This affable documentary should perhaps have a different title; it would be more accurate to call it The Richard Jobson Story, consisting as it does entirely of Jobson – erstwhile frontman of the Scottish punk act Skids, TV presenter, film-maker and novelist – ruminating on these and other endeavours that have kept him busy since his teen years in the 1970s. In between the bits of archive footage, Jobson gets a haircut, tries on a leather jacket or two, and trundles around the stage in a sleeveless T-shirt reliving the glory days.
The way Jobson tells it, his and the band’s ascent to national prominence in the late 70s was bit of a miracle in itself: growing up in a bleak, postindustrial mining village outside Dunfermline, his first stroke of luck was bumping into Sid Vicious in Malcolm McLaren’s Sex shop on a trip down to London as a 15-year-old in 1976 to try to buy some leather trousers. Becoming a face on the early punk scene, Jobson’s second bit of luck was meeting fellow Dunfermline-ite Stuart Adamson, who asked him to join his nascent band after an audition at Cowdenbeath Workingmen’s Club. Jobson’s stories of Skids’ early days are pretty entertaining – most of them involving some kind of mass fight – as the band became part of the record-industry feeding frenzy after punk rock broke through in 1977.
Jobson appears to remain justifiably proud of Skids’ best known songs – Into the Valley, The Saints Are Coming, Charles – and it remains bit of a late-70s madeleine to see him cavorting around on Top of the Pops. He is also fairly forthright about in his views on various fellow travellers (his dislike for John Lydon and Nancy Spungen is readily apparent) while former bandmates Rusty Egan and the late John McGeoch get a bit of a pasting for other reasons. Conversely Jobson, understandably, seems reluctant to talk in detail about Adamson, his former songwriting partner, who left Skids in 1981, went on to find major success with Big Country and who killed himself in 2001; it’s clearly a sensitive subject. Well, Jobson appears to have emerged from it all relatively unscathed, and this film is an engaging stroll down the byways of 70s pop culture.
• The Story of Skids: Scotland’s No 1 Punk Band is in cinemas from 1 October.
