Simple Minds at Resorts World Arena, Birmingham
Jim Kerr was back on stage where he belongs, with a triumphant performance at Birmingham’s Resorts World Arena.
The Simple Minds front man soaked up the devotion of fans who have followed the band since the early 1980s.
He spoke earlier this week of the strangeness of the last two years.
Simple Minds were in Copenhagen, 10 dates into a world tour, when all the remaining shows were cancelled because of Covid.
Kerr returned to Glasgow and found himself in the supermarkets, where the shelves had been emptied by panic buyers.
“It was like the first time I’d gone to East Germany in 1978,” he told the Guardian. “All that was left were cabbages and broccoli. I reached for the last cabbage and a woman burst in front of me and grabbed it.
"Two nights before, I’d been a rock star. I thought: ‘What happened to my life?’”
The show at Resorts World on Thursday night was all about celebrating the success of Simple Minds. The tour is titled ‘Forty Years of Hits’.
Kerr said he spent lockdown writing a memoir and more music and is enjoying a renewed popularity that is seeing arenas sold out.
Today’s seven-piece touring line-up includes three women and, Kerr jokes, “no mullets”.
Kerr divides his time between Glasgow and Taormina, Sicily, where he has built a hotel. But he says he is enjoying life back on stage, playing new music and celebrating the old.
“This is who we are and what we do,” he said.
Simple Minds' setlist at Resorts World Arena:
Set 1:
Act of Love
I Travel
Celebrate
Glittering Prize
Promised You a Miracle
Book of Brilliant Things
Up on the Catwalk
Hunter and the Hunted
Love Song
Belfast Child
Set 2:
Theme For Great Cities
Waterfront
She's a River
Dolphins
Once Upon a Time
Someone Somewhere in Summertime
See the Lights
All the Things She Said
Don't You (Forget About Me)
Let It All Come Down
New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84)
Encore:
Speed Your Love to Me
Alive and Kicking
Sanctify Yourself
