Rollers’ legal saga reaches end of the road
Author says chart-topping band members got just £70k in royalties
Members of the Bay City Rollers have won less than £70,000 each in an out-of-court settlement of their long-running pursuit of millions of pounds in unpaid royalties, according to a new biography of the 1970s chart-toppers.
Music industry giants Sony are said to have settled out of court earlier this year after a decade-long battle over Edinburgh pop outfit.
They sold more than 120 million albums in their heyday, but were left virtually emptyhanded in the wake of bitter legal wrangles.
Author Simon Spence spent a year investigating the troubled background of the band for his book, The Dark History Of The Bay City Rollers.
He said he discovered a strict confidentiality agreement is in place over a deal, which the key members of the band are believed to have agreed with Sony, parent company of their label Arista Records.
At one point the Bay City Rollers, whose hits included Remember, Shang-a-lang, Bye Bye Baby and Saturday Night, were reported to have been owed more than £70 million in unpaid royalties.
His book charts the efforts of the various band members – including Les Mckeown, Eric Faulkner, Stuart Wood, Alan Longmuir and Derek Longmuir – to recoup their royalties after being plunged into financial ruin when the Rollers split in the early 1980s.
It also lifts the lid on the drug and alcohol addiction problems which dogged the group and the influence of their longtime manager Tam Paton, jailed for gross indecency against two teenage boys.
Spence said the key members of the Rollers received just one previous royalty payment of £120,000 each when a previous out-of-court settlement was reached in 1987. A new lawsuit was launched 20 years later.
He writes: “In early May 2016, I was told by a reliable source, that the band and Sony had settled out of court. There had been no concrete developments in the lawsuit reported by the media.
“The settlement figure was rumoured to be $3.5m (£2.9m) and the band members were said to have come away with just about £70,000 each. It seemed a believable, if rather limp, ending to their epic struggle with the record industry.
“After all, there had been a similar amount of money on offer from the label for many years.
“It had been tens of millions they had been chasing.”
A new wave of “Rollermania” was triggered last September when Mckeown, Wood and Alan Longmuir revealed they were reuniting for a series of festive shows.
They played the T in the Park festival in July.