, there's still this thing. You start to look at it. Even the true greats, they all had periods where they went up and down and headed for the hills. John Lennon ended up baking bread in a f****** house, Dylan headed for the hills."

And that's when they found themselves. The seeds of hope grow in the garden of despair. That's when Jim, guitarist Charlie Burchill and the rest of the gang decided not to give in. That's when they decided to keep on chasing the dream.

"You ask yourself, do you have the stomach for it? I tell you, you find out a lot about yourself when you're in a van driving to a club gig in some city. The gig's not sold out and en route you pass a stadium that you sold out in the past.

"That's when you find out what makes you tick. Is it the quest to be rich and famous or to be in the charts? Don't get me wrong, that's fantastic, or are you doing it because this is who we are? And you go back to the greats. You look at those blues guys and they went on until they stopped. You wouldn't ask them why they still did it. You wouldn't ask them what kept them going. It would be written on their face.

"We didn't get desperate. No disrespect to anybody but we didn't take the cheque for the 80s tours and there were big cheques there. In a sense, fate, time, sometimes those things go for you. Fate is with us. People start coming along and discovering it. A new generation of bands come along and cited us as influences. That all added to the confidence. I look at it like this: you're a burned out car and you're like, can we get the engine going. Can we turn it round? Oh great, we can. So we've got the engine going. Now how far down the road can we go?"

Jim wouldn't change much. He's happy with his lot. He's lived a charmed life, albeit it stressful at times. The kid from Holyrood Secondary School who had a stammer during his childhood and early teens but found punk – and himself – would do it all again. In a heartbeat. He loves his time on the road. He's thrilled that an old dog can learn new tricks and he has the same passion now as when it was the summer of '77 and he was belting out punk tunes in his then-band, Johnny and the Self Abusers.

"After a gig, the first thing that flits through my mind is 'great, we made people happy'. Every day you look at the news. Jesus. It's grim.

"You know, it might sound corny, but there are people laughing, smiling and holding each other when they come to see us. Music does that. It takes us back to when we were 13/14. As a kid, I'd see gigs with performers that could do that.

"But the final thing for me is how lucky we are to have this life. How lucky we are to have moments like that."

The quality of Simple Minds Acoustic means Jim can look forward to a whole heap more of such moments. Keep on rockin', Jim. Keep on rockin'.

Andy Richardson

Simple Minds Acoustic Live is on at Birmingham Symphony Hall on Sunday, May 21. For tickets, costing from £39 visit www.gigsandtours.com and www.ticketmaster.co.uk or call 0121 780 3333.

Their latest album Acoustic, is out now.