SIMPLE MINDS MAKES A PITCH FOR AMNESTY

Reporters weren’t the only cynics at the Live Aid benefit concerts last year.

Among the ranks of those doubting that this heralded event signalled some sort of genuine New Humanitarianism in entertainment was Jim Kerr--singer for the Scottish rock group Simple Minds, which had made its commercial breakthrough in America not long before appearing on the international telecast.

“I think it’s interesting to see how many people walk on and do Live Aid and nothing else--the token gesture of conscientiousness,” said Kerr, looking uncharacteristically somber in all black on a recent visit to town.

“For the past few years, especially on the last album, Simple Minds has been connected through our songs with ideals--maybe they’re naive ones--of love, peace and freedom. And how long can you just go on singing about it and not really taking it that next step up?”

Simple Minds’s answer is to put its weight behind a cause full force. The group is using its most elaborate international jaunt to date--with more than 2 million customers expected by tour’s end--as an extended plug for Amnesty International, an organization dedicated to freeing nonviolent political prisoners around the world.

In an era when pop stars are more likely to be soliciting commercial endorsements from brewers for their tours than using them to issue endorsements for nonprofit agencies, the commitment of Simple Minds--and of U2 and Sting, who embark in June on a limited tour themselves for Amnesty International--is something of a milestone.

Proceeds from two Simple Minds concerts have been earmarked for Amnesty, including Tuesday’s show at the Greek Theatre, which is the first of three local appearances. (Other dates include a second show Wednesday at the Greek, a San Diego State concert Saturday and a stop at the Pacific Amphitheatre in Orange County, April 22).

But more important, according to Kerr, will be the distribution of a set of post cards to every patron on the tour, with the express purpose of securing the release of two prisoners in particular--and of getting the masses involved in a cause that has had what he thinks is a highbrow image.

“It would have been easy to silently do a few benefit gigs and give them money, but the frustration is, they need more than the money from me,” says Kerr.

“I’ve been watching what they were doing for the past couple of years with a mixture of admiration and total frustration--frustration because I thought that on their own they wouldn’t get across to the kind of people they really need to.

“People in Glasgow and Detroit need to know about it. Amnesty has got to come out of those intellectual, collegiate kind of circles, and the audience we’re getting is very street.

“I do think that to sing about it is enough,” says Kerr. But he’s aware that with the band’s higher profile, the opportunities for publicity are greater. He says the group wants to “turn a percent of this same publicity into something worthwhile, as opposed to just the usual self-glorification.

“It’s nothing for us to do this. I mean, we believe in it, so why not?”

For Simple Minds to throw its support behind an organization that acts as a sort of global watchdog seems a logical step, given the international flavor of “Once Upon a Time,” the group’s current Top 10 album. Songs like “Oh Jungleland” and “Ghost-dancing” reflect the tension in locales like Ireland and the band’s native Glasgow, romantic lands in which horrific violence could erupt any second.

That the album was actually made in the United States with hotshot American producers accounts for no small amount of irony--and a few snide reviews in England, where the band has been popular much longer than over here, and where U.S. success is immediate cause for critical excommunication.

“That doesn’t hold up, that ‘American album’ stink,” says an agitated Kerr, who admits that the British press still gets under his skin.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous. So you make a record with Americans because you happen to think that the best engineer in the world is American. That doesn’t mean that you’ve made a sort of American concept album. It is a much more international album. The songs on there are actually inspired by a couple of Lebanese friends of ours.

“You can sit and debate until the cows come home about which album had the best melodies and which had the most sensitivity and which had the best atmosphere, but this is our best balanced album, I think.

“The natural, organic, uplifting side to us is balanced by a band not afraid anymore to show that we also have fears and doubts--hence making our positiveness more believable, instead of just euphoria and wishful thinking.”

As for the Amnesty International pitch, Kerr is reluctant to “preach” from the stage, but the importance of the post cards will be stressed at every tour stop.

Says John G. Healey, Amnesty International U.S.A’s executive director: “The ability of normal, decent people--sort of the nobodys of the Earth--to get other nobodys out of jail works. . . . We know that writing letters and sending post cards can put pressure on governments to stop political imprisonment, torture and execution.”

Kerr, for his part, sees a light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel in the recent U.S. success of acts from Bruce Springsteen to U2 to Sting to . . . well, to Simple Minds.

“It seems that people want more,” he enthuses. “See, I love the idea of rock music in the pure sense as a communication, as in passing on, as in learning, as in folk music. We’re so used to the way it’s been sold and caricatured as trivia--and it’s right to trivialize it--but thinking people seem to be doing well right now.

“I’m not necessarily a member of the Bruce Springsteen fan club, but I loved this last album he made. I was absolutely delighted last year when he became the biggest thing on Earth, because the biggest thing on Earth before him in terms of rock had to be Wacko Jacko, or Prince bummin’ around in a jock strap.”

Kerr thinks it’s great that someone like Springsteen could be accepted, because people are used to the idea that good guys don’t win. “It’s the meanie who’s up there on top,” he says. “All these Halloween bands in their whole heavy-metal, ‘Rocky Horror’ pantomime thing are a total farce. I don’t believe that rock ‘n’ roll’s the devil’s music.”