JIM KERR IS KEEPING IT FOR SIMPLE MINDS

Congratulate Jim Kerr on Simple Minds’ Top Five single, “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” from the hit movie “The Breakfast Club”--and you’re liable to get a sheepish grin or a grumpy “thank you.” Kerr, the Scottish band’s 25-year-old lead singer/lyricist, is somewhat embarrassed by the single. It doesn’t matter that it’s classy mainstream pop/rock and one of the year’s better singles. The problem is that it’s the kind of music Kerr normally wouldn’t be caught dead singing.

On “Don’t You,” he sounds more like Billy Idol than the Jim Kerr who has recorded seven Simple Minds albums since 1978. Kerr, usually a straight-ahead vocalist with a spare, unaffected style, slips into smoldering, sexy singing on the single. No one knew he had it in him. Sure, there’s passion in his other Simple Minds’ vocals but not sexy passion.

What’s worse--from his point of view--is that the lyrics of “Don’t You” are the kind of dreamy, romantic fare commonplace on Top 40 radio. Repeating some of the lines, Kerr observed sarcastically: “They sound pretty inane to me.”

The lyrics of “Don’t You” really aren’t that flimsy. It’s just that Kerr is used to singing his own, which are several cuts above the average. Kerr writes lyrics that are obliquely poetic, bordering on esoteric. There’s nothing ordinary about the words or imagery in songs like “Someone Somewhere in Summertime,” “Promised You a Miracle,” “Up on the Catwalk” and “Waterfront.”

Never make the mistake of accusing Kerr of composing “Don’t You,” written by Keith Forsey and Steve Schiff. “I hope nobody thinks I wrote it, but some people might think that,” said Kerr, obviously disturbed by such a prospect. It’s only the second time Kerr has performed another composer’s material. The other exception was recording Lou Reed’s “Street Hassle” on the “Sparkle in the Rain” album.

The “embarrassing,” thoroughly commercial hit single has been a boon to Simple Minds’ American career. Though well-known in Europe, the band, until now, has only had a cult following in the U.S. Most American fans are only aware of its last two albums, “New Gold Dream” (1983) and “Sparkle in the Rain” (1984)--both on A&M--and; are unfamiliar with the first five.

“We look at the single as a vehicle,” said Kerr, whose singing, songwriting and sleek performing techniques are the band’s primary assets. “Perhaps it will lead people to check out those other albums. They’ll find something more intriguing and hopefully less trite.”

Obviously no one put a gun to Kerr’s head and forced him to sing “Don’t You.” But the band was never really thrilled with the idea. When Keith Forsey, co-writer and producer of “Don’t You,” first approached Simple Minds backstage after a concert a year ago, its members responded indifferently.

“We said, ‘Who is this guy who’s trying to hustle us with this tape of this weird song from this weird movie?,’ ” Kerr recalled. “We thought singing in a teen-age movie from America wouldn’t be for us. There have been so many trashy ones.”

But Forsey didn’t give up. Others, like the group’s manager, were also chipping away at the band’s dogged resistance. Though the members didn’t like the idea of singing in an American teen epic, they had long been interested in sound-track work.

“But nobody was interested in us,” Kerr explained. “We couldn’t get a break before in movies. We weren’t big enough.”

A factor that finally helped sway Simple Minds was Forsey’s enthusiasm about the band’s previous work. It turned out that the film’s director, Jim Hughes, and other cast members were fans too.

“I love fans, I love that enthusiasm,” Kerr said. “So many people we meet on our side of the business are so blase. If they had told us that there were so many fans of our music on this film, we would have been more interested in doing the song from the beginning.”

The band members decided to delay the decision until after seeing the movie. Two days after the screening last November, they were in the studio working on “Don’t You.” “We basically liked the movie,” Kerr said. “It avoids some of the cliches and it has a nice message.”

The group was able to make some changes in the original version of the song. “We enhanced it and put some life into it,” Kerr pointed out.

Though those changes made the song more bearable to them, they obviously still aren’t satisfied with it. Kerr noted: “There were other things in the song we would have changed if we could have--lots of other things.”

Don’t look for something like “Don’t You” on the next Simple Minds album. “If we started doing songs like that it would be the death of us in the long run,” Kerr explained. “We don’t deal in formula music. We’re into improvising and doing the unexpected.”

Kerr is now in Nice, France, putting lyrics to the music written by the other band members, guitarist Charlie Burchill, drummer Mel Gaynor, bassist Derek Forbes and keyboards player Mick MacNeil. If the album is released in September according to schedule, it will be followed by a two-part American tour in October and February.

That album will be co-produced by Jimmy Iovine and Bob Clearmountain, ending speculation that the band would again hire Steve Lillywhite, who produced the last album, “Sparkle in the Rain.”

“We definitely wouldn’t use Steve again,” Kerr said. “We have nothing against him. It’s just that we got everything out of him on that last album. There’s no more for us to get from him. We sucked him dry.”

When Kerr married Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders last year, just about everyone was amazed. The surprise wasn’t that he got married, it was who he married.

“It didn’t coincide with my image,” Kerr said. “Here I’m supposed to be this sensitive loner and I go and marry a rock goddess. I was kind of surprised it happened too.”

Since the marriage, which has resulted in a girl born March 26, he’s been the butt of many jokes. Some cattily refer to him as Mr. Chrissie Hynde.

“I don’t worry about the cracks people make,” he said. “I’m very much my own man and I don’t feel the need to prove it.”

Simple Minds has been criticized for accepting the opening act position on the Pretenders’ tour last year. Some thought it seemed like Kerr was riding his wife’s coattails.

“That tour was first discussed before Chrissie and I got involved,” he insisted. “So why not do it? We’re not trying to take advantage of the Pretenders’ fame and success. That’s not the way we do things.”

To avoid further controversy, it’s not likely that Simple Minds will tour with the Pretenders again. And don’t expect a Kerr-Hynde duet album either. From now on, you can be sure they’ll keep their careers quite separate.