Inspired by the industrial rhythms of Neu!, Kraftwerk and Cabaret Voltaire, Empires And Dance mixed synthetic sounds with Charlie’s electric guitars to produce the first fully-realised Simple Minds album. Darker and less conventional, it yielded the single Changeling and signalled the start of a fascination with European culture that became more pronounced on 1980’s impressionistic Empires And Dance. Much the same applied to its sequel Real To Real Cacophony, released seven months later. Leaning on Roxy Music, the album and its attendant single Chelsea Girl showcased a group still finding their feet. A debut album, Life In A Day, emerged on Findlay’s independent Zoom label, backed by the distribution muscle of Arista, in April 1979. The band hooked up with a manager, Bruce Findlay, and used their interest in electronic music to experiment with rhythm and texture. As we got going, we soon realised there were a clutch of other bands, like Siouxsie And The Banshees, The Cure and Magazine, who were also moving away from punk.’ Says Jim: ‘From the moment we first heard a DJ playing the 12-inch version of Donna Summer’s I Feel Love, I knew we had to find a local musician with a synthesizer. For them, punk was a springboard rather than a template. The duo, augmented by keyboardist Mick MacNeil, bassist Derek Forbes and drummer Brian McGee, retained punk’s D-I-Y spirit, but were keen to look beyond the genre’s three-chord limitations. Two weeks later, singer Kerr and guitarist Burchill started Simple Minds, taking their name from a line in Bowie’s The Jean Genie. In true punk fashion, the Self-Abusers – ‘atrocious and amateur’ according to Jim – released one independent single, Saints And Sinners, and split up the same day. Coalescing around the talent of childhood friends Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill, they emerged from the ashes of Glasgow punk outfit Johnny & The Self-Abusers in November 1977. As their recent albums Big Music, Simple Minds Acoustic and Walk Between Worlds have shown, they remain a band touched by magic – willing to experiment while remaining true to their original instincts. They are now marking their 40th anniversary with a world tour, live album and career-spanning compilation. The past decade has also seen a remarkable resurgence, their world-class credentials acknowledged by a Q magazine Inspiration award in 2014 and an Ivor Novello in 2016. They starred at Live Aid and played three momentous London shows in honour of Nelson Mandela. A spellbinding touring band, they have graced the world’s biggest stadiums. In selling over 60 million records, they have seen three of their 20 studio albums reach number one in the UK – Sparkle In The Rain, Once Upon A Time and Street Fighting Years – a chart-topping feat equalled by their live album Live In The City Of Light and the compilation Glittering Prize. They topped the American chart with Don’t You (Forget About Me) and followed suit in the UK with the Ballad Of The Streets EP (featuring Belfast Child). They went on to become one of the great bands of their generation, deploying rousing choruses and booming atmospherics to provide a soundtrack that has endured. Catching the mood of the post-punk era, when the angry sounds of 1977 were splintering into a thousand different shapes, they emerged with a style rooted in the art-rock of David Bowie and the electronic dance of Donna Summer. Simple Minds have been musical pioneers for 40 glittering years.