Quotes from Jim Kerr

I love playing shows and travelling - but I'm not about to cart myself around the world with inferior product. I just won't do it. I don't need to do it.

Back in the Seventies, we bucked the trend. Instead of going to London and handing in a demo tape, we insisted the record labels came to Glasgow to hear us.

I'm not a loner, but I spend so much time alone, even on tour.

Glasgow - don't get me wrong, I love Glasgow, but in the '60s and '70s the city was on its knees. It was kind of bankrupt. It was pretty monochrome.

You don't plan 'La la la's.' They just pop out. Bowie and Marc Bolan littered many of their songs with 'La la's.'

What it boils down to is that we look for a melody and we look for a lyric, and we look for an atmosphere and an emotion, and we try to concoct a song out of all of those ingredients.

We did all those memorable iconic gigs at The Barrowlands and Ibrox and I remember Tiffany's because it was the first time my dad came to see us.

I think it's because of dreamers that the world turns.

When you go though the door to the big league, your band is no longer your band. I wouldn't want anyone to feel sorry for us. We'd worked and we'd gone for it. We were pretty gung-ho. I liked our attitude.

Every generation has its soundtrack.

We had this thing that hometown gigs were the best and the worst because there was this unbearable pressure.

It's still a mysterious thing, making music.

It's a mysterious thing, music. You're just never sure. You 'get' it, but does anyone else even get a chance to know it exists? And if they do, are they gonna feel about it like you feel? When they do, it feels great.

When we started in the late 70s, I don't think it's unfair to say Glasgow was on its knees. It was the end of the industrial age and it really was looking to find itself. It had to reinvent itself. And Simple Minds have had to constantly reinvent themselves. So has Glasgow.

I am a huge sports fan and could easily reel off a load of sports stars who became idols to me.

I have the most beautiful memories of 'New Gold Dream.' It was made in a time between spring and summer, and everything we tried worked. There were no arguments. We were in love with what we were doing, playing it, listening to it.

I mean, the thing with Simple Minds is that there's many Simple Minds within Simple Minds. There was definitely an electronic art-rock phase; a lot of people associate us with the big MTV pop age. Other people you talk to and they say 'Oh, Simple Minds are stadium rock.' I'll say, 'Hang on a minute, I think it can be all those things.'

I never really left Glasgow. No doubt I've spent most of my grown-up life away from the city but I've always had somewhere to lay my head.

Like everyone else, when you start out you must begin from a position of being completely unknown. No option.

I'm not an easy one when it comes to nostalgia - as long as I've got a new idea I'll always think that this is the best song we've ever written and all that.

When that punk strain came to Britain and infected everyone. It was more than just a sound. There was an ethos, an ethic that went with it.

You know, one minute you're in fashion and then you're completely out of fashion, but if you hang around long enough and don't get desperate, suddenly you become 'classic.' You see that happening all the time.

The only time I tried alcohol my hangover lasted for days, and I decided never again.

I was into the 'Dennis The Menace' comic strip long before I got into music, and it still makes me chuckle.