Stuart will always be with us

It’s 40 years since The Skids made their debut in Dunfermline but front man Richard Jobson insists they’ll be looking to the future when they play the town’s PJ Molloys on May 3 and 4

August 1977 and The Skids are playing their first live gig in their hometown of Dunfermline.

The iconic post-punk band, founded by the late Stuart Adamson with Bill Simpson, Tam Kellichan and Richard Jobson, would go on to enjoy their first big success two years later with Into the Valley.

That set the scene for a series of other anthems, including Working for the Yankee Dollar, Masquerade and The Saints are Coming, which was given a new lease of life when U2 and Green Day released it as a charity single in 2006 to raise funds for Hurricane Katrina.

Now, as frontman Jobson and the modern line-up of Simpson, Mike Baillie, Bruce Watson and Jamie Watson launch a 40th anniversary UK tour with back-to-back homecoming gigs, fans should not imagine their latest project is driven by nostalgia.

This July will see the release of Burning Cities – the first album from The Skids in 35 years and Jobson has been surprised by the level of interest.

“I didn’t expect it to become as big as it has,” the 56-year-old admits in an interview from London.

“We wanted the album to be relevant and pertinent to the world today and not just about nostalgia.

“I’m very aware of the interest in The Skids – that for many people we were part of their childhood with our anthemic big choruses. But at the same time we have to be relevant to now because there’s so much going on in the world. I am not a juke box.”

Jobson, who has reinvented himself as a poet, film critic and movie director, said the band were approached by Jesus

and Mary Chain producers Youth – who are “massive” Skids fans – to work on the new album.

David Mack, the Leven-based artist and fellow Skids fan, also asked if he could do the sleeve.

“Having Skids fans come out of the hedgerow has been the nicest part of the process,” he adds.

Jobson, who has been living back in Dunfermline since January after years in Bedfordshire, looks back on The Skids as a “definitive part” of his early life.

The former miner’s son from Ballingry, who was a member of Dunfermline’s notorious Av Toi gang growing up, was just 15 when he first met Adamson.

Describing The Skids era as a “brilliant adventure into the world of creativity and adulthood,” he recalls how Stuart brought “structure, melody and confidence” to the band.

“My contribution was as front man,” he adds. “When he met me I was 15, confident. I could do things he could not do like my dancing.

“We were very different people. I was very itinarent. He was a home boy. If he was away from Dunfermline for a week he’d be homesick.”

Jobson was as shocked as anyone when he heard Adamson had committed suicide in Hawaii in December 2001, aged just 43.

But he says he wants to lay to rest “once and for all” speculation that he and Stuart parted on bad terms.

“He was my friend as kids,” reflects Jobson. “We were very very close.

“I want to end the rumour that our split was acrimonious.

“We just wandered off in different directions. He did Big Country and I did my thing. There was no antipathy. I didn’t fit with what he was doing and he didn’t fit with what I was doing.

“I think the ghost of him is always there in the songs. And he is there in the new songs.

“We re-engineered stuff to bring in his sound. We are very careful to his legacy and very careful with the new songs. Stuart will always be with us.”

“He did Big Country and I did my thing. There was no antipathy

Four decades on, The Skids are back in the band’s home town.