Lead singer Jim Kerr revealed on the Simple Minds web site this week that during the band's upcoming European tour, they will perform "Don't You (Forget About Me)" nightly in memory of The Breakfast Club director John Hughes.
From slicingupeyeballs.com: The dedication to Hughes, who died last week of a heart attack, is somewhat ironic, given the band's well-known antipathy toward the soundtrack tune - a song Simple Minds didn't write and didn't want to record, yet it broke the band in America and became its biggest U.S. hit.
Kerr posted a diary entry on the band's site thanking Hughes, somewhat backhandedly, for his part in Simple Minds' success. ("That we were maybe destined for it in any case is neither here nor there," Kerr noted, after complaining earlier in the entry that "our far better" subsequent single, "Alive and Kicking," stalled at No. 2 in America.)
As for the band's upcoming Graffiti Soul tour - currently set for November and December throughout Europe - Kerr wrote:
"When each and every night we dig into ourselves in order to pull out the greatest-ever version of 'Don't You (Forget About Me),' it is John Hughes that I will be considering, and how in particular it was his enthusiasm for the sound of Simple Minds that made us go the extra mile back in December '84, when we pulled up at a draughty and soulless Wembley recording studio, hell-bent nevertheless on making a classic piece of pop rock, and one at that which would figure perhaps among the best of a generation whenever looked back on."
Simple Minds are currently Jim Kerr, Charlie Burchill, Eddie Duffy, and Mel Gaynor.
