And that's what the last 10 years have been about.' Next year, when Simple Minds tour to New Zealand with the B52s, the British rock band will play the greatest hits from some of 16 albums, including five UK chart-toppers.Kerr and Burchill first met in a housing estate on a Glasgow street when they were 8, and their friendship has endured for almost five decades. With new drummer Mel Gaynor on board and jazz keyboardist Herbie Hancock a guest on Hunter And The Hunted, it was clear that Simple Minds were changing. We thought, let's see if we can get the engine going again.

The face of this rock star still beams out from the hotel website, where Kerr writes about the magical influence the place had on him when he first visited in 1982.The band that had formed and fractured and reformed over the years was scattered over the globe, and Charlie Burchill, another founding member, was living in Rome.Says Kerr: 'I realised I still loved doing this, so I got in touch with Charlie and we decided to get back into it, and to give it 100 per cent commitment. Esconced on the island, Simple Minds didn't play a single gig for an entire year. But I don't know anyone who has a 40-year music career who doesn't have a period where it all goes pearshaped.' At the time, Kerr was living in Sicily, where he was producing and performing with local musicians, and also running his four-star hotel, Villa Angela, in Taormina. The brother of Simple Minds singer Jim Kerr threatened to cripple, assault and murder two superfans who left a negative online review for the band, a court heard today. From that day on and continuing to the present Mel Gaynor has brought so much energy to Simple Minds and Simple Minds became a different beast from the moment of his arrival Always an outsider, if only in the sense that he was the first of our group not to grow up in Glasgow, and therefore experience the very early formative years with us.

Why did mel gaynor leave simple minds