When the Scottish band Simple Minds made their live debut at the Satellite City club in Glasgow on Jan. 17, 1978, it’s fair to wonder just how big the four teenagers in the band dared to dream.

“That’s a good question,” says singer Jim Kerr, who with guitarist Charlie Burchill are the only founding members of Simple Minds to have stayed in the band for the 47 years since that first gig. “And it’s one that we’ve been reflecting on a lot recently, because Charlie and I have just finished off a book on the history of the band.”

At the time, Kerr and Burchill were both 18 and had been friends for a decade, Kerr says.

“Charlie and I go back,” he says on a recent call from Los Angeles, where Simple Minds was rehearsing for a U.S. tour with dates at the Kia Forum in Inglewood on Thursday and Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert the following day. “We both moved into the same street. It was a housing project in Glasgow, and that was 1967, so we’ve known each other since we’re 8 years old.

“And then, just playing like all the other kids,” Kerr continues. “By the time we became teenagers, with Brian (McGee, the original drummer), we were in the same class at school. That’s when you start to identify your tribe, especially walking around with vinyl albums under your sleeve you find out, oh, these are the guys I’ve got something in common with.”

Burchill had a guitar, McGee had a drum kit, and Kerr says he’d have done anything to be involved with music or a band.

“I wasn’t sure how I was going to fit in,” he says. “I’d have been happy to be a manager or a road manager. But we were so passionate, especially about live music.”

Touring bands would often play Glasgow before heading to London and other cities around the United Kingdom, Kerr says, looking for a welcoming crowd and a chance to fine-tune the show before going before “the prying eyes of the London media,” he adds.

“So Charlie’s first-ever gig at 13 was Led Zeppelin followed by Alice Cooper,” Kerr says. “Myself, it was Lou Reed, Roxy Music, Bowie, Bob Marley, the Rolling Stones. Live music was our thing.

“So when it came to forming a band, although they go hand in hand, the dream wasn’t so much about having hit singles and being top of the Billboard charts — it was, how do you become a great live band like some of the great live bands we saw?”

Simple Minds ended up with all of that. Singles such as “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” “Alive and Kicking” and “Sanctify Yourself” were international hits, with even more chart success in the United Kingdom. At the peak of the band’s mid-’80s success, it played Live Aid in Philadelphia, perhaps the biggest live performance of the decade.

“That really was the dream,” Kerr says. “I was talking recently to a journalist who’s still working and was at our first in January 1978. He interviewed me (at the time) and asked the question, ‘What’s it all about? Is it, you know, fame and riches?’

“And I said, ‘No, it’s three things’ — and I don’t know where I got the chutzpah — I said, ‘We want to be a great live band. We want to take it around the world. And we want to try and make a life out of it.’

“Well, lo and behold, here we are, decades later, still dealing with that challenge, and feeling blessed to have had a life out of working with that challenge,” Kerr says. “It’s brought great purpose to our lives.”

In an interview edited for length and clarity, Kerr talked about how he and Burchill have stayed friends since those early days on Crossbank Road, what Simple Minds hope their audiences feel during the big anthemic numbers, and how he’s got a beef with Mike White and HBO over the second season of “The White Lotus.”

Q: I saw you a year ago at Cruel World Festival and it was such a fun show and huge crowd.

A: Oh, yeah, we were delighted with that. We had no idea, you know. We came out full of hope. But as you said, 20 minutes before we went on, we were looking out, thinking, “God, the people are really excited about us being here.” And we felt that through the set. It’s exactly a year ago this weekend. It’s nice on the back of that Live Nation offered us the chance to come and do something much more extensive.

Q: One of the interesting things in your career is the different kinds of music Simple Minds made — early on punk, then pop and stadium rock, and back to gentler things.

A: What you say there is true, and it’s one of the things that we’re most, well, I wouldn’t say proud, but happy about. Basically, it’s to be able to do that wide smorgasbord and yet still have an identity. Because you could try a lot of things and say you’re good at all that, but, you know, you don’t have any identity, because you’re neither fish nor … .

But through these styles, there seemed to be something intrinsically Simple Minds within the vision of the music, whether it was a punk song or a dance song or an electro or a stadium rocker. It really comes from having a wide taste of music. We could be as much huge fans of Bruce Springsteen as we would be of Stevie Wonder.

Q: Coming to America for the first time is often a big moment for bands from the U.K. What do you remember of your first Southern California show at the Whisky in November 1981?

A: It’s amazing that you say that because I got up early this morning — we’re staying just off the Strip now — and I thought, “I hope the Whisky is still there.” And indeed it is still there. So I passed by it this morning and those memories are coming back.

I can’t tell you how exciting that was. First of all, to be in California, to be in Los Angeles for the first time, growing up with the Doors, especially, and those iconic names. Because British bands will tell you, especially British bands of our generation, although we had some great bands through the years, from the Beatles on, Led Zeppelin to the Who and so on, we’re still basically dealing with a format that’s American-produced. You guys invented it.

So it’s still the mecca. When you come to America, you feel, God, well, first of all, it’s size. Especially when you’ve been in Britain, the size and the idea that you could dare to think you can make an impression here. So that was sort of the thoughts and feelings and the delight when there was an acceptance. It was tremendously exciting. To work in the studios in Manhattan and beyond that work in L.A. as well. As corny as it sounds, kind of a dream come true.

Q: As far as how you and Charlie kept Simple Minds going through the ups and downs and different band lineups. This many years together is rare.

A: I mean, most bands don’t last. Certainly, in terms of when you think of classic bands, there’s usually a classic lineup within that band, and they are kind of the Mount Rushmore of the band. Whenever one of them leaves for whatever reason, there’s a feeling it was never quite the same.

I understand that, but at the same time, I mean, even the Beatles only lasted a decade. Bowie sacked his band. The Velvet Underground, all the bands we loved didn’t really last that much.

Q: So how’d you do it?

A: One thing we’ve never lost, he and I, is the relationship that we have and the friendship we have, both personally and creatively. The band to him and I was, still is, almost a bit of a crusade, you know. It’s our lives. It’s who we are, the ups and downs, good times and bad times, all of these things. Frustrations, successes. There’s never been any point where we thought, OK, enough of this.

There’s been times where we thought, this is getting tricky. Maybe it’ll end sooner than we had hoped for. But we hung on in and found the creative spark again, and then reconnected with the original purpose.

And here we are, all these years later. Every night we go onstage. What are you saying when you go onstage now, unlike before? Well, you’re not just saying, “This is our new album” or this is whatever. You’re saying, “This is what we’ve done with our lives.” And when that’s at stake, you really don’t want to be giving less than 100%.

Q: You mention the band as a crusade a minute ago, and I think in those big anthems that get everyone singing along, it has that feeling in the best kind of way.

A: Well, that’s great. You know, there are so few things, especially now in life where lifestyles are so isolated, there are few things that are — it almost sounds ecclesiastical — congregational. You maybe go to a sports stadium and hear that, but the sad thing is one side’s losing and one side’s winning. Well, you come to the gig and if Simple Minds are hitting it, and the fans are there, we’re in it together.