Street Fighting Years
Street Fighting Years is the eighth studio album by Scottish rock band Simple Minds, released in May 1989 by record label Virgin Records worldwide apart from the US, where it was released by A&M. Produced by Trevor Horn and Stephen Lipson, the album reached the top of the UK Albums Chart.
Background
Produced by Trevor Horn and Stephen Lipson, it was a major stylistic departure from the previous album, 1985's Once Upon a Time. While still maintaining the epic arena rock sense of scale and drama which the band had developed since the mid-1980s, Street Fighting Years also moved away from the American soul and gospel influences of its predecessor in favour of soundtrack atmospherics and a new incorporation of acoustic and Celtic/folk music-related ingredients including fretless bass, slide guitar and accordion. The lyrics built on the more political themes which the band had introduced with "Ghost Dancing", moving away from the impressionistic or spiritual concerns of earlier 1980s Simple Minds songs and covering topics including the Poll Tax, the Soweto townships, the Berlin Wall and the stationing of nuclear submarines on the Scottish coast.The album marked the beginning of a period of substantial personnel change for Simple Minds. Keyboard player/composer/founder member Mick MacNeil has subsequently mentioned that "Jim had already started talking about making changes" and the lack of equality and unity within the band's ranks soon became evident. Most of the initial writing and direction-setting sessions had only involved the trio of remaining original members - Kerr, MacNeil and guitarist Charlie Burchill - without the involvement of either bassist John Giblin or drummer Mel Gaynor, both of whom had remained in London during the Scottish residential sessions. Subsequent disagreements regarding both the recording process and the direction in which Trevor Horn was coaxing the band led to the temporary departure of Gaynor and the permanent departure of Giblin.
Band relations
Despite having made significant contributions, John Giblin left Simple Minds in July 1988, halfway through the Street Fighting Years sessions. According to Kerr, Giblin unplugged his bass and walked out of both the sessions and the band without a word following a culminating disagreement with Trevor Horn. Kerr later noted that "John and Trevor didn't quite hit it off, I don't think, and John didn't quite like Trevor's instructions" and admitted "it had been a long, protracted recording process. And then there was one point when John certainly wasn't there." The band's previous bass player Derek Forbes has hinted that ultimately Giblin simply "didn’t fit in" with the band; and thirty-one years later, Kerr reflected "John was seven years older than us and I suspect we were quite brattish around him. He’d done so much more than us in who he’d worked with and he was a lone wolf who didn't say much. John’s stoicism added to his charm, but we always knew he was never going to sign up to Simple Minds' youth club." Following Giblin's departure, co-producer Stephen Lipson played the remaining bass guitar parts on the album.For similar reasons, Gaynor was sidelined during the album sessions after disagreements with Horn. Kerr recalls "Trevor was trying to get Mel to do more than just 'the Mel thing'. Mel is brilliant. With certain tracks, like "Mandela Day", you're looking for something softer, perhaps. Trevor wanted him to be more diverse. Technology and drum machines were becoming a part of modern records. We always wanted to incorporate both. I remember them running out of patience with each other... Trevor really tests you. I mean, he'll go, 'That's great, got it - now give me something I'd never expect.' And I don't think Trevor felt he was getting that from Mel, I think he felt he was getting the big thud the whole time, and it worked on some tracks, but maybe not on others." Gaynor temporarily left the band, with the album being completed with session drummer Manu Katché, while former Police drummer Stewart Copeland contributed some drum programming.
Despite the upheavals, Kerr later defended Horn's various approaches. " convince you anything was possible. If you think of Trevor's music, so much of his budget goes into one or two big songs that the rest of the record ends up getting done pretty quick. There's a bit of that in Street Fighting Years, but mostly he'd kick the tyres of a song over and over, trying it a dozen different ways, until something was there."
Recording
The music and themes on Street Fighting Years emerged as a reaction to Simple Minds' accession to the role of stadium rock band after years of effort. Kerr later reflected "we’d had success beyond our belief and we were just on the verge of getting bored with our own thing. I don’t think we quite knew that, and we certainly didn’t talk about it, and it’s inevitable after ten years that it happened." After many years of lyrics which were intellectual, impressionistic or emotional in nature, Kerr had also decided that it was time to start writing about the outside world and directly political subjects, rather than his own emotional landscape. "The last thing I wanted to write about was myself. I didn’t want to sit licking my own wounds... The word ‘activists’ might be pushing it, but we were from that background. It was inevitable the strains of that would come out in our music."As part of the intended changes, the band chose to work with the production team of Horn and Lipson, who between them had most recently been working with Pet Shop Boys, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Propaganda and Grace Jones. Although the results were sometimes inspired, the process was not without difficulties, with Kerr having to have an emergency meeting with Horn after six months of very slow work. "We saw hitching our wagon to Trevor and Stephen’s Fantasia production world as like strapping on rocket engines... before he came along, Trevor told me, ‘Jim, one of the reasons we wanted to work with you is we’re bored of our thing,’” recalls Jim. “So there we were, two camps bored of their sound, looking for the other to help. I just thought, ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’... I'm sure we didn't give Trevor and Stephen the easiest time, and it says something they didn't work together again after Street Fighting Years. We were a bit dead on our feet and it's still a frustration that atmosphere was there."
The album was written and recorded during residential sessions at multiple locations - the band's own new Bonnie Wee Studio near Loch Earn in the Scottish Highlands; at a house in rural Glenstriven on the shores of Loch Striven ; at bass player John Giblin's own Barwell Court Studios in south London; and at Horn's Sarm West studios in west London. The earliest Bonnie Wee sessions took place before the studio had been fully built, and were open-ended explorations of instrumental ideas; with the band, at one point, considering launching an instrumental side project called Aurora Borealis. What became the new album's title track emerged during these sessions, and set another stylistic hallmark for the record - a break from the rhythm-section driven work of earlier album up until and including Once Upon a Time.
Having previously resisted the Scottish folk music which he'd grown up with, Kerr was won back over to elements of it by Giblin, whom he'd heard playing the traditional Irish folk song "She Moved Through The Fair" on piano one evening. Kerr: "John is a deep guy, which was reflected in the music he played. I was captivated by this Celtic piece and, when he finished, I said to John, ‘Wow! When did you write that?’ and John replied, ‘About 200 years ago…’" Horn had already been pushing Kerr, without success, to work on "a Celtic song", and Kerr was now moved to seek out various covers of "She Moved Through the Fair", which the band later refashioned into "Belfast Child". Despite Kerr's initial misgivings about potentially producing a "mawkish, tokenistic and trite" adaptation, he became very proud of the song after its subsequent success as a single: "Am I still glad I did it?’,... too right I am. To have the balls to mess around with that big a sacred cow of the folk world? Great! The folkies were going, ‘You can’t fucking do that to "She Moved Through the Fair!", when the folk world changes lyrics and melodies around forever. I thought, ‘Give me a break, you’re only jealous you hadn’t thought of it first.’"
The song "This is Your Land" was written early in the Street Fighting Years sessions but was one of the last to be completed, since Kerr was unsure of how to finish it. After Kerr sang a verse using a Lou Reed impression, Horn suggested bringing in the actual Lou Reed for a guest spot. Initially intimidated by Reed's reputation as "the world's biggest curmudgeon", the band agreed to the suggestion, with Horn making the actual approach.
Release
Released in May 1989, the album became the band's fourth number one in the UK on the back of the chart-topping single "Belfast Child", which had been released three months earlier. "This Is Your Land" was chosen as the lead single for the US, but with guest vocals from the band's idol Lou Reed, the single failed to make a mark on the pop charts. The album performed relatively poorly in the United States and produced no hit singles.Mel Gaynor rejoined the band for the Street Fighting Years tour, and remained an on/off member of Simple Minds in subsequent years. With John Giblin's departure permanent, Malcolm Foster was hired as the new bass guitarist, although he was not made an official band member. Having grown unhappy with constant touring and other changes, and wanting to spend more time with his family, MacNeil left the band at the conclusion of the tour.
Simple Minds released on 6 March 2020 a 4-CD Super Deluxe box set edition of Street Fighting Years on UMC / Virgin Domestic, including the original album remastered at Abbey Road Studios, a CD of B-sides, edits and 12″ remixes, a 2-CD unissued Verona live show from 1989 plus brand new book including a new interview with Trevor Horn. Also available as 2-LP, 2-CD or remastered single CD.