WHEN Tom Robinson saw the Sex Pistols play in the sweltering summer of 1976, it kicked open the door for the art of confrontation.

What followed was a story of how punk energy fired up Tom’s gay-rights anthem, Glad to Be Gay.

“Oh, it was anger. Sheer and utter anger,” recalled Robinson who is lined up for this year's Ramsbottom Festival.

“It was like a pressure cooker of emotions and tempers were fraying.

“There was a race riot at the Notting Hill Carnival – The Clash wrote White Riot about that – and there was a lot of discontent at the way the Police were behaving towards minorities like the gay community.

“I was a gay teenager and I ended up trying to take my life.”

He made his name in the 1970s as singer and bass player in the Tom Robinson Band, best known for 2-4-6-8 Motorway and further hits Don’t Take No For An Answer and Up Against The Wall.

Subsequently he has become an author, commentator and Radio 6 presenter.

But in September Tom will be on the bill alongside Idlewild and on the Go Team as part of the Saturday line-up for the Ramsbottom Festival.

Then in October he will be heading off around the UK with his band which includes Faithless drummer for a tour to promote his first album in 20 years, Only the Now.

It is hard to believe that it is now nearly 40 years since Tom Robinson first came to prominence.

He recalls writing Glad to Be Gay on an acoustic guitar in his flat, intending it as a one-off for a Gay Pride march.

“The title came from a slogan I’d seen on badges,” he said. “I never thought it would see the light of day again.

“It was my attempt at a wake-up call and the song seemed like commercial suicide at the time.”

John Peel was the only Radio One DJ to play it, even though it’s a great sing-a-long track.

“Maybe we got lucky because times were changing,” said Robinson.

“With the arrival of punk, it was a time when people were doing things differently, challenging the norms – and there was a sense that almost anything went.

“Perhaps people were just ready for the idea of a minority standing up for their rights.”

Robinson, who also enjoyed a notable solo success with his top 10 hit War Baby, added: “The ethics of the punk movement was based on realism.

“Real people singing about real experience with real passion.

“It’s funny, I did get quite a lot of stick from the gay community, people saying stuff like, ‘It’s so embarrassing, this clumsy football chant, it makes me sick every time I hear it, it’s just so crass'.

“But for each one of those, you also found the opposite – sympathetic straights like Peel going ‘That’s a brave stance, let’s support them.”

Now, inspired by the new music he has heard through his popular national radio Music Show, Robinson has returned with his first album in nearly twenty years, Only The Know.

The songs are as vibrant and edgy as any he’s ever written: the sound of a veteran craftsman

He added: “I’m now married with kids, but Glad to Be Gay was about anyone who didn’t conform.

“I never imagined that, nearly 40 years later, it would be called the gay national anthem, or that we’d have openly gay pop stars and a Tory Prime Minister campaigning for gay marriage.

Tom Robinson and his band play the Ramsbottom Festival, Saturday, September 19. Details from www.ramsbottomfestival.com