Today on Sirius first wave radio station they played a snippet where BF discusses passing on the mega hit Don't You(Forget about Me).
He explains that he was wrapping up Boys and Girls at the time and decided to pass doing the song that was offered to him. He says it was a big career mistake. Goes on to compliment Simple Minds for doing a great job with it. I knew he passed on it but never heard him discuss it.

It's impossible to hear this without recalling BF's faux pas. However, I'm not certain calling it a career mistake is necessarily accurate. Had BF recorded it, it could have ended up really rather different and not garnered the same degree of success. I think too that you have to factor in the different fan bases - at the time, BF had been around a lot longer and singles sales were waning as his audience matured and focused on the albums. Even there, B&G and hits packages aside, album sales had pretty much peaked. SM on the other hand were very much in the ascendancy with somewhat younger and undoubtedly more motivated fans to propel singles into the upper reaches of the charts.

No disrespect intended towards BF, but it's like comparing apples to pears to suppose a BF version of DY(FAM) would have proved the seminal work for him as it actually was for SM.

Mes Amis,
W2 is sure that our hero would have sprinkled Ferrydust on DYFAM and made it work. That said, he is being over generous to describe rejecting it as a ‘Career Mistake’.
Anthems were never really his thing and frankly although Windswept enjoyed Simple Minds version the song doesn’t remotely have the sophistication to warrant a place in Geordie’s Favourite Son’s canon.
Salutations et bon ete a tous.
W2

He did “Dance with Life” and its a good job that few heard it.