As a spiffy new CD box set commemorates their influential early albums, Saints founder Chris Bailey tells Brian Boyd about those heady days of being EMI's token Aussie punk band

Only the true punk cognoscenti know to put The Saints up there alongside The Sex Pistols, The Damned, The Ramones and The Clash as the first ones up and over the trenches when the great punk wars began. The Australian band's still seminal I'm Stranded single made it into the record shops way before Anarchy in the UK and New Rose. Their high-octane rock 'n' roll sound delivered three classic punk/new wave albums before they walked away, disillusioned, from a scene that had descended into "cash from chaos".

A new four-CD box set should help jolt a few memories about this largely sidelined band. The Saints' first three albums (I'm Stranded, Eternally Yours and Prehistoric Sounds) are all there in their re-mastered glory, as well as a live CD, culled from a truly banging performance at London's Hope and Anchor venue.

"The box set wasn't my idea, it was the record company's," says Saints frontman Chris Bailey. "It's a snapshot of a different time, a different life. The Saints are still going, and I'd like to think we're much more advanced musically than we were then. But I can still hear certain thematic links between the music then and the music now."

There are two very different versions of The Saints. The first, as captured on this box set, are a three-chord garage rock wonder. But after Prehistoric Sounds and with most original members drifting off, Bailey brought into the band into more "new wave" territory. The Saints, as a Bailey vehicle, still exist but now play a more "mature pop/rock" sound.

Bailey was always uncomfortable with the "punk" epithet: "We were just a bunch of working-class kids from Brisbane who were white guys trying to sound like black guys playing r 'n' b. Somehow, locally we got this reputation as 'obnoxious bad boys' - this would have been the really early days of punk - but we never saw it ourselves.

"One weekend we went in to a studio to record some demos, which we sent off to all the record companies. We were turned down by all of them except for EMI in London, who told us they wanted to release the demos as our first album."

In Brisbane, The Saints had no idea of something called punk rock glowering away in London, but EMI saw them as their "Australian punk band".

"We went from obscurity in Brisbane to the musical mecca that was London at the time. We were signed as a punk rock band, but we really had no idea what that meant. We just didn't have that 'political' thing going for us at all, and we soon found that the London punk scene was more about fashion and art than about music."

That début single, I'm Stranded, absorbed the band, willy nilly, into punk's body politic. "I can see now why we were dragged into that scene, but at the time, we used to get into terrible trouble with the label for not wearing the right clothes and having the right haircut. I mean, I had long, stringy hair. We never really got to produce the image to go along with the product."

Strange but true, it was the Vietnam War which formed The Saints' sound.

"I'm Northern Irish," says Bailey. "From Belfast originally, but we left there when there were signs of trouble brewing at the end of the 1960s, when I was 10. When we arrived in Brisbane, I discovered Elvis Presley. But Brisbane at the time was a popular place for US soldiers serving in Vietnam to go for a bit of r & r. They used to bring these amazing records with them - records which showed me the real roots of rock 'n' roll, the stuff that had inspired Elvis. There was loads of Stax and Motown stuff around as well.

"That was the stuff we were trying to do in The Saints but it wasn't until about our third album, Prehistoric Sounds, that we managed to get somewhere near it and by then EMI had lost interest in us. I think of those first three albums as my teenage corporate years."

Whether as a solo artist or in various different line-ups of The Saints, Bailey has kept recording and touring. "All I ever wanted to be was one of those bohemian artist types, and when we left the major label I got signed by a French indie called New Rose, which allowed me to do what I wanted. Over the years, I was aware that I was always seen as 'that bloke who used to be in that band', and it always astonished me how those early Saints albums kept getting name-checked as 'pivotal' and 'influential'. We had no idea at the time; as I said, the first album was just a bunch of demos recorded over one weekend."

Listening to I'm Stranded now, you realise how much The Hives have learnt from The Saints.

"It's funny you mention that particular band," says Bailey. " I played a show with them in Sweden a few years ago. My wife is Swedish and I speak the language, so I heard The Hives talking away about The Saints and went over and introduced myself. They were a bit shocked and they told me that before they really got going their entire repertoire consisted of The Saints' first album. They always mention us in interviews as big influences. And just listening back again to our first three albums, what does strike me is how they could be released for the first time tomorrow and still sound of this moment."

There will be no Saints reunion to accompany the box set. "I think we are top of that shortlist of bands who could and should reform, but it's not going to happen. First, I still use The Saints name when I tour, so it would be strange to go out on tour with a different Saints. Mainly though, I don't want to turn the whole thing into some sort of punk cabaret. We're all doing very different things now.

"I'm flattered that these records are being re-released and I'm happy where I am - on the periphery of things".

All Times Through Paradise (The Complete Recordings 1976-1978) is on the EMI label