Wednesday, Jan 26, 2022 • 16min

The song Simple Minds didn’t want to record for The Breakfast Club soundtrack

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“Don’t You (Forget About Me)” made its debut in the opening and closing credits for the 1985 movie that it was written specifically for, The Breakfast Club, and it has since made its way permanently into popular culture by being such a huge part of the classic John Hughes teen drama. It became an instant hit for the band Simple Minds, going all the way to number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 Chart, but it almost wasn’t recorded by the very reluctant band at all. Find out how Jim Kerr and the rest of Simple Minds were finally convinced to do it, and the surprising number of other artists who passed entirely on recording this bonafide hit, in this episode of the Behind The Song podcast. Watch the video episode and subscribe to the Behind The Song Youtube channel: https://bit.ly/2DBF4wJ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Janda Lane

Transcript

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00:00

97.1 FM. The Drive presents the Behind the Song podcast, taking you deeper into classic rock's most timeless tunes. Here's your host, Janda.

Janda Lane

00:11

Saturday, March 24th, 1984. That's the day five students reported to the Shermer High School for detention or

The Breakfast Club

, as they called it.

00:23

Claire, Bender, Andrew, Brian, and Allison, all came from different walks of life and their shared experience that day became one of the classic teen dramas of the 80s,

The Breakfast Club

. Brilliantly conceived, written, and directed by the late great

John Hughes

00:42

So much of this movie stems from

Hughes'

own experience growing up in the

Chicago

suburb of

Northbrook

, which has similarities to the make-believe town, that

The Breakfast Club

was set in. A town he called Shermer Illinois after

Northbrook's

original historical name of Shermer Ville.

00:60

What transpires between the characters that day unfolds like a play, and it was one of the first times that we saw teenagers from vastly different home lives and backgrounds joined together, giving a real glimpse into the hierarchy that exists in American high school culture and how the shared shame of detention can level that order, even if just for that one day.

01:26

Because this movie was so close to

John Hughes

, he was very particular about how the music and the soundtrack would factor into it.

01:34

He wanted the music to be percussive, heavy on drums so that it would reflect the chaotic emotions of the main characters. Players upwardly mobile expectations in the tug of war between her parents, played by

Molly Ringwald

01:49

Allison's artistic isolation performed pitch-perfect by

Ally Sheedy

. Andrew, pressured to perform well in sports and maintain his father's approval, portrayed by

Emilio Estevez

. Brian's need to maintain perfect grades in the turmoil of being thought of as a mama's boy, played by

Anthony Michael Hall

. And Bender, the troubled delinquent who seems to have no respect for anyone, performed so well by

Judd Nelson

that he reportedly turned everybody on the set against him and even caused

John Hughes

to proclaim that he would never work with

Nelson

again.

02:26

The music for this cast of characters had to speak to their inner chaos. So

Hughes

selected

Keith Forsey

a former drummer from

London

turned producer for the job.

Forsey

began playing drums and bands around

London

in the latter part of the 60s, which put them in pole position for the disco explosion that would happen in the 70s.

02:47

He worked with

Donna Summer

, among others at the time. And as the decade wore on, embraced electronic and synth sounds. By the time the 80s rolled around, he was producing albums for other bands, including former

Generation X

frontman,

Billy Idol

03:03

He produced

Idol's

solo debut in 1982 and the next year struck gold with

Idol's

Rebel Yell

album, which went double platinum. He then quickly got into movie soundtracks, co-writing

Flashdance... What A Feeling

for

Irene Cara

to sing.

03:20

He won an Academy Award for that song and went on to co-write songs for

Ghostbusters

Beverly Hills Cop

the

Never Ending Story

, and

The Breakfast Club

Forsey

was paired up with

Steve Schiff

, a guitarist, and songwriter from the incomparable

Nina Hagen's

band to create the score for

The Breakfast Club

03:41

Having gotten the gig, the two set out to write a song for the movie specifically for the band

Simple Minds

to record. That song,

Don't You Forget About Me

, was absolutely intended for the band to sing and play for this movie, but getting them to do it was an uphill battle, to say the least.

04:02

The first time that

Forsey

played the demo of the song for the band after a concert stop in the US, they quickly declined.

Simple Minds

, so-named after a lyric and

David Bowie's

song,

The Jean Genie

, was a cool band from

The UK

, totally doing their own thing. The band was led by

Jim Kerr

who was of the opinion that they didn't need to perform material written by other people.

04:27

Forsey

was dejected, but he had to try to get the song done for the movie. So next he offered it to

Bryan Ferry

Roxy Music

who also declined it.

04:38

He then offered it to

Billy Idol

, who he thought would be an easy yes, since they had experienced so much success together on

Idol's

own albums but

Billy Idol

also declined to record it.

Corey Hart

was brought up by the record label as a possible artist to record the song, having had a hit with the song sunglasses at night, but

Forsey

declined that idea.

05:02

The fix also then reportedly passed on the song.

Jim Kerr

Simple Minds

has said that at the time the band were busy working on their album Once Upon a Time and did not feel that they needed to waste time doing this song for some American movie.

05:19

It took the band's label,

A&M Records

, to keep pushing

Don't You Forget About Me

on them along with

Kerr's

wife at the time, pretenders frontwoman Kristy Hinds who was encouraging him to record it to help get it done,

Forsey

he made several impassioned calls expressing his adoration for

Simple Minds

to the

Kerr

and finally he devised a last-ditch plan.

05:43

He flew to

London

saying that he had a new song to present to the band, but he didn't have any such thing. He just wanted to try to change their minds about it one more time. For whatever reason, this time it worked and the band finally agreed to record the song in the fall of 1984.

06:03

The recording happened in a

London

studio in the span of one afternoon, and even then, the band didn't really think that it would go anywhere. In fact, the whole session was approached with a real lack of seriousness on the part of the band.

06:18

Kerr

added the "La-la-la-la" at the end of the song simply because he didn't have any other lyrics as a placeholder. But in another example of them, happy accidents of rock and roll. Everybody else in the band liked it and

Forsey

he demanded that that be kept in the recording.

Kerr

was okay with that. He just had no real opinion about it either way.

06:40

The song debuted in 1985 in both the opening and closing credits for

The Breakfast Club

. When the movie soundtrack was released shortly after the film debuted,

Don't You Forget About Me

went to number one on the

Billboard Hot 100 Chart

in the US and it became a hit worldwide. Before this,

Simple Minds

with the kind of band that had critical success, but nothing like what they saw after the release of this song that they fought so hard against taking part in.

07:13

Forsey

has said that this song is his greatest achievement and that it could only have been sung by

Simple Minds

and the lyrics go like this;

07:22

Won't you come see about me, I'll be alone. Dancing, you know it, baby, tell me your troubles and doubts giving everything inside and out, and love's strange, so real in the dark. Think of the tender things that we were working on. Slow change may pull us apart when the light gets into your heart, baby, don't you forget about me.

07:47

Now, these lyrics bring to mind one of the more famous lines in the movie,

The Breakfast Club

, a line that seems to sum up the view of teenagers looking from the outside at adulthood and what comes afterward. When

Ally Sheedy

as Allison says to the group, "When you grow up, your heart dies."

08:06

This line is one that

Molly Ringwald

has pointed out in years since as her favorite in the entire film. Seven words that perfectly describe how more than anything most teenagers just don't want to end up like their parents The driving idea behind the entire movie.

08:24

And the song goes on;

08:26

Will you stand above me, look my way, never love me. Rain keeps falling. Rain keeps falling down. Will you recognize me? Call my name or walk on by. Rain keeps falling. Rain keeps falling down.

08:45

There's that class system that I mentioned earlier evident in 1980s high school culture and still evident today. When you watch

The Breakfast Club

, you realize that these particular five teenagers are not that different when it comes to their coming of age anxieties, but you're also left with the feeling that it won't really matter that they will all go back to their respective turfs and corners afterward, maybe giving each other a wave in the hallway, maybe not.

09:12

And the song ends;

09:14

Don't you try and pretend. It's my feeling we'll win in the end. I won't harm you or touch your defenses, vanity, and security. don't you forget about me, I'll be alone dancing, you know it, baby. Going to take you apart. I'll put us back together at heart, baby. Don't you forget about me. And these lines repeat over and over at the end of the song. As you walk on by, will you call my name?

09:49

And then

Jim Kerr's

now-famous "La-la-la-la" s over and over. His placeholder lyrics that remained forever from that short recording session that spawned such a huge hit song.

10:02

Now for his part, the car has this to say on the

Simple Minds

website about the song. He says;

10:08

Lady Luck certainly happened our away when producer

Keith Forsey

and movie director

John Hughes

came banging on our door in November of 1984.

The Breakfast Club

movie had recently finished shooting and they were adamant that they wanted

Simple Minds

to record the main song for the soundtrack,

Don't You Forget About Me

the success of that song and the movie fast tracked

Simple Minds

onto a level of success that may or may not, already have been coming our way. I am eternally grateful to be associated with a record that has given so much pleasure to so many. Plus, it's always a blast to perform. That apart, I must admit that I also like the notion of having sung on a record that once sat at the number one position on the American

Billboard Charts

10:59

In 2016,

The Breakfast Club

was selected for the national film registry by

The Library Of Congress

as being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. And so did another of

Hughes'

films

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

, which was actually selected first in 2014.

11:17

You can still take a pilgrimage to see the actual school where

The Breakfast Club

was shot in suburban

Chicago.

Main North High School in

Des Plaines

Illinois

. The building is now owned by the

Illinois

state police and is used largely for storage, but much of the exterior remains the same.

11:36

You'll be able to spot the exact location in the film where

John Hughes

himself playing Brian's father picks him up after detention.

Anthony Michael Hall

, who played Brian said in recent interviews, including with the enemy that

Hughes

had spoken to him and others in the late 80s about making a sequel to the movie, which would have portrayed the characters in their middle age.

12:01

It never came to be of course. And

John Hughes

passed away in 2009 after having suffered a heart attack. His work and his uncanny ability to make convincing movies about teenagers just being teenagers will live on forever, of course.

12:18

And every time we hear,

Don't You Forget About Me

, were taken back to Shermer High and

The Breakfast Club

. Each one of us relating in some way to Claire, Allison, Brian, Andrew, or even Bender, fist up in the air as the song roles at the end.

12:37

I'm Janda and this has been Behind the song. Special thanks to

Christian Lane

for the music you hear on these podcast episodes, subscribe on

YouTube

and watch the videos, and you can follow at Behind The Song podcast on

TikTok

. On the way, an anti-Valentine's song about the pitfalls of love and more classic, rock and roll.

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