I’m not sure when my flirtation with heavy rock kicked in, nor why I was briefly a fan of Nazareth, but I do know when that was. It was 1973.

Perhaps it was Dan McCafferty’s whisky-soaked and cigarette-damaged voice that drew me in: a ravaged rasp that made Rod Stewart sound like Karen Carpenter – and inspired Axl Rose to form a band. Or perhaps it was the loose, ramshackle racket the made, like a harder rocking version of The Faces with even more drink inside them.

Listening now to their hit single Broken Down Angel, which broke into the top ten in 1973, it sounds like nothing so much as a cross between AC/DC and Status Quo.

Nazareth were formed in Dunfermline in 1968 from the remnants of an earlier band, The Shadettes, who dated all the way back to 1961. They started out like a Scottish version of the Stones, blending country and blues into their sound, but by the time they released their third album, Razamanaz (still in my vinyl collection) they had moved over to this harder rocking style.

That heavy edge was reinforced by the album’s producer, Roger Glover of Deep Purple. In a nod to the times, you might discern elements of Glam in the stomping drum sound on some album tracks, though I prefer Manny Charlton’s bluesy slide guitar on their Woody Guthrie cover, Vigilante Man.

Incredibly, they are still soldiering on to this very day with one original member – bass player Pete Agnew, whose son Lee is now the drummer – and, following the retirement in 2013 of McCafferty due to ill health, a new singer called Carl Sentance.