DENNIS Greaves is struggling to work out where all the time has gone.

Next Saturday he will be bringing Nine Below Zero to Manchester Academy as part of a tour celebrating the band’s debut album Live at the Marquee which was released 38 years ago.

“It feels like yesterday,” he said. “I can see the dressing room at the Marquee, I can smell it. I remember all the graffiti and opening the doors - it was like an oven. The gig was like a football match, it was astonishing - and somehow that was nearly 40 years ago. How the hell did that happen?”

Live at the Marquee, packed with covers of classic blues songs quickly established Nine Below Zero at the head of a rapidly growing R&B explosion, and the band have remained there ever since.

“There was a studio behind the Marquee and everything was set up which meant we just just plugged the microphones into the wall and it was just piped into the back,” said Dennis.

“We just played the gig and went back and listened to the show, chose the songs, mixed it in half an hour and it was in the shops by Tuesday.

“When I hear it now and I think ‘that’s really fast’ but that’s just youth. But the passion, energy and love for the blues comes across and yet we were such young boys.”

Nine Below Zero were coming through as punk and new wave was challenging the established music scene.

“Punk gave me the opportunity to go out there and form a band and play,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it when we first went out on the road. I thought we were the only ones but then there was Red Beans and Rice, Dr Feelgood, Split Rivet, the Blues Band with Paul Jones. All of a sudden so many of us were playing blues within this punky independent area, it was fantastic.”

Alexis Korner, one of the most influential figures in the British blues scene, soon became aware of Nine Below Zero.

“He once said to me ‘I love you, you’re like the Stones; you don’t know what you’re doing. There’s no contrived thought process, you just naturally love the blues’.”

Dennis’s passion for the music has not diminished one jot. In 2016 the band released a covers album, 13 Shades of Blue, which featured a brass section for the first time to great critical acclaim. That and a recent tour supporting Squeeze, have seen a dramatic resurgence in interest in the band.

And now they are on the road again with the brass section in tow.

“What’s astonishing is that when you put the brass onto the Marquee album it was as though it was made to happen,” he said. “What a perfect fit!”

“I’ve got to give Adrian our promoter credit. He heard the eight-piece band out last year and said he’d love to hear the Marquee songs done like that. I just went ‘oh shut up’ but he was right. The buzz for tours is terrific.

“It’s the rebirth of Nine Below Zero - it’s lengthened out career. The worst thing you can do when you’ve been around as long as us is to be a tribute band of yourself.

“13 Shades of Blue gave me the licence to have a big band, I’m completely skint now as keeping an eight-piece on the road compared to a four-piece is phenomenally expensive but that’s not what it is all about. It’s about you going on stage having fun and projecting that to your audience so that they don’t see the same old thing.”

Nine Below Zero, Manchester Academy, Saturday, April 28. Details from 0161 832 1111