Yesterday I was looking at my Instagram feed when I was shown a post from Nicola Meighan. I don’t follow her, but sometimes the algorithm puts things in your feed that it thinks will interest you. This one was a post in which Nicola was photographed with His Nibs and her saying that he was going to be on her show from 2pm. It was around 1pm when I saw this post and I was about to head to the shower. It piqued some cursory interest but I knew I could listen to the show on catch-up and not have to sit through a bunch of drivel to find that he had a total airtime of barely five minutes.
After my shower and having got some flapjacks baking in the oven, I used the BBC Sounds playback feature and started listening in. Glen Matlock was on by that time, so I finished listening to his talk with Nicola and then rewound the show back to the start to listen to ‘him.’ It was quite a good thing actually. Not the same old tired crap. Nicola actually did get him talking about other stuff, which was nice. And he largely avoided falling into the same old soundbites he trots out ad infinitum. I even learned something new that I had not previously heard – that his Da was fae up the road in Springburn?! Who knew! I had always assumed the Kerrs were strictly southsiders. A fresh piece of info is so bloody rare these days!
I digress.
Shortly after listening back I was thinking – you know, he was literally just down the road at Pacific Quay. There’d have been a time not-so-long-ago when I would have BOLTED down to the Clyde, crossed one of its many bridges, or had gone to Cessnock subway and walked down to the BBC Scotland studios from there just to hang around in the vain hope of getting to say hi to him and speak to him for even a nanosecond.
I had a flashback to the time in 2019 when we still lived in Luton. I got up at the crack of dawn to go to Broadcasting House in London. He was going to be on with…I think it was Zoe Ball’s show? Whoever was doing the Radio 2 breakfast show by then. I got there around…7am, I think, possibly a little earlier…and stood and waited for ages. I listened to the show as I stood around, freezing my bits off (it was the end of September and already quite cold, especially at that time in the morning). He was finally introduced and I was like, ‘But I never saw him arrive? Oh, he must have gotten here before me. Never mind. I’ll see him when he leaves.’ Seconds later, it was obvious that he wasn’t in London at all but was calling in from Glasgow. I was GUTTED!
Had it still been 2019, or even 2023, I’d have made my way down to Pacific Quay on a wing and a prayer. So much closer and easier for me to achieve than the effort I made to get from Luton to London to see him, only for it to be dashed as he was here in Glasgow.
But…it never crossed my mind at all until after. And even then, I felt no lament of ‘dashed hopes’ or an opportunity that was missed. To be fair, I didn’t know he was here and had assumed he’d be calling in from Taormina. I’d been hearing and seeing bits about him being ‘in toon’ lately but it’s all rumour and I just pay no mind at all. I mean, it matters little to me these days where the hell he is. And that’s the point. Not long ago, I would have cared, and I would have been champing at the bit for just a few precious (as I would have seen it at the time) moments with him. And I probably would have gone down to Pacific Quay anyway, in the hope of him being there.
Even at the gigs in March, there was only just a passing little flicker of forlorn that I was not going to get to speak to him because I couldn’t afford a meet and greet. I’d have probably just said ‘Thanks for not responding to my reaching out to you via Elaine Hawkes, praying that you’d read my uni assignment and be somehow moved by it – hope that you’d tell me that I’d be okay, that it would all be okay and just keep doing what you’re doing. That you deserve to be on this planet, and that life is indeed worth living.’ It spurred me on instead of feeling like the final defeat and that I was ready to end it. And that final nail in what could have been my coffin actually filled me with a resolve. With a ‘fuck you, Kerr!’ and a determination to just keep going when it really was the last thing I wanted to do. So thanks, for saving me by not saving me.
And it all started to fade away. I it was slowly fading before that…at least from his side…but for me I just kept trying to hold onto something. Those letters. The mourning I was going through from losing Mum. I don’t think I realised at the time just how hard it hit me. I cried every day for months and months – a whole year…more. I thought it was all down to him, the whole limerence thing – and that was part of it, no denying that, but a lot of it was losing Mum, and the move to Glasgow. A death and a house-move in the space of a week had such emotional magnitude.
It’s been 12 months since I sent on that stuff to Elaine. It feels like so much longer.
I miss writing letters to him. Or at least that fantasy man that I thought was Jim Kerr. My own…ideal of Jim Kerr. The man I’d write the letters to who probably was really nothing like this beautiful man I had conjured up in my mind. The one that still looked like all the photos of Virginia’s that I have all around my bedroom walls. A man who is driven, with focus, has the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen in my entire life that exudes warmth, generosity and made me feel like I mattered in the world – for a time. He was all things to me. A brother, a father figure – when I had lost mine. My brother, David, passed away 10 years ago this past October. That was a telling point of timing too in hindsight – getting into Simple Minds when David was in his final weeks of life. Crying every time I heard Blood Diamonds because of what it symbolised between me and David. Listening to the song when I found out David had passed away.
I wouldn’t change how the past 10 years has panned out. It was wonderful. The people I’ve met. All those gigs. The music. I still love a lot of the music. Sons and Fascination/Sister Feelings Call mean more to me than ANY Bowie album – and I NEVER thought I’d be saying THAT 10 years ago! They mean more to me than most of the rest of Simple Minds’ music. It feels so special. At a time when it wasn’t just this “Jim and Charlie show” thing. When he saw more than himself (and his supposed best pal) in it all – at least, that’s how it used to look.
He did mention Mick and Derek when talking with Nicola yesterday, but it now feels so…jaded when he does it. Nothing feels genuine any more. It all just feels like a veneer and a facade – all a front, and it’s just so sad. I feel so sad about that.
I haven’t written a letter to him in well over a year now. Over the years I had written thousands of words to him – probably two novels worth at least. When I felt I couldn’t express myself to anyone else in any other way, I’d purge my thoughts to Jim. It was endless catharsis. I was very mindful never to overstep boundaries. I had my own lines that I drew. Never would really talk about his personal life – rarely brought up his children, never spoke about ex wifes, or current partner. Never asked about any band dynamics. I just spoke about myself. I would ask some questions – but they were silly things. Like, one time for example, I asked about how he learned to drive, when it was exactly – silly things like that. I wouldn’t get answers as I never got a single letter back. Not one. I don’t know how many letters I sent in total but I never got a single reply. I used to think sometimes that he replied “in secret” by way of a topic he’d bring up in a SM post – and that some of his responses to things I’d mentioned in letters or had asked about were responded to there. But I think that was all very wishful thinking.
When that book came out – The Heart of the Crowd, I remember one specific fan’s entry in the book where they had received a postcard from Jim, in that beautiful handwriting he used to have – with those wonderfully cursive H’s that he’d write his ‘hellos’ with. I envied that guy’s postcard. Oh, how I dreamed I’d get something like that. One letter. One note. Something that felt truly ‘from the heart.’ But it never came.
Anyway, this has gone really fucking maudlin! And it shouldn’t be. I’m as mentally healthy as I have been in a LONG time.
Lastly to wrap this up I’d say that – for a long while, very soon after I became a “mega” Minds fan, Jim became more important than the music, I think. I think that’s what happened to me. He just became more important than the music. I loved the music because I loved him. The past 12 months has finally seen a reversal in that. It’s finally gone back to where it started and now the music is once again more important than Jim Kerr. Jim Kerr wouldn’t actually exist without that music. Music other people make for him – and not just Charlie Burchill, let’s just place that very big caveat in there! Take one look at the setlists from the gigs this year alone and do the maths on how many of those songs were Kerr/Burchill only compositions and you’ll see.
These days when I think about where I am and genuinely how little Jim Kerr is in my thoughts (apart from an instance such as this, of course), I think of Hamish Hawk’s opening track on his most recent album A Firmer Hand. The song is called ‘Juliet as Epithet’. It begins with the line ‘He said “Death-wise I wanna be cremated.”’ The chorus is, ‘Haven’t you heard? I smother the chances I get / And when they hurt to remember, I forget / This tete-a-tete turned head-to-head / Now I think of you less and less.’
I’ll add a link to the Nicola Meighan interview in a separate post.
