One record shipped with two covers that were really one image split in half. The Scottish band Simple Minds had British shops display both versions in a grid, so the sleeves formed a single panorama. On October 21, 1985, their seventh studio album Once Upon a Time arrived on Virgin Records, and the packaging matched the scale of the music inside.
Chart success and a lineup change
The album went straight to the top of the UK Albums Chart and climbed to number 10 on the American Billboard 200. That success was not a given. Simple Minds had just lost bassist Derek Forbes after the recording of the hit single Don't You (Forget About Me), and his replacement, John Giblin, had previously played in the jazz-rock group Brand X.
Producers Jimmy Iovine and Bob Clearmountain pushed for a bigger, more forceful sound. Iovine had worked with Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Nicks, and he wanted singer Jim Kerr to sing with more energy than before. The result was arena rock and new wave, built for stadiums rather than small clubs. The album's sound was shaped by more than the producers. Backing vocalists Robin Clark, Michael Been, The Simms Brothers and Carlos Alomar all contributed, while Sue Hadjopoulos played timbales on All the Things She Said. Bob Ludwig handled the mastering, giving the record its final polish.
Four singles and their chart placings
Four singles carried the album. Alive and Kicking came out in September 1985 and reached number 7 in Britain and number 3 in the United States. Sanctify Yourself followed in January 1986, reaching 10th place in Britain and 14th in America. All the Things She Said arrived in March 1986, reaching number 9 in Britain and number 28 in America.
The band had originally planned Oh Jungleland as the second single but chose Sanctify Yourself instead. Money from All the Things She Said and the fourth single, Ghost Dancing, went to Amnesty International. Ghost Dancing itself was a reworking of the song I Travel from the band's 1980 album Empires and Dance.
Derek Forbes and the writing credit dispute
Behind the chart run, a quieter conflict lingered. Derek Forbes claimed he had helped write part of Once Upon a Time but was not credited. Two of the songs, All the Things She Said and I Wish You Were Here, dated back to a 1983 session in Lincolnshire, when Forbes was still in the band. He would not return to Simple Minds until the 1998 album Neapolis.
The album's visual identity came from designer Mick Haggerty and photographer Anton Corbijn. The two vinyl covers were designed to be displayed together in shops, a small piece of theatre that rewarded fans who bought the record in its original form. Later CD editions used a single unified cover. The original release also came with a collector's vinyl picture disc in a lavish sleeve with a gold effect. Inside the gatefold, a separate sheet with the lyrics was included. Virgin Records even produced a magnetic puzzle to promote the album.
Once Upon a Time marked a moment when Simple Minds stopped being an art-school new wave group and became a mainstream rock act. The number-one spot in Britain and a top-ten American placing proved the gamble had worked, even if the question of who wrote some of those songs never quite went away. The album has been reissued many times since. In 2002 Virgin released a remastered version in a cardboard sleeve that replicated the vinyl, and in early 2003 a jewel-case edition followed. The same year it appeared on SACD, and in 2005 Virgin issued a fully remixed version on DVD-Audio with all tracks redone in 5.1 surround sound.
Once Upon a Time marked a moment when Simple Minds stopped being an art-school new wave group and became a mainstream rock act.