Stuart Adamson - The Skids

The Skids

Adamson founded The Skids in 1977, when he was 18. Adamson and Simpson first recruited drummer Thomas Kellichan. They played as a trio around Dunfermline and Edinburgh until running into "the only other punk in town" on a street corner, 16-year-old Richard Jobson. Jobson was recruited as a frontman; Adamson and Jobson both wrote songs for the band.

The Skids' biggest success was the single "Into the Valley" in 1979, which did well in the UK charts, and still regularly appears in anthologies. The band had four singles chart in the UK that year. Adamson was involved with three of their four albums, leaving in 1980 before Joy. Jobson's influence had increased in the band, which may have led to the increasing disputes between the two artists.

Six years later, Adamson reported he had suffered a nervous breakdown at around this point in his life. He seems to have kept any such problems deeply private though. Jobson later said "This was a guy who had a mortgage, a wife and a family when we were all trying to live some mythic punk lifestyle. He seemed level-headed, grounded."

Adamson was a large part of The Skids' sound, which set it apart from many of the punk/New Wave bands of the period, including slow riffs, as opposed to speedily played ones, which anticipated Black Flag and Grunge's "slow punk".