Trailblazers for 1980s Scottish acts like Big Country, Wet Wet Wet, Del Amitri, Deacon Blue, and Texas? Very likely so. Heroes and inspiration for Guns N’ Roses? Most definitely. But the Nazareth story isn’t just another from-rags-to-unheard-of-riches tale of making it in rock‘n’roll.

In the early 1960s there were many fledgling Scottish bands struggling to create a unique sound of their own, but a major factor holding them back was their remoteness from the main hub of the UK music business in London , this was the place you had to be, but frankly nobody was interested in what was happening north of Watford, let alone in Scotland.

Matters were made even worse by Scottish promoters and ballroom managers who insisted that Scottish groups limit their set-list strictly to covers of singles in the UK Top Thirty. In other words, performers like Agnew, Charlton, singer and front man Dan McCafferty and drummer Darrell Sweet were excluded by ‘the machine in London’ yet were trapped into mimicking its often dire output as well.  So, yes, it did really happen that soon-to-be hard rockers Naz were forced – in their original incarnation as the Shadettes – to perform tongue-in-cheek versions of ‘Simple Simon Says’ if they wanted to get paid after the gig.

It was enough to make this group of angry young musos from Dunfermline tell the Brylcreemed Locarno ballroom brigade to stuff it – so instead they went out and conquered the world. What follows is the story – mostly told by Pete Agnew and Dan McCafferty, possibly in greater detail than ever before – of how Nazareth did just that. But first here are some Naz facts to set the scene.