The
Bay City Rollers were a Scottish
pop/rock band of the 1970s. Their youthful,
clean-cut image, distinctive styling featuring
tartan-trimmed outfits, and cheery, sing-along pop
hits helped the group become among the most popular musical acts of
their time. For a relatively brief but fervent period (nicknamed
"Rollermania"), they were worldwide
teen
idols. The group's line-up featured numerous changes over the
years, but the classic line-up during its heyday included
guitarists
Eric Faulkner and
Stuart Wood, singer
Les McKeown, bassist
Alan Longmuir, and drummer
Derek Longmuir.
Since the band's quick rise to, and subsequent fall from fame, the
members have endured numerous and varied struggles regarding
royalty payments, substance abuse, and personal legal
problems.
History
Early days: formation-1973
Bassist
Alan Longmuir, his younger brother
Derek Longmuir, a drummer, along with
school mate, lead singer Gordon "Nobby"
Clark founded the group in Edinburgh
, Scotland in 1967, as
The Saxons. Shortly afterwards, seeking a less
English-sounding moniker, they chose a new name allegedly by
throwing a dart at a map of the United States
. The dart landed on the map in the state of
Arkansas
, but since
"Arkansas Rollers" did not sound quite right, and might also lead
to problems with pronunciation, they tried again and this time the
dart landed near the community of Bay City, Michigan
.
The Bay City Rollers were managed from early on by the imposing and
controversial
Tam Paton, himself a former
big band leader. Paton was notorious for
his rigid control over all aspects of the band's career, including
the shuffling in and out of group members at a very high rate.
Short term members from this period include
David Paton (member 1969-1970) &
Billy Lyall (member 1969-1971, who went on to be
founding members of another successful Edinburgh band,
Pilot.
The Bay City Rollers received their first break when prominent
record executive
Dick Leahy caught their
act by chance in an Edinburgh club. After signing with Leahy's
Bell Records, the band's first hit
was "
Keep on Dancing" (UK #9, 1971),
a cover of a 1965
Gentrys hit, recorded at
the suggestion of pop impresario and producer
Jonathan King who produced it. (Singer Nobby
Clark was backed on vocals on "Keep on Dancing" by King himself
doing multi tracked singing.) Upon this release's success, they
made guest appearances on
BBC-TV's
Top of the Pops.
The group then won a
Radio
Luxembourg-sponsored song contest with the tune "Mañana", which
was later popular in parts of Europe and in
Israel
.
Several non-charting singles were released over the following two
years. This period did see the addition of long term members
Eric Faulkner and
Stuart "Woody" Wood.
In mid 1973 they narrowly missed the UK chart with the 4th single,
"
Saturday
Night", one of many songs written and produced for the band by
the highly successful songwriting duo of Scotsman
Bill Martin and Irishman
Phil Coulter.
By the end of 1973, Nobby Clark had become disillusioned by the
band's lack of success and decided to move on. He was replaced as
lead singer by
Leslie McKeown.
British breakthrough: 1974–75
The five members at the very end of 1973 - the Longmuir brothers,
Faulkner, Wood and McKeown - are generally referred to as the
"classic line-up". In early 1974 McKeown hastily re-recorded lead
vocals of the group's forthcoming single, "Remember (Sha La La
La)", which became a sizable hit and a lead-in to a series of UK
chart hits.
Beginning with "Remember" (UK #6), the Rollers' popularity
exploded, and they released a string of very successful hits on the
British charts. Following in succession were "Shang-a-Lang" (UK
#2), "Summerlove Sensation" (UK #3), and "All of Me Loves All of
You" (UK #4).
By early
1975, they were one of the highest-selling acts in Britain
. That year saw a successful UK tour (which
prompted newspaper headlines about "Rollermania"), and a 20-week UK
television series,
Shang-a-Lang.
A cover of the
Four Seasons'
"
Bye, Bye, Baby"
stayed at #1 in the UK for six weeks in the spring of 1975, selling
nearly a million copies to become the biggest seller of the year,
and the subsequent single "
Give a
Little Love" topped the charts that summer, their second #1
hit. Two full-length LPs were produced during this period:
Once Upon a Star and
Wouldn't You Like
It?. Each featured the full band playing on all studio
sessions, which had not been the case on earlier recordings. In
addition, Faulkner and Wood were tasked with the vast majority of
the songwriting duties.
At the peak of their popularity in the UK, comparisons were made to
even
The Beatles. Also by this time, BCR
fans had a completely distinctive style of dress, the main elements
of which were ankle-length
tartan trousers and tartan
scarves, a
look which had originally been sported by another Tam Paton Band,
Bilbo Baggins. A popular playground chant of the
time went (to the tune of "
This Old
Man"):
- B-A-Y, B-A-Y,
- B-A-Y, C-I-T-Y,
- With an R-O-double-L, E-R-S,
- Bay City Rollers are the best!
World impact: 1976
As the group's popularity swelled to superstardom in the UK, a
concerted effort was made by
Arista
Records (the record company that evolved from Bell) to launch
the Rollers in America. New Arista head
Clive Davis was instrumental in grooming and
overseeing the project. His work paid off, as in early '76, the
Rollers reached #1 on the US
Billboard
Hot 100 with "Saturday Night", the song that had missed the UK
chart completely two years earlier. The Rollers gave the tune its
American debut via a much-hyped satellite-link performance on
Saturday Night
Live with Howard Cosell.
A second US hit came with "Money Honey", written by guitarists
Faulkner and Wood, which hit #9.
The dark side of the band's unending schedule of tours and
appearances was the great amount of stress the band members felt.
By early '76, the strain of success (and the discomfort of a mature
man in a teen band) had taken its toll on bassist Alan Longmuir,
who decided to leave the group.
He was replaced for 7 months by 17-year-old
Ian Mitchell - the first
band member born outside of Edinburgh, Scotland (he was from
Northern
Ireland
). With Mitchell, the group released an album
titled
Dedication, and hit
the charts with a cover version of the
Dusty Springfield song "I Only Want To Be
With You", which reached US #12, as well as "Yesterday's Hero" and
"Dedication". The album was a step away from the group's musical
independence, however, with Davis and producer
Jimmy Ienner imposing a smaller songwriting
load on the band members.
1977-79
As the Rollers' popularity waned, the shuffling of personnel
continued: Mitchell quit the band, replaced by
Pat McGlynn, who lasted only a few months.
Further struggles around the band involved the direction of their
sound, as the members wished to pursue more sophisticated styles.
They settled on
David Bowie's producer,
Harry Maslin, and summer of 1977 saw the group put forth a
heavily-orchestrated, soft-rock leaning album,
It's a Game as a four-piece group -
McKeown, Wood, Faulkner and Derek Longmuir.
The It's a
Game tour produced the live album
Rollerworld, recorded in '77 at Japan's
Budokan Hall
, but unreleased until 2001.
On the disc, they covered an unsuccessful 1973 single by
String Driven Thing, "
It's a Game" to give them their final UK Top 20
hit (#16 in the spring), but "
You Made Me Believe in Magic"
could only make #34 in the summer. "Magic" managed to just crack
the top ten in the United States, but this would be their final
major success there too.
In 1978, Alan Longmuir reunited with the band for the recording of
Strangers in the
Wind. The release of this LP was timed to coincide with
the debut of the Rollers' US Saturday morning television show
"
The Krofft Superstar
Hour", later renamed "
The
Bay City Rollers Show", on the
NBC network.
The show was a poor match for the band. Their time in the
teen-idol spotlight was slipping away and their
music had matured and become more sophisticated compared to the
bubblegum hits they had released in
'75-'76. The show and album were each dismal failures.
New singer, new name
Following the abject failures of 1978, Les McKeown made the
decision to leave for a solo career, but stuck around long enough
to do a last lucrative concert tour of Japan. The tour was fraught
with problems.
By 1979, the band had split with McKeown, fired Tam Paton and
decided to continue in a more new-wave, rock-oriented sound. Their
name was now simply
The Rollers.
South African-born
Duncan Faure joined the band as new lead
vocalist, guitarist and songwriter. With Faure, the lineup produced
three albums:
Elevator (1979),
Voxx (1980), and
Ricochet (1981). Despite generally inspired performances,
none of the releases found an audience. They officially parted ways
in late 1981.
80s and beyond
During the 1980s and 1990s, there were various short-lived revivals
featuring some of the original members. The classic quintet played
Japan in 1982, and again in '83 with guest spots from both Mitchell
and McGlynn. A slapdash reunion album of sorts,
Breakout, came out in Japan in 1985,
performed primarily by McKeown and McGlynn with minor contributions
from Faulkner, Wood, and Mitchell.
In the late 1980s a version of the band called the "New Rollers"
was formed featuring Faulkner on lead vocals, Kass (Karen Prosser)
on vocals, Jason Medvec on guitar, Andy Boakes on bass, Mark
Roberts on drums. The band toured extensively throughout the US and
Canada as well as tours of the UK and Australia. This group also
released an independent 5-song EP titled "Party Hardy".
In 1990 Stuart Wood and Alan Longmuir joined with Faulkner to tour
under the BCR name, and issued several CDs of re-recordings of the
old Roller tunes. These recordings still turn up frequently on
iTunes and in CD bins.
The classic lineup (minus Derek) performed a one-off show at a New
Year's Eve 1999 concert in Scotland.
In the 2000s, interest
was rekindled in Britain by various
television documentaries about the group and a new TV-advertised
compilation of greatest hits, Very Best of the Bay City
Rollers, which entered the UK charts on release in
2004 at #11.
Currently, Mitchell, Faulkner and McKeown each regularly tour
playing Rollers hits. Due to legal issues over which performers may
use the band name, McKeown's group uses the name:
Les
McKeown's Legendary Bay City Rollers. At present there is
no official Bay City Rollers.
Financial dispute
A recent
Channel 4 documentary,
Who
Got The Rollers' Millions?, explored the speculation about
what happened to the supposed financial fortune the group generated
in their career, with accusations that it was defrauded from the
group by their management and record company. There are claims that
the group sold 100-300 million records and generated the
equivalent of five billion
pounds in
revenue, with the band members themselves earning very
little.
. According to
BBC they sold 70 million
records. However, even this figure has been disputed by several
sources, not least their former record company.
[5279].
In March 2007, six former members of the group (Faure plus the
"classic line-up") announced a lawsuit against
Arista Records in hopes of claiming what they
describe as "tens of millions of dollars" of unpaid royalties.
Nobby Clark has threatened to sue the other band members if their
lawsuit is successful, stating that he was the creative force
behind the band's success, despite the fact that he left the group
in 1973 before the bulk of their fame and fortune began.
[5280][5281]
Discography
Albums
Singles
References
External links
- http://www.lcv.ne.jp/~ryhokaya/bcr-home/ Bay City Rollers
discography
- http://www.eric-faulkner.com/ The unofficial Eric Faulkner
website
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