AN EMOTIONAL tribute has paid to legendary Dunfermline band Nazareth's first ever road manager Willie McQuillan.

It has been confirmed by the band's Pete Agnew that McQuillan sadly passed yesterday morning (Thursday).

Agnew says that his friend had been suffering from lung cancer, which he had only recently been diagnosed with.

McQuillan died at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy at the age of 70.

On the band's official Facebook page yesterday evening, Agnew paid tribute to an "amazing guy".

Agnew posted: "It makes me very sad to announce that Willie McQuillan, our very first roadie and dear friend died this morning (Thursday) at 7:30am in Kirkcaldy’s Victoria Hospital.

"He was suffering from recently diagnosed lung cancer.

"Willie was an amazing guy who we first met when he was only a boy of 19.

"He came from the time before everyone in road crews had titles like ‘drum tech, guitar tech, sound engineer, stage manager etc.

"Willie was a ‘roadie’ and proud of it.

"Back in those days a roadie was the guy who had to be able to do all the above jobs after driving the van to the venue, humping all the gear onto the stage, then setting up (and repairing) everything needed to put on the show.

"Willie did all of that stuff at hurricane speed without ever complaining and was in fact a constant source of amusement to all around him.

"But that doesn’t really say enough about how much the man was known and loved by, not only us in the band and crew, but by all our families.

"Our kids grew up knowing ‘Uncle Willie’ could fix anything and he was in constant demand to perform almost impossible repairs.

"I personally remember stepping on a plastic toy car being operated by my young son and reducing it to what looked like a pile of powdered corn flakes, only to hear the young voice saying 'Oh dad, you better get Willie'.

"Willie didn’t just work with Nazareth.

"He would help out any local band that needed it and was often busy organising events (free gratis) around our home town of Dunfermline.

"One that stands out for me was when one of the local high schools wanted to put on a rock concert with about 20 different bands which could have been a disaster.

"Willie volunteered to set up a sound system for this event but eventually ended up not only mixing every one of these wannabe Bon Jovi's, but running the whole show, which was like putting together a festival on the spot, single-handed, with 20 bands, most of whom had never played a gig in their lives.

"It was an astounding thing to witness and it all ran better than many a (professional?) festival Nazareth have played.

"That was Willie.

"He got his band nickname early in his career when we used to deal with a company called WEM who were the main manufacturers of P.A. systems in the 70s.

"Their advert used to have this saying ‘WHAM ... IT’S WEM’ with all these lightning flashes around the wording.

"We had a huge WEM system with 24 different speaker cabinets of varying sizes which Willie used to throw up at an astounding speed each night, and one night we were watching this and somebody said 'WHAM it’s Willie’ "Much laughter, but the name stuck and from there on (only amongst the band and crew) Willie was affectionately known as ‘Whamits’ ... which eventually became Whamitz , with the Nazareth ‘z’.

"It would take a book for me to say all the things I’d like to say about Willie, but right now I just want to sit here a while and think back on all the crazy years and wonderful times we had together touring the world, and laughing at how daft the place is.

"We’ll miss you Whamitz ..... rest easy pal. x - Pete".