PLAYING in the 'Toon' and looking out on an audience where there are more recognisable faces than otherwise may be old hand for Nazareth, but that's what makes their rare hometown appearances worth looking forward to.

For Pete Agnew, the final remaining founding member of the band, walking down Dunfermline High Street is now a similar experience to a gig in itself - with no turn safe from old friends and fans -, though an upcoming performance at the Alhambra Theatre is sure to take him back to the first time he ever took to the stage.

He explained: "The Alhambra was the very first gig I played with a band in my entire life.

"We used to have the morning pictures and in between the movies you had a guest, we won this Fife competition down in Kirkcaldy, we were 11-years-old and in a band called The Spitfires.

"They asked us at the Alhambra to play there, we went and played in 1957, that was one for the books."

He also took his now-wife there to watch an Elvis Presley film when they first met and Nazareth officially opened the theatre in its current form back in 2007.

The last time the band played at the venue was in 2012 in aid of the Mary Leishman Foundation.

They'll now be returning fresh from a series of European dates, though several areas where Nazareth have enjoyed playing in the past - they're one of the only UK bands to tour the whole of Russia and have been frequent visitors to Ukraine - have remained off limits.

"We've played in places Putin has never been to out there, I'm not kidding," Pete laughed.

"We were the very first and are one of the only UK bands to tour that country from west to east, most of the cities we've never heard of them because they were closed, they weren't allowed to be on maps even.

"We were seeing places nobody in the west has ever been to at all, let alone a rock band from Dunfermline."

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He continued: "Playing at home can be quite trying, looking to the audience here I know half of them, you're giving them a nod, so when we play a gig at the Alhambra we've got to watch out for a pitch invasion at the dressing room.

"One of the things that we laugh about when we come home is we say 'Well, for the next two nights at least people will know what we're saying!

"It's been good to me, it's a great life. As I say, you don't retire from this game, you just die, your batteries run out."

But, Pete explained, despite his travels, one of the things he is most proud of being able to do is writing Dunfermline as his place of birth on different forms.

He said: "To me, I love this place, it's got so much history, that's one of the things I am quite sad about, the amount of times we travel and the amount of forms we fill in every country we go to there's always a section for place of birth.

"I quite proudly write Dunfermline, people can't do that anymore, they're not born in Dunfermline, they're born in Kirkcaldy, it makes you think 'Wait a minute, I'm a Dunfermline boy!'

"We need, in fact I demand, a maternity unit back here!

"I've always been quite proud of Dunfermline, you can tell people it's the ancient capital and you've got a story right away.

"I love the 'Toon', it's where I started, we played the Kinema and those places, we are very much rooted in Dunfermline."

And while Pete - who is currently one quarter of the band alongside Jimmy Murrison, Lee Agnew, and Carl Sentence - doesn't use the word "Legendary" to describe himself or Nazareth, he is all too aware of the legacy he has left in his birth place, and how that will continue for years to come.

"You still get young rock bands, out of all the things that there have been, rap and disco and whatever else, you still have young bands starting up playing rock, it'll never go away," he said.

"As long as there are guitars, that's never going to go away, and we were all the guys that started that.

"We were right there for the very start of the rock bands, I remember saying a long time ago that rock and roll will never die and it won't as long as young guys keep playing.

"Look at Dunfermline alone, look at all the bands, really, really good bands, it's quite incredible the amount of home grown talent, it must be something in the water I think!

"It's nice to know if you're not influencing them, at least you know you started out the road they eventually joined."

Nazareth will play the Alhambra on Saturday, April 29, with tickets still available online via Ticketmaster or from the Kingsgate Centre box office.