After Knox's unguarded comments about starting a solo career had ensured the death of the original Vibrators in 1980, they seemed destined to be remembered as underachieving also-rans from punk's first wave. However, in 1982 bass player Pat Collier, who had established the highly successful studio enterprise Alaska 127, decided to get the old gang back together, putting out a call to fellow original members John Ellis, Knox, and Eddie. Knox recalls the spirit behind the reunion: "They were initially saying, 'Oh, we can knock out any old rubbish and make some money.' But I said that we couldn't really; we had a history for being a good band, so we had to write good material." One thing his fellow band members did impress on Knox was that they wanted an equal share in songwriting. Not a good idea -- the resulting Guilty suffers from a lot of uneven compositions.