The Rezillos: Destination top of the pops..again!

OLD punks never die – OK, they do sometimes – they simply fade away. But that's not strictly true either. Take, for example, The Rezillos, the pop-punk legends who first emerged in Edinburgh in 1976, had a Top 20 hit, a sell-out world tour and a deal with a major record label . . . but, just 19 months later, split up.

Then, 25 years after they called it a day, the Capital band made an unexpected – and wholly unlikely – comeback after their most notorious song, Somebody's Going To Get Their Head Kicked In Tonite, was plucked from obscurity to be included on the massively successful Jackass: The Movie soundtrack.

"I was in a plane crossing the Atlantic watching Jackass on one of those back-of-the-headrest type devices when suddenly I heard myself singing on the track. That was the first I knew about it," recalls frontman Eugene Reynolds (real name Alan Forbes), who fronted The Rezillos alongside Sheila Hynde (aka Faye Fife), Jo Callis (aka Warm), Alan Paterson (aka Angel) and Simon Bloomfield (aka Templar).

Enjoying a new lease of life as a whole generation of youngsters discovered their music for the first time, the back-in-demand band reformed to perform in front of a massive crowd at the Capital's Hogmanay celebrations in 2002.

Still together as they are, The Rezillos insist they are not just here to become caricatures of their 1970s selves. Far from it, the band, who release a new single, No.1 Boy, today, reckon their best is still to come. No.1 Boy was actually written when the idea to get The Rezillos back together was first mentioned, but that was before we really got together," explains Reynolds.

"We toyed with the idea of getting back together as long ago as 1996, and we wrote some more songs, but we didn't get back together.

"And so when we eventually did get back together, we had a bedrock of a few new songs which showed us that we were still of a mind to write new songs rather than just keep on performing the old ones."

Unsurprisingly, he feels the band is even better than in its heyday. "No doubt about it," he says. "I think we've got edgier,

'I remember us having a hit and still being on £4 a week'

and our sound is harder. But most importantly, there's still lots of ideas floating around in our heads from the original time when we broke up that we hadn't really expressed. So there's a backlog of that to get through, and you have to find a way to subtly reinvent yourselves but still be true to your roots."

In the years they were apart, Reynolds established a successful motorcycle business in Lasswade but was delighted when all the band members decided to reform.

"When you have got music in your blood, you can never shake it out," he says. "It's like a musical virus that you can't get rid of. As long as there's chemistry between the members of the band and you still have nearly all the original members that are medically fit and able to do it then why not?

"In a way we were artificially terminated, so we still had unfinished business as a band."

One thing that's never been quite clear about The Rezillos is why they split at the height of their success?

"I don't know, there's a lot of pressures that come on you – from all directions," says Reynolds. "Family pressures, relationship pressures, friendship pressures, music pressures, business pressures . . . I can't begin to explain how the pressure gets rained down on top of you and it's a life-changing experience.

"If it happens to you, it quite often happens to you when you are quite young, when you might not be mentally prepared to see it as a career. And we didn't look at The Rezillos as a career. If we had, we should have stayed together and been millionaires, because we would have been."

Was it the usual rock 'n' roll excesses that did them in all those years ago? "We were wild, I'll admit that," admits the 54-year-old. "But I don't think you want to print some of the things we did.

"You've got to be irresponsible to do some of the things we were doing, but sometimes when you are on the edge that's when your most creative times come out."

As it turns out, they could only afford to push the boat out so far when the time came to party. For even at the height of their fame, The Rezillos were as hard-up as any other band on the Edinburgh music scene.

"I remember us having a hit single, and still being on £4 a week," laughs Reynolds. "So anyway, the day after we were on Top of the Pops, we thought let's get out and celebrate. Sadly, we didn't have any money for a drink, so we did the usual thing and went through all our jacket pockets and looked down the back of the sofa. Anyway, we managed to get enough together for a half pint, between us.

"I remember us being in Bennets Bar in Tollcross sharing that half, and a man came up and said 'I can't believe it, they're on Top of the Pops, and they're still too damn mean to buy a pint each'."

But that, presumably, is how the public perceive pop stars? "Yes," agrees Reynolds, "they've seen you on the telly, and they assume that means you've had a gold bar thrust into your hands. Or that someone gives you a cheque book and says 'write those cheques for as much money as you want'. Far from it."

Pausing for thought, he adds, "Nah, you are more liable to earn money decades after the event if you've managed to survive live."

Just like The Rezillos, then? "You know, The Rezillos have seen themselves go from nobodies, to somebodies, to has-beens, to nobodies, and now we've become legends. But I've never been in it for the money. I'm just grateful that we're still able to do this; still loving to do this. You can't ask for any more than that, can you?

"We just have to hope what we do transmits in a way, but we still want to have hit records, and we've still got a hunger. This isn't about going and re-living glory days, we really want this to happen."

• The Rezillos release No.1 Boy today