The Skids frontman Richard Jobson is still fond of the Fife library that was his favourite songwriting spot

RICHARD JOBSON has taken a step back in time – and he’s loving every minute of it.

The Skids frontman has not only returned to the music that made his name, but gone right back to where it all came from.

Fife-born Richard’s current focus has been on the band that rocketed him to fame and that meant a return to – an admittedly very different – Dunfermline Library.

Now, the Dunfermline Carnegie Library & Galleries is an award-winning building.

Then, it was just the cosy place he could pen some hits.

“It’s where it all began for me,” Richard, 56, told iN10. “I wrote all the Skids lyrics there.

“It was a nice, warm place – I lived in a house with five boys, so there wasn’t a lot of room to write there.

“I’d go straight to the library after school and then later on we would rehearse and I’d hang out there.

“It was nice and quiet and, as well as that, the society in the mid-’70s was quite a macho culture. Sitting around writing poetical lyrics was never going to go down well with some of the local lads, so the library felt like an OK place to do it.

“It worked very well for me and I’m still very fond of it.”

It’s 40 years since Richard joined The Skids as a 16-year-old in 1977 and fame, he recalls, came quickly over the next couple of years with smash hits such as Into The Valley and Working For The Yankee Dollar.

“We were almost instantaneously successful. We went from our own independent records in Dunfermline to suddenly being signed to Virgin Records.

“Everything happened so fast, doing a couple of albums a year, but it ended so quickly, too.”

The band was at its peak when guitarist Stuart Adamson quit to form Big Country, while Richard went on to the critically-acclaimed, but less commercial, The Armoury Show.

Did it rankle that Adamson’s departure brought The Skids shuddering to a halt?

“Initially there was a sense of confusion and anger,” admits Richard. “But I’m not a bitter person. My relationship with Stuart remained cordial and then it warmed up, although it wasn’t as close as it once was.”

The current 40th Anniversary Tour showcases the big hits as well as new material.

And fans who had bought the early records but never caught the Skids on tour have been enjoying seeing the music live after all these years.

Interest has been such that extra dates have been added, with forthcoming appearances including in Dalkeith, Inverness and Dundee.

They were also due to be the support for Green Day at Glasgow’s Bellahouston Park in July, a concert sadly cancelled at the last minute.

That stemmed from a relationship forged when the American rockers and U2 recorded a cover version of The Skids’ The Saints Are Coming to raise money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2006.

“We were invited to the Abbey Road studios to watch them do it,” recalls Richard.

“It was really exciting. To have the two biggest rock ’n’ roll bands in the world doing a song you wrote in Dunfermline Library when you were 15, well, you could never have predicted that.

“And it was amazing to see them play it live during Monday Night Football on American TV to what I’ve been told is one of the biggest audiences in history.”

Richard is proud that the songs still have a resonance with audiences today and says he never finds performing them a chore.

But he’s always had more than one string to his creative bow and he’s also back on the filmmaking front.

He already has the finance in place and has been casting for his latest project to be shot next year.

“It’s about the early years of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley,” he reveals.

“Brady was from the Gorbals and it looks at how they met and how he manipulated her into his world.

“I think that if she had never met him she’d be knitting her grandchildren cardigans now, rather than becoming public enemy No. 1.

“It’s controversial, I know. It’s not been an easy film to cast because their reputation is such that it does concern people.

“But we don’t focus on the murders, the story ends before then.”

The Skids, 40th Anniversary Tour, various dates