It is a beautiful day in Kelvingrove, Glasgow, and Derek Forbes is showing me the artefacts of a life in music.
There are gold discs from the years when Simple Minds became one of the world’s biggest bands, along with the basses he used on stage and in the studio, instruments that travelled with him from Glasgow rehearsal rooms to recording studios and stages around the globe.
Then Forbes picks one up and plays. With the sun streaming through the window behind him, he begins to deliver the magic he brought to tracks such as ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’, ‘Waterfront’, ‘Promise You A Miracle’ and ‘Glittering Prize’. Forbes is appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival to discuss his autobiography A Very Simple Mind. The book provides one reason for our conversation, but the discussion quickly moves beyond reminiscence into the complicated history of the band he helped create.
Simple Minds emerged from Glasgow with a core line-up of Jim Kerr, Charlie Burchill, Mick MacNeil, Derek Forbes and Brian McGee. They were not hired hands brought into an established act. They were working-class musicians from the same streets; they spoke the same language and shared an identity, and it all fed into what fans loved about Simple Minds.
There is a significant comparison with U2, another band formed by young musicians in the same era with similar values. Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr remain the four members who started out together in Dublin and shared royalties that were split four ways . Both bands influenced each other and were friends, but chose very different paths.
The comparison matters because it raises a bigger question about what happens when a band created collectively becomes a huge commercial and global enterprise after starting out with next to nothing. Who owns the history, who receives the songwriting credits and, ultimately, who gets to tell the story?
Critics have long distinguished between the early and later versions of Simple Minds, with key members leaving along the way. They are essentially two different bands. In recent years, accounts by Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill have offered an alternative version of the history to that of early core members such as Forbes, MacNeil and McGee. Forbes describes the band’s formative period from 1978 to 1984/85 as its “golden era”. There is something persuasive about hearing him play his parts and then explaining them while surrounded by the instruments that helped create that sound.
Steve Lillywhite, who produced their 1984 album Sparkle in the Rain, described Forbes as the band’s “secret weapon”, anchoring their sound while driving the melody forward. Forbes also remembers working with John Leckie, describing him as an “amazing producer”. One of the most significant moments came while recording ‘Changeling’, when Leckie pushed him to evolve his playing style. “Before that, it was just chords, and it was just the root notes, then he said: ‘Derek… write as a bassline.’” What transpired was a restless, pulsating sound resembling something from Bowie’s Low. “I’d heard it in my head and I went ‘right, John got it’… and it changed the whole thing, changed the whole sound because it was more than just root notes.”
Forbes’s pride in the music is obvious, but so too is his conviction that his contribution was not properly recognised. On ‘Act of Love’, the first song he played with Simple Minds, he says he received no writing credit on its recent first official release. The dispute became more serious with Once Upon a Time, the band’s biggest album and a hit on both sides of the Atlantic during the mid 1980s. “I didn’t get writing credit for it when I should have,” he explains. “They said they were just going to scrap it all and were going to start afresh.”
Forbes says it was Edinburgh manager Bruce Findlay, a popular figure in the industry, who told him he was being removed from Simple Minds in 1985. Forbes had already begun work on Once Upon a Time.
When the record appeared, Forbes says he recognised his work after being told it had been scrapped. “It was f***ing note for note, exactly the same when I got the album.” He says he had written parts for at least six or seven songs years earlier, including ‘Sanctify Yourself’ and ‘All the Things She Said’.
Being removed from Simple Minds was about more than songwriting credits or money. Forbes describes the aftermath as a “screaming silence”. He found himself completely alone. The band and friendships that had defined his life had suddenly disappeared, while Simple Minds continued without him.
The financial story, he says, was equally disturbing. “Jim was getting f***ing five times as much as I was getting… or any of the rest of us were getting.” He remembers Charlie Burchill offering to pay for a new floor at his home. “I never realised at the time it was Catholic guilt… they were robbing me blind.” Forbes insists money wasn’t his motivation at the time. Being a creative part of Simple Minds was his drive, and making a living. “I’ve never cared about money,” he says. “I knew I could always make it somehow.”
These are serious claims, but they are not confined to Forbes’s recollections. The newly released TH3 MINDS documentary series, There Are Two Truths, brings Forbes together with Mick MacNeil and Brian McGee, with Mel Gaynor also featuring, alongside other figures from the band’s history. Its first episode, Our Shares Are Not The Same, directly examines authorship, songwriting credits, historical documents, publishing and the financial arrangements surrounding early Simple Minds.
Anger began to manifest after the publication last year of Our Secrets Are The Same, the joint memoir by Kerr and Burchill; it appears to have reopened old wounds among former members. Its account of the band’s early years, including claims about songwriting and publishing, has prompted Forbes, MacNeil and McGee to revisit their own versions of events. MacNeil and McGee are not simply backing Forbes’s version of events.
They offer their own accounts of a band whose original members believe their contributions were not properly recognised and are now being diminished. Bruce Findlay and producer John Leckie also take part in There Are Two Truths. This provides a striking counterpoint to the book and also the 2023 official documentary Simple Minds: Everything Is Possible, which features Kerr and Burchill alongside musicians, producers and other contributors such as Primal Scream.
The two films leave the viewer with very different perspectives on the same history. Forbes returned to Simple Minds during the mid 1990s and played on Néapolis, released in 1998. By then, however, he says the relationship had changed, and he no longer had the same creative freedom, meaning the reunion did not last. The album’s official credits list the songs to Kerr and Burchill.
There is an important distinction in how the original members left. Brian McGee departed in 1981 while Mick MacNeil eventually left in 1989. Forbes was asked to leave in 1985, returned in the 1990s and then left of his own accord. That sense of betrayal reaches its most striking point when the conversation turns to the Ivor Novello sitting proudly on his mantelpiece.
In 2016, Simple Minds received the Outstanding Song Collection award, with Forbes, Kerr, Burchill and MacNeil named among the recipients. It was significant recognition of the songwriting that came from the band’s formative years. “They even tried to stop me getting that.” He remains adamant about why it mattered. “It was for songs I actually wrote,” Forbes recalls discovering that the band was being honoured while walking through a park near his home. He encountered Mick MacNeil.
According to Forbes, MacNeil told him Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill had been in touch about an upcoming award in London but that Forbes would not be involved. “I saw Mick, and he said, ‘Oh, that’s Jim and Charlie got in touch with me.’ I said, ‘What’s that about?’ He says, ‘Well,’ they said, ‘Oh, we’ve got some award… Ivor Novello… they said it’s for that song Belfast Child. I thought it’s f***ing ridiculous because it’s sort of like based on an old folk song.” Forbes was upset by the exclusion but says the situation was eventually resolved. He received the Ivor Novello and, almost a decade later, it remains an important recognition of his work with Simple Minds.
Our interview also takes place after a recent period of dealing with ill health, adding another dimension to a conversation about a career that began almost five decades ago. He does not dwell on these matters and sounds more matter-of-fact than bitter, often laughing at the absurdity of it all. His attention remains on the music and, before I leave, he turns to pick up the bass again.
Forbes has no interest in pretending that everything was harmonious. Nor does he deny the success Simple Minds achieved after his departure. What he questions is the idea that the band’s history can be reduced to the familiar partnership of Kerr and Burchill. “I’ve never left the band,” he says. “They left me.”
It is a memorable statement from a man who has spent decades outside the group, despite his name remaining attached to some of its greatest work. Simple Minds became a different enterprise. The line-up became Kerr and Burchill with hired hands, meaning the creativity declined, but the scale of the operation grew. For fans, the power of the early work has endured, and so has the debate over who created it and how that history should be remembered.
Perhaps that is the contradiction at the heart of Forbes’s story. He was asked to leave the band, returned years later and found that the creative relationship had changed, resulting in his eventual departure, this time on his terms. Yet the music he helped create remains inseparable from the history of Simple Minds and should be recognised as such.
Derek Forbes appears at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Saturday, August 22 at 3.45 pm.
Derek Forbes: A Very Simple Mind is out now
All photos Richard Purden
