Old punk songs never die, they just get some sleep

RICHARD Jobson's friend joined the British army in the mid-1970s and was killed while on a tour of duty in Belfast. Back in his native Dunfermline, Scotland, Jobson and fellow Skids band member Stuart Adamson wrote a song about the incident.

"My friend didn't want to go down the mines in Fife," says Jobson. "He was looking for a career and thought the army would turn him into an engineer. But within 20 weeks of basic training he was walking down a street in Belfast with a rifle in his hand and was shot dead."

The song, The Saints Are Coming, went to No 48 in the singles charts on its release in 1978 and laid the ground for subsequent bigger hits for The Skids, including Into the Valley (which is still sung by Charlton FC fans), Masquerade and Working for the Yankee Dollar.

Before U2 ever released anything, The Edge was a big fan of The Saints Are Coming, describing it as a big inspiration for the then just-formed band. Almost 30 years later, The Edge remembered the song when it came to recording a track for Music Rising, the charity created to bring instruments and music programmes back to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The U2/Green Day version has now become a massive global hit, though barely anyone remembers that it's about The Troubles.

You may think that the current album reissue, The Saints Are Coming - The Best of The Skids (EMI Gold), is a bit of cash-in, especially with that title. But it's better viewed as a welcome collection of classic punk-pop anthems from a band who sparkled brightly before prematurely disbanding.

For Jobson, now a successful film-maker, The Skids were all about "the rush, the energy, the audience, the sound of Stuart Adamson's guitar and the two of us flying through the air onstage passing each other mid-flight, smiling with joy."

The Skids fell victim to record company pressure. Their second album, Days in Europa, was deemed "too controversial" because of its album cover, which featured an allegedly "Aryan" image with Germanic gothic style lettering reminiscent of the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

"It was a time when people used these fairly strong images," says Jobson. "But we were the ones who got singled out. It was OK to be called Joy Division, and they even had booking agents called Final Solution, but it wasn't OK for The Skids to use that sleeve? I thought, fuck 'em."

The record company went further than just replacing the cover: they also drafted in Bruce Fairbairn to re-mix the album, apparently for the American market, with the result that the songs were mainly neutered. Shortly after, Bruce Adamson left the band to form Big Country and the momentum was lost.

When The Edge rang up to say that U2 and Green Day were covering The Saints Are Coming, he told Jobson that "good work never dies, it just goes to sleep for a while until somebody wakes it up."

"The Edge was very flattering about my lyrics to the song. That's not something I've had much recognition for, so to hear The Edge praise my words was a great validation of a song I'm very proud of. And even though Green Day are from a different generation to The Skids, as soon as The Edge played them the song and suggested recording it, they got it first time."

If you go to YouTube you can see The Skids performing the song on Top of the Pops. Just two days before the recording, Jobson got into a fight and the BBC make-up department had to work overtime to cover up the bruising around his eyes. "I've got a tooth missing as well," he says. "You can tell by the way I'm singing I'm a real little shit."