- "If there's any kind of concept to Empires And Dance, it must be the boy or man who's run away - a
fugitive" - Jim.
- Empires And Dance was written about the experiences and places visited by the band during their
previous tour. "I was twenty, and I looked around me.
We had the talent always to be in the place where the neo-Nazis
exploded another bomb. Bologna, a synagogue in Paris, a railway station in Munich. Don't tell me anything like
that could leave you unmoved." - Jim.
- Strong, percussive and driving, the music of the album was based around the rhythm section with
Mick and Charlie filling in.
- "We'd never thought about selling albums until this third one; never thought 'Oh, this cover'll look
great in the window of Boots' or this and that. It was just we were in the band, which was a hobby that
someone wanted to finance." - Jim.
- Unlike Real To Real Cacophony, the band produced a set of
demos for the album, recording several of the new songs which had
appeared in the last previous tour:
Capital City,
Room and
I Travel.
- Whilst John Leckie sat in on the
album demos, Arista considered
David Cunningham as a producer at one point.
- The front image, a photograph by German photographyer Michael Ruetz, was spotted by
Jim in a magazine during a plane flight. The look of the album, including
the cyrillic font used by The Artifex Studio, inspired the artwork for The Holy Bible by
The Manic Street Preachers.
- The chipped statue was used as a motif through single sleeves, tour posters and tour T-shirts. Often referred to as
a 'soldier', he was actually an air force officer, shown by the wings on his breast pocket.
- Original LPs included a lyric sheet, although Room was left off.
- The album was finished in July 1980. Arista didn't know what to do with it, and
Jim,
Bruce and
John Leckie ended up telegramming the company daily: "What a great album. Stop.
This album is a hit. Stop. Jim Kerr. Glasgow."
- Arista only pressed up 15,000 copies of the album, waited for it for sell out, pressed up another 15,000
copies, watched it sell out, and then pressed up another batch. This ensured that the album wasn't often available in shops,
and lead it to stall at a lowly 41. Bruce ended up writing a letter to the music
press, apologizing for the absense of the LP in the shops.
- The treatment of the album and its single by Arista was the final straw; the band considered splitting
up to rid themselves of the record company.
- I Travel was selected by as the first single, and included the band's first limited edition and
12" release. By the time Celebrate was issued, the group had long left the label.
- Virgin reissued the album and cassette in October 1982. After the success of Once Upon A Time,
they issued the sloppiest of their Simple Minds CDs - the artwork still even included Side One
and Side Two labels.
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