Frank Zappa once said there were only two bands worth buying a ticket to see: The Mothers Of Invention and “an English group called The Sensational Alex Harvey Band.”

I doubt that went down well with Alex or any other Scotsman. But he was half-right – The SAHB were a fantastic live band. They were also the first band I ever saw, on a school trip to York in 1973, at the university where my daughter would end up studying years later.

I didn’t know much about them at the time but it was a great gig for my first. No one else captured their theatricality – the stripy-shirted Harvey with his menacing movements contrasting with guitarist Zal Cleminson in his somehow even more menacing clown make-up.

A kind of Glaswegian precursor of Ian Dury, Harvey brought elements of music hall into his Dickensian stage persona, creating characters for his songs – Vambo, Midnight Moses, Sergeant Fury, Tomahawk Kid and the titular fellow from a sinister song called There’s No Lights On The Christmas Tree Mother, They’re Burning Big Louie Tonight.

I remember Harvey constructed a wall across the front of the stage during the performance, spray-painting it with graffiti before finally demolishing the polystyrene bricks in a violent onslaught during the set closer, Vambo.

His most memorable character was the relgious con man known as The Faith Healer, in what would become the band’s signature song with its an ominously pulsing bass, the rattle of maracas, the tweets of a synthesiser, a distinctive keyboard melody, crunchy guitar riffs and theatrical vocals.

The SAHB are usually lumped in with Glam because of their costumes and make-up, but apart from Harvey – a tough Glaswegian already pushing 40 – the musicians had been in a local prog group called Tear Gas.

Harvey had been in skiffle groups since the mid-Fiftires and at Alloa Town Hall in 1960 he supported a singer called Johnny Gentle, whose backing band – an up-and-coming group called The Silver Beetles – went on to become quite famous in their own right.

Alex Harvey died a day before his 47th birthday in 1982 – ten years after his younger brother Les was electrocuted live onstage with his band Stone The Crows.