UK band Simple Minds are touring Australia with The B-52s.

It’s good. If you get six sh---ty things on there you know you’ve got a problem. If it’s one sh---ty thing and 200 amazing things you know you can’t please everyone. But then I’m staying at a hotel in London where I’ve been coming for 30 years, while we make the new Simple Minds album. This hotel is the greatest place and it gets trashed on Trip Advisor. It all depends what you’re looking for and how you are treated.

Do Simple Minds fans go to your hotel? Some of the reviews on Trip Advisor say you’ve greeted some fans as they arrive.

I suppose they do, it’s still mostly people going on a great holiday going to see Taormina — I’m just an additional story. But Simple Minds play in Taormina every two or three years, then the hotel become a bit of a convention.

What’s the secret to running a good hotel?

Some people say you make your impressions in the first 30 seconds. You walk in, you breathe the air, the person’s nice to you, you think ‘Yeah, this is OK’. Any credit for Villa Angela goes to the professionals how run it.

So Simple Minds are recording a new album. How’s that going?

Great. In the past few years the band has been on a roll. We’ve got our mojo back. We’ve got a parallel existence. We work on the back catalogue but we’re always wanting to add new chapters. The last album (2014’s Big Music) got a really great reaction. We’re being carried along with the positivity of that.

UK band Simple Minds, from left Ged Grimes, Charlie Burchill, Jim Kerr, Mel Gaynor and Andy Gillespie.Source:Supplied

The last album included some collaborations with Iain Cook of ChVrches. Any more collaborations planned?

Actually, yes. I worked with Ian six years ago. ChVrches were embryonic. What they’ve done since then has been immense. They’re as confident as can be now. Their set-up is pretty minimal on stage, which means they can tour pretty cheaply. As a result they’ve hammered it and you can see the results of that. But what we did back then was immense, Iain and I wrote ten or 12 tunes. I’ve worked on two of them so far, we’re about to work on a few more of the tunes that came out of that collaboration for this new Simple Minds album. It was pretty potent stuff.

Every few years Simple Minds release box sets of classic albums. Is that important for the legacy?

Legacy is the right word. It’s something we did a long time ago but it means a lot to people. It meant a lot then and it still means a lot. There isn’t a lot of unreleased material in the vaults though. Back in the day there wasn’t much left over. We were always touring. And there wasn’t the incentive to write a lot of songs back then in the pre-CD world. It was 45 minutes of music essentially on an album, maybe eight or nine songs, a few left over for b-sides. So there wasn’t the time either, we were always touring. Now we’ll work on 30 pieces of music before we think we’ve got a dozen work shouting about.

There’s been a rash of autobiographies by rock stars, but you have yet to succumb ...

There’s been an offer. I go on and off it. I walk through the airport and every Tom Dick and Harry has done an autobiography and sometimes I think ‘I might as well do one as well’. There will be a time for it. I keep a journal. There is stuff there. It’s a matter of deciding to do it, having a deadline and finishing it. I write little stories on the Facebook page. Maybe that suffices for now, it lets me develop those muscles for maybe something bigger later.

Jim Kerr’s ex Chrissie Hynde has released a book, but he’s still tossing up whether to write his own.Source:Supplied

Did you read your ex wife Chrissie Hynde’s book?

I haven’t. I feel I’ve read it, because everyone around me read it. I also saw all the publicity about it when it came out. There was a lot of controversy and knowing her she would have been cackling about that. It’s exactly what she wanted. She was always a great writer. I know it had been a real labour of love, she had a few false starts. Even my dad was talking about Chrissie’s book because she sent him a copy. I enjoyed Patti Smith’s book, the Keith Richards book. They’re great tomes of both the times that great music was being made and also very interesting and influential people to me.

Chrissie’s book captures that punk era, which is when Simple Minds were starting out.

The first time I ever heard of Chrissie Hynde she was a journalist. She and Nick Kent were the first real punk journalists. At that time journalists took the record company’s line. They weren’t afraid to lash out with wit and style. Then we heard Chrissie was going to make a record, people thought it might be a bit of a laugh. And when it came out (Brass In Pocket) it certainly wasn’t a laugh, it was awesome.

How long are Simple Minds live shows these days?

It depends. We do different shows. Sometimes we do two sets, that works quite well. That’s about two and a half hours. I know the Cure are playing three-hour shows this year. Stevie Wonder played four hours in Hyde Park recently. Personally I think all that’s a bit much. Someone’s who put their hard-earned down might say “the more the merrier’. But I think there should be a narrative to a set. I don’t like when things just sprawl for the sake of sprawling. I like it to have peaks, moments when you bring it down. We’ll be pushing for a least two hours in Australia.

Kerr reckons two to two and a half hours is plenty for a Simple Minds gig.Source:Supplied

What about the Bruce Springsteen approach — three-hour plus shows with no set list, just spontaneously shouting out songs?

We like to work with the lights, there’s a lot of technical programming going on with them. Springsteen is the greatest, but it’s like a huge bar band. He can just turn around and shout and that’s it. It doesn’t work like that with us. My guys would freak!

Is it tricky picking a setlist when Simple Minds have so many different eras stretching back to 1979?

It is a challenge but it’s not a bad challenge to have. It means you’ve got a huge catalogue of songs people appreciate. Simple Minds have various fans. There’s the new fans, there’s the MTV fans who know those half a dozen songs form the ‘80s, the early fans who go along thinking we won’t play anything from their favourite early album and we do — that’s what it’s all about. Trying to tick all the boxes.

You’re quite open about talking about how the band slumped in the 90s — you’d pass stadiums you used to sell out on the way to playing half-empty theatres.

It’s that classic thing, picking yourself up off the canvas. The kind of career we had, no one owes us anything, we’ve never felt that. But there was a point where the wheels came off. Are we going to go ‘round like some punch-drunk boxers who don’t know what else to do? Or are we going to regroup and put everything into this as we once did? That’s what we’ve been doing the last ten years, and the results have been good.

US rock band The B-52s are touring with Simple Minds in Australia.Source:Supplied

Looking back, was that grim ‘90s period beneficial? Did it help you get the hunger back?

Maybe. A lot of people who kept going on in the ‘90s did run out of gas, creatively. Whereas Simple Minds seem very potent. I can’t go into it just now but we’re working on three or four different projects. Given how long in the tooth we are, and given we could be sitting on the beach, but we’re not, were into it. Perhaps that ‘90s thing, you could look on it as we’re now getting the benefit of not using up all the energy then.

You were 57 last month. How did you celebrate?

The last birthday I remember celebrating was my 50th which was seven years ago. Geez, already. At the time my dad was pushing because he thought it was a big deal and I should have a party. We were on tour so I told my agent to make sure we were somewhere good for my birthday that year. Don’t put me in Coventry or Birmingham or somewhere for my 50th! How does Paris sound? Paris on my 50th sounds great. My old man said to me — ‘You have to have a party’, I said, ‘I am, I’m doing a show’. He told me ‘You’re the only person I know who can have a birthday party and charge people to come and see it!

You’re touring Australia next year with the B-52s ...

We never fail to underline how much Australia has meant to us and how much we enjoy it. I bought the B-52’s debut album after hearing it on the John Peel show. Actually, I remember an early tour of Australia and I was listening to B-52s at the time. They’re another band who always know how to put on a show.

Simple Minds/B-52s. A Day On the Green Kings Park and Botanic Garden, Perth, Feb. 2. SEE Rochford Wines Yarra Valley Feb. 4, Leconfield Wines, McLaren Vale South Australia Feb. 5, Bimbadgen, Hunter Valley NSW Feb. 11, Sirromet Wines Mt Cotton Qld Feb. 12. Also, Margaret Court Arena Feb. 8, Hordern Pavillion Feb. 9. On sale Monday August 22.