The Intro
In the summer of 75, Bay City Rollers were the biggest band in the UK. Their cover of The Four Seasons’ Bye Bye Baby had become the biggest seller of the year, they had their own ITV series, Shang-a-Lang, and ‘Rollermania’ was considered the new ‘Beatlemania’. There was one more number 1 to come.
Before
Give a Little Love was penned by Johnny Goodison and Phil Wainman. Goodison had been a member of The Brotherhood of Man’s original line-up in 1969 until 1971, and Wainman was a former colleague of Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, producing many of their hits including The Sweet’s number 1 Block Buster !. They conjured up an anthem for their loyal fans to hold their tartan scarfs aloft and sway away to.
Review
By starting Give a Little Love with ‘It’s a teenage dream to be 17/And to find you’re all wrapped up in lo-o-ove’, Goodison and Wainman are ensuring every adoring teenage girl feels like singer Les McKeown is speaking directly to them about their love of the Rollers. The whole song is a love letter to the fans and I can imagine tears being shed to this one at live shows. It’s OK as far as this sort of thing goes, but it goes on a bit, and the single version is strangely missing the strings that were included in the album version – did this get rush-released to capitalise on Bye Bye Baby?
After
Bay City Rollers capped off the end of their peak year with the album Wouldn’t You Like It?, featuring the superior string-laden version of this single, and non-album track Love Me Like I Love You climbed to four. With the UK theirs, they next looked to repeat their fame in the US with the help of Clive Davis, head of Arista. It paid off in early 1976 when Saturday Night, a UK single from 1973, reached 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. However, the pressures of megastardom took their toll on bassist Alan Longmuir, one of the original members of the band. He was replaced by 17-year-old Ian Mitchell from Northern Ireland, the first non-Scottish member. Money Honey and a cover of Dusty Springfield’s I Only Want to Be with You were huge hits in the UK, peaking at three and four respectively.
From 1977, the fortunes of the Rollers faded. It’s a Game reached 16, but You Made Me Believe in Magic only just scraped into the UK top 40, and it was their last single to do so here and in the US. Mitchell quit and was replaced by Pat McGlynn, and there were arguments over the band’s future direction. They worked with Harry Maslin, a producer for David Bowie, but it didn’t work out.
At the end of 1978, McKeown quit and manager Tam Paton was fired. They decided to become a new wave band, and became simply the Rollers. South African Duncan Faure became the new singer. But they couldn’t come close to the fame they had in the mid-70s, and called it a day in 1981. In 1982 Paton was convicted of gross indecency with two teenage boys aged 16 and 17.
The inevitable reunions with shifting line-ups soon began and continued throughout the 80s and 90s. 1999 saw the classic line-up of McKeown, Alan Longmuir (Derek declined), Stuart ‘Woody’ Wood and Eric Faulkner performed on the final New Year’s Eve of the millennium outside Edinburgh Castle. Paton found himself in the news several times in the last few years of his life as further allegations of his predatory past came to light. He was arrested for child sexual abuse charges in 2003 but they were later dropped, and he was also accused of trying to rape McGlynn in a hotel room in 1977, but it was decided there was insufficient evidence. Original singer Gordon ‘Nobby’ Clark claimed in 2016 that Paton had urged the band to have sex with paedophile Radio 1 DJ Chris Denning. Paton died in 2009 of a suspected heart attack.
In 2007 the ‘classic’ line-up of the group plus Faure announced a lawsuit against Arista for ‘tens of millions’ in unpaid royalties. But their move was delayed by a 2010 lawsuit by Clark, Mitchell and McGlynn against the band. It took until 2016 for the original case to be decided, with an out-of-court settlement in which parent company Sony Music awarded each member £70,000.
The latest incarnation of the Bay City Rollers began in 2018, and includes Wood. Alan Longmuir died in 2018 after falling ill while on holiday in Mexico, and Mitchell died in 2020 from throat cancer. McKeown died of a cardiac arrest in 2021, aged 65.
The Outro
In 2023, ITV broadcast the documentary Secrets of the Bay City Rollers. DJ Nicky Campbell, who was himself abused as a child, highlighted the shocking abuse members of the band suffered at the hands of Paton.
The Info
Written & produced by
Johnny Goodison & Phil Wainman
Weeks at number 1
3 (19 July-8 August)
Births
30 July: Artist Graham Nicholls
31 July: Radio DJ Stephanie Hirst
Deaths
7 August: Labour MP Jim Griffiths
Meanwhile…
19 July: Hatton Cross tube station was opened, completing the first phase of the extension of the London Underground’s Piccadilly line to Heathrow Airport.
1 August: The Government’s anti-inflation policy came into full effect. During the year, inflation reached 24.2% – the second-highest recorded level since records began in 1750, and the highest since 1800.
