Published: Thursday, 15th March, 2007 12:00
When we were Skids
By Gary Fitzpatrick
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Pic by: Dunfermline Press
NOW a successful property executive, Bill Simpson still has fond memories of his wild punk days in The Skids, when he gloried in the stage name Alex Plode.
The revival in interest in the Dunfermline band has received another boost with the release of two albums celebrating their ’70s heyday.
This follows the accolade of U2 and Green Day covering ‘The Saints Are Coming’ for a high-profile charity recording.
Bill, now 49, has been talking to the Press about the days when The Skids stormed the charts with hits like ‘Into the Valley’.
The roots of the band were in Bill’s friendship with Stuart Adamson, then living in Crossgates, when both attended Beath High School.
“We liked the same music and Stuart had a band playing covers of Roxy Music, Bowie, Status Quo among others,” said Bill. “When the bass player left they asked me to step in even though I hadn’t pick up an instrument in my puff.”
In the punk era, of course, lack of musical experience was never seen as a barrier to getting involved.
Soon Bill and Stuart were playing gigs, often in RAF bases in the north of Scotland, and then had a spell in Amsterdam.
When they came back to Fife, they met up with Richard Jobson, who would go on to be The Skids’ all-action stage performer and distinctive vocalist.
“We didn’t know him but I think Stuart must have met him somewhere and he came along and the next thing he was our singer,” said Bill.
“We then put an advert in the Dunfermline Press, I think, for a drummer. We wanted them to know it was a punk band and so Richard put ‘Hippies need not apply’.”
Tom Kellichan proved he was up to the job and wasn’t a hippy, completing the line-up under his alias, Tom Bomb.
The band – all still in their teens – practised in an old building at Broomhead and afterwards enjoyed a pint in the Castleton bar but soon the lights of London were beckoning.
“Looking back, the success maybe came too quickly for us. Within a year of the band starting out, we were recording albums and appearing on Top of the Pops,” said Bill.
“We were a bit immature and perhaps didn’t realise about people being different and respecting each other. We drifted apart and I regret that.”
Having hit the heights so soon, Bill didn’t have the appetite for going back to starting up another band. “I thought ‘I’ve had my 15 minutes of fame’ and moved on.”
He turned his attention to property – rather than anarchy – in the UK and now has a successful career in Edinburgh but still lives in Dunfermline with his fiancee Tracy.
Over the years, his music background sometimes came up during conversations at work but Bill said colleagues “showed no great sign of interest”.
There was a one-off appearance on ‘Never Mind the Buzzcocks’ but it was when U2’s The Edge chose ‘The Saints Are Coming’, a favourite of his, to raise money for New Orleans hurricane victims, that a new generation of music fans started asking about The Skids.
“It’s humbling really for two of the world’s biggest groups to cover one of your songs. I think we now realise more than before that we inspired people with our music.
“I look back with pride on those great times. Stuart was a musical genius and it took the tragedy of his death to bring us back together to play in tribute.”
Thirty years on, Bill admits his memories are “getting a bit hazy” and certainly not up to the standard of the band’s fans who beat him in quizzes in The Skids conventions.
Tom Kellichan now runs a music bar in Tenerife and Bill paid him a surprise visit last year.
“I hadn’t seen him for years and when I called in at the bar he wasn’t there. I called him on his phone and said ‘Is that Tom Bomb, it’s Alex Plode here’. He didn’t believe it at first.”
EMI have responded to the renewed interest by releasing a 21-track ‘Best of’ compilation and a live album ‘Masquerade Masquerade’ recorded at the Glasgow Apollo and Hammersmith Odeon.
Their first ever gig was at Dunfermline’s Belleville Hotel in August 1977 and they played the Kinema Ballroom eleven times.
They had 10 British hits and their biggest chart success was ‘Into the Valley’ in February 1979.
Richard Jobson writes in the notes to the live album, “During the halcyon days of 1979 and 1980, The Skids had arrived at a special place as a live band.
“For me it was what we were about, the rush, the energy, the audience, the sound of Stuart Adamson’s guitar and the two of us flying through the air on stage passing each other mid-flight, smiling with joy.”
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