IT'S a moment Jim Kerr will never forget - walking on stage at the JFK Stadium in Philadelphia in July 1985 for Simple Minds' slot at Live Aid.
"We were on for 15 minutes and I spent 13 minutes thinking about the fact that we'd just been introduced by Jack Nicholson," recalls Kerr, who was unaware he was going to be introduced by the actor until the last minute.
"I just kept thinking Jack Nicholson... I can't believe this... this is while we're being broadcast to one of the biggest television audiences ever (an estimated 1.9 billion)," continues Kerr.
"He was everything you would want him to be, immensely warm and friendly. I've found that with all those guys - De Niro, Pacino - those guys might be movie actors but they are so real, that's what's appealing about them."
Kerr was only a few dates into a 40th anniversary tour with Simple Minds just over two years ago "when everything went into overdrive with Covid and we were ground to a halt".
"Before we knew it we were back at home and we haven't played live since," he tells me.
"We thought we'd be back in the summer (2021) but here we are two years later. Playing live is the centre of our lives, we're a live band and our crew are like a family, it was a lot to put on hold.
"Charlie (Burchill) and I kept writing and we have a new record up our sleeve, we didn't sit twiddling our thumbs."
Our conversation takes place before Celtic clinched this season's Premiership title, and Simple Minds' 1995 track Hypnotised has featured in television coverage.
"We all know about the nerves and tension here in Sicily," says Kerr, who currently resides in Taormina where he owns a hotel. Simple Minds guitarist and boyhood friend Charlie Burchill lives on the same street.
"I don't know what coverage we were watching but we didn't get Hypnotised. Sometimes during rehearsals, Charlie will play a riff and I say: 'Who is that, Roxy Music or something?' It turns out it's one of ours.
"OK - part of it is getting older, which we all are - but when you have over 300 songs things get buried, and when you hear a keyboard line or bass line it makes an impression."
With that in mind, how do the band comprise a setlist that appeals to different generations of fans over 40 years?
"We're picking up on postponed dates - it was billed as a 40th anniversary tour but in reality we're getting on for 44 years. We try to tick all the boxes so we play the ones people expect to hear," he says.
"There are 24 songs from a pool of about 40 which is the spine but we change five songs every night because we like to go back to the early days and do something obscure where the hardcore might say, 'I didn't think they'd play that again'. We might do a cover or something we've not played for a while."
Belfast Child, however, "is in the setlist", Kerr confirms. The track was first released in February 1989, making the Number 1 slot on both the British and Irish singles charts.
It's often said Simple Minds were a significant influence on U2's classic 1984 long-player The Unforgettable Fire. Does Kerr agree?
"We're big fans of U2. I think at that time it was great when you toured with other bands like U2, The Cure or Echo & the Bunnymen - you'd get talking to them and the thing is we all could have been in each other's bands. OK, geographically we were from different places, but if you went through our record collections it would be the same stuff and I just assumed it rubbed off."
Kerr admits a war of words between some bands "could be brutal".
"I used to take solace in the fact that they wouldn't say it in a Glasgow pub because they'd get a sore jaw but because it was music it was acceptable to denigrate somebody," he says.
"We were all young men trying to jockey for position and looking back now, our contemporaries all had their strengths and weaknesses, there were insecurities there too.
"Some bands had certain qualities that were more to my taste, I was a music lover and it was exciting to compete with those bands.
"If the radio was taking only two songs on the playlist you wanted to be one of them, and if there was only one record sleeve going in the window a shop you wanted it to be yours. The thing about all of those bands is we are all still going now."
The Simple Minds anniversary gig takes place just months after Echo & the Bunnymen played their 40th anniversary gig in Belfast.
Kerr turns his attention to a more recent meeting with Ian McCulloch. "We were both playing a festival in Portugal a few years ago now and we noticed the Bunnymen were on the bill," he says.
"We were in the dressing room and one of their crew comes to the door, a real Scouser and says, 'Mac wants to say hello; come down to the dressing room'.
"We said, 'Nah, tell him to come here'. Five minutes later he comes in and he's great and we are delighted to see him.
"He goes, 'Listen, I have to say something here; I've got to apologise; I used to say all this stuff. I met my wife at a Simple Minds gig and all I ever heard were Simple Minds; it drove me nuts'."
"Well, I can understand that, but two weeks later he does an interview and goes 'Simple Minds - they're a bunch of wa**ers'," laughs Kerr, adding "I think it's an act."
Unlike his contemporaries, Kerr managed to record with their triumvirate of heroes - he sang backing vocals in between David Bowie and Iggy Pop on the latter's Play it Safe, from his 1980 album Soldier, and also achieved a coup when Lou Reed agreed to appear on the Simple Minds single This Is Your Land from their 1989 album Street Fighting Years.
"We sent him a note and he said, 'Yeah, I'll do it'. It's a bit like Jack Nicholson and almost as brief," recalls Kerr.
"We went over to Paris to meet him and he came down to the studio for an hour dressed in a leather jacket smoking a cigarette.
"He was very camp and couldn't have been sweeter, someone at the label said he was a nightmare to work with but in all honesty, he couldn't have been better."
We know what Kerr was thinking about in the first 13 minutes of that slot at Live Aid; what was he thinking in last two? "I was thinking about my trousers; I had these white trousers on flapping in the wind that looked like I should have on a yacht. I was thinking: wrong trousers."
:: Simple Minds: 40 Years of Hits tour comes to Custom House Square, Belfast on August 9. ticketmaster.co.uk.
