ROCKER Billy Rankin has seen it all - and done even more. He has toured the world "with every band on the planet", played in front of crazed audiences of thousands and met all his music heroes.

Now the former guitarist with Nazareth has come full circle as a DJ on 96.3 Rock Radio, Scotland's first classic rock station and the first in the UK to be broadcast on FM.

The station has just marked its first birthday with a mega bash at The Garage, starring the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Gun, Thunder and others, raising over £12,000 for Nordoff-Robbins Scotland, a music therapy charity.

Scots legend Frankie Miller was guest of honour at the gig, which may now become an annual event.

Kirkintilloch-born Billy is delighted to join such Rock Jocks as Tom Russell and Wild Willie - playing, as he puts it, "tracks by all the bands I've got the dirt on".

"I was invited in by Jay Crawford, the programming director, on a totally different matter.

"I lent him a tenner about 20 years ago and thought I was going to get it back - instead he offered me a position as a presenter.

"But I'm having a great time here. I was a musician for 30-odd years and I've got a lot of interesting stories.

"I know my music, so I'm able to say more than just here's another one from Van Halen'. I can actually tell you what I did to Van Halen."

Our ears prick up. What did you to Van Halen?

"Not half as much as what I did to Iron Maiden," he laughs.

When he was just 17, Billy joined the Zal Band - the Sensational Alex Harvey Band without Alex, "and toured till I felt 42."

He was to have joined top-selling German rockers The Scorpions, "but they changed their minds, citing language difficulties'."

He joined Nazareth in 1980, had a solo US hit in 1984, toured extensively, rejoined Nazareth and later was part of the reformed SAHB as Alex for the Frankie Miller Barrowlands concert.

Billy has even written songs which have been sung by such stars as Meatloaf.

He's widely seen as one of the top rock guitarists ever to emerge from Scotland.

His gilded career enabled him to meet "all my heroes, including Paul and Linda, Alvin Lee, Bill Nelson and Ted Nugent - and they were all great."

He does, however, admit to attending Be-Bop Deluxe guitarist Bill Nelson's third wedding "and managing to upset his entire family".

It's open to question whether the Scot would be invited to Nelson's fourth wedding, should it ever come about.

Jay Crawford recalls that in 1980, aged 24, he accompanied Nazareth - complete with Billy on guitar - on a tour of the US. The memories live with him still.

"I came home having aged about a dozen years," he says. "It was a real eye-opener. That's the way to see America, on tour with a successful rock band.

"But it's great having Billy as part of the team here - he brings extra credibility to the line-up. He's learning new skills, and hopefully it's also an exciting new challenge for him."

The success of Rock Radio shows that rock music never fades in popularity, even if its visibility waxes and wanes.

Says Jay: "The first radio show I ever presented was a rock show, five nights a week, and the very first song I played was Led Zeppelin's Communication Breakdown.

"That was in January 1975, when you had bands like Zeppelin, the Who and the Rolling Stones.

"Funnily enough, these bands are still huge today."

The station mines the field of classic rock, which effectively means everyone from Bon Jovi, Pink Floyd, U2, Zeppelin and Meatloaf to Queen, Big Country and Thin Lizzy.

"Apart from all that, we have a contemporary playlist, featuring bands like Airborne, and Logan who opened the concert at the Garage.

"We also have air-time for bands who have been around for a long time and whose new singles would otherwise be overlooked.

"We've had fantastic support from the artists. We even had requests from bands who wanted to play the Garage gig but we just didn't have space to put them all on," adds Jay.

Rock Radio's head of presentation Ciaran O'Toole, who has a Saturday night show, said the station had rejuvenated a number of long-established acts, including Gun and the Sensational Alex Harvey Band.

Gun fans from across the Continent arrived to see them perform an electric set at the birthday party.

Added Ciaran: "It's just been fantastic, getting the station off the ground after Billy and Jay had the original idea.

"From then it's been a case of gradually building up the listeners."

Positive feedback has been received from male and female rock fans, he added, as well as teenagers who appreciate that classic acts such as Zeppelin and AC/DC have been an influence on modern bands such as The Killers or My Chemical Romance.

The station's managing director Billy Anderson said: "Rock is a music genre that hasn't been serviced properly, certainly not on FM or on commercial FM ever. We're not only Scotland's first dedicated station, we're the UK's first.

"It was, to say the least, an exciting proposition to do something different.

"You really can't say that listening to AC/DC's Highway to Hell at 8.10am on your way to work is the same as listening to Robbie Williams or Elton John or pretty much anything else that is played on radio." You can listen to 96.3 Rock Radio online at www.rockradio.co.uk