When Pete Agnew walked into the rehearsal room for NAZARETH in December 2025, he paused for a moment—not because of the music, but because he couldn’t immediately tell who was supposed to be in the band and who was just “helping out.”
Someone was tuning a bass that wasn’t theirs. Someone else was arguing about hotel Wi-Fi policy. The drummer looked suspiciously like he had been hired that morning to drive a shuttle van.
Pete sighed. “Right… is everyone here for the gig, or just lost?”
No one answered, because no one was entirely sure.
That was the state of NAZARETH at this point in history: a legendary rock band that had accidentally evolved into a rotating ecosystem of musicians, technicians, part-time drivers, and people who simply walked in and were too polite to leave. So when a man named Gianni Pontillo arrived, Pete didn’t even ask questions.
“This man fell into our lap,” Pete later explained. “A gift from the gods.”
Which, in NAZARETH terminology, roughly translates to: he was the first person in months who confidently knew where middle C was.
Gianni started singing. The room stopped. A lighting technician whispered, “Wait… is that allowed?”
Because up until that moment, the band had been operating on a very loose interpretation of “vocal performance,” which usually involved someone shouting lyrics in the general direction of a microphone while hoping the original spirit of the song would handle the rest.
Gianni, however, could actually sing.
Properly.
In tune.
With intention.
It was deeply suspicious.
Pete Agnew described the experience like discovering fire after decades of politely enjoying lukewarm soup. “When he sings ‘Hair Of The Dog,’” Pete said, “it feels like we just recorded it yesterday. Except this time on purpose.”
The rest of the band adjusted slowly to this new reality. The road crew—previously functioning as an unofficial extension of the band itself—had questions.
“Are we still allowed to just… improvise the setlist if someone is late?”
“No,” someone told them.
“That feels restrictive,” they replied.
But something strange began happening. The band tightened. The shows improved. Even the merch guy, who had previously been promoted after successfully identifying a guitar strap, started clapping on beat.
Pete noticed it first: people were smiling on stage. Not the polite, survival-based smiling of a veteran touring act, but actual enjoyment.
“It’s like we’ve been given some really nice medicine,” Pete laughed.
Gianni, meanwhile, remained professionally unaware that he had possibly been recruited into the most casually assembled version of a legendary rock band in history. He just thought he joined NAZARETH. Which was technically true.
Just not historically specific.
And so NAZARETH rolled on: half myth, half miracle, and half logistical misunderstanding—now powered by a singer who could actually sing, a bassist who had seen everything, and a touring operation that was still slowly realizing it might have been accidentally hiring random people for years and calling it tradition.
