‘Money is the glue that helped to bond us’
tured sound was always destined for a short shelf life, made shorter still by their constant interference with a winning formula. Perhaps their desire is simply to lift that curse?
‘I don’t believe in all that curse stuff,’ said McKeown. ‘I don’t think it came down to bad luck – it was down to terrible management and a lot of thieves around taking advantage of us.’
It is a spirited reading of events but one which scarcely takes account of the tumultuous reversals in fortune which befell the band’s various members.
One wonders what Faustian pact transformed humble covers band The Saxons, formed in 1966 by brothers Alan and Derek Longmuir with school mates from Edinburgh’s Tynecastle High, into the worldwide phenomenon named after Bay City, Michigan, a place name found by a pin stuck in a map.
It is tempting to think the band must have assembled at some deserted crossroads outside Edinburgh to sign away their lives to the Machiavellian Tam Paton, a local pop promoter who installed himself as their manager and secured them the deal with Bell Records in 1971 that propelled them to the big time.
Bell brought in hit-makers Phil Coulter and Bill Martin – writers of Britain’s first Eurovision Song Contest winner, Puppet on a String, for Sandie Shaw in 1967 – to sprinkle their magic dust.
Irishman Coulter was struck by their ‘unshakeable’ belief that they would one day be famous even though ‘they could barely tune their guitars’. He insisted on using session musicians to complete the tracks without eating up costly studio time, a source of friction with the band, who wanted to play.
Martin, from Govan, recalled: ‘They would have been better blowing their noses because they weren’t good musicians.’
McKeown was drafted in as frontman by Paton with the promise of £10 a week after original singer Nobby Clark quit shortly before they exploded into the charts with Remember (Sha La La La), which reached number six in early 1974 before Shang-a-Lang reached number two. Rollermania was born.
Paton booked a whirlwind UK tour to take advantage and McKeown recalled the madness that ensued: ‘We would go on and the police would make us stop because they just could not control the crowd. The streets outside were all covered in kids fainting and crying.’
The Rollers had found a brand new gap in the market – pre-teen girls were buying records and the moneymen exploited it shamelessly. Coulter and Martin walked when the band demanded more artistic involvement, but Phil Wainman, noted for his work with Sweet, XTC, Dollar and Mud, was drafted in to keep the hits coming.
He asked them to cover an old Four Seasons hit from the Sixties, Bye Bye Baby, which stayed at number one in early 1975 for six weeks, turning everyone tartan-crazy. The next single, Give A Little Love, also went to number one, their last, and within two years they would trouble the charts no more.
At the height of their fame, Paton turned his parents’ council house i n Prestonpans, East Lothian, into a fan club and employed 17 girls just to reply to sackloads of fan mail.
Danny Fields, who edited America’s influential teen magazine 16, recalled in a recent BBC documentary: ‘Five cute guys at once. That’s the story of rock ’n’ roll. The invention of boy bands became an industry thanks to the Bay City Rollers.’
As the powerhouse of that ‘ industry’, the Rollers found themselves touring relentlessly as the money men sought to squeeze every last cent from their popularity.
But the strain was already beginning to tell and McKeown was the first to crack. On a rare trip home to see his parents in