Rollers took on the world with bouffants and half-mast tartan troosers

Every morning, a gaggle of teenage girls would be waiting at the bottom of one of the tenement stairs. I was not being immodest in acknowledging they were not there for me, a hirsute hippie bringing disgrace to the Royal Mail uniform.

But this is where the aforementioned Rollers enter the plot. For the gals were there for one of them. I forget which one. At that time, Warrender Park was a douce, respectable area of Edinburgh (now occupied entirely by students from England; sshht, not supposed to say things like; true but).

Of course, I’d no interest in pop. I was (still am) into prog, the classical music of rock. All the same, I knew about the Rollers. There was no avoiding them, certainly in those days, the mid-Seventies, of one three-channel telly per household.

Researching the Rollers’ genesis (not the revered prog band of that name), I was surprised to read their origins lay in 1964, when I was barely out of nappies.

It started with the Longmuirs, 16-year-old Alan on acoustic guitar, younger brother Derek on drums, and cousin Neil Porteous on second guitar. They called themselves The Ambassadors, but only performed once, at a wedding.

Still, it was the start of something big. After various permutations over the next decade, generally under the name The Saxons (thus Scotia pre-Salmond), by 1973 they’d become the Bay City Rollers (Michigan’s Bay City sounding arguably more sexy than the Lumphinnans Rollers). This was under the classic line-up: the aforementioned Longmuirs (Alan now on bass), Stuart “Woody” Wood (guitar), Eric Faulkner (spoons) and Les McKeown (vocals).

In 1974, they exploded on the scene with the unforgettable “Remember”, which reached six in the charts, followed by “Shang-a-Lang” (two), “Summerlove Sensation” (three), and “All of Me Loves All of You” (four). Their cover of the Four Seasons’ “Bye, Bye, Baby” stayed number one in Britain for six weeks, selling nearly a million copies and becoming the biggest hit of the year.

By 1975, the papers were talking of “Rollermania”, as in the previous decade’s Beatlemania. By 1976, the band was also huge in America, Australia, Canada and yonder Japan. Internationally, following the band’s lead, fans took to wearing platform shoes, tartan scarves tied to their wrists, and calf-length tartan trousers, which did not look daft at all.

Their principal audience consisted of teenage girls, an anarchic force which, able to organise itself, could take over the world. For decades now, biologists have tried to understand why, in adolescence, females totally lose the nut, screaming, fainting and wetting themselves at the sight of young men playing musical instruments or just stepping out of aeroplanes.

Romantic undertones are suspected, but what possible chance could they have among so many? Perhaps it’s a ritual of reverence for emerging masculinity. I’m getting a message in my earpiece. Out of my depth? No, I’m not. It’s science. Eh? All right, yes, I am just talking tripe off the top of my head. Leave me alane.

Back to the narrative. At this time, Alan Longmuir decided to jack it in, partly out of discomfort at being a chap in his late twenties playing in a teen band. More personnel changes followed and, soon, the game was effectively up – up to a point. The band continued, in one form or another, initially switching to a more new wave sound.

In succeeding years, amid the usual fall-outs and lawsuits, they became a tribute band to themselves (with the aforementioned Longmuir eventually rejoining).

Longmuir, who had retrained as a building inspector, died in July 2018, aged 70, after contracting an illness in Mexico (following two heart attacks and a stroke). McKeown was by Longmuir’s bedside in Scotland the day before he died. After problems with drink and drugs, McKeown himself died of cardiac arrest in April 2021, aged 65, and another former member, Ian Mitchell, passed away in September 2020 of throat cancer. He was 62.

Thankfully, as it were, the band lives on in name at least, with Woody and others perpetuating “Scotland’s original boy band”, as the official website puts it.

So, how to access the contribution of the Rollers to Scottish and international culture? Did they bring shame on Scotia? No, of course not. No more than the Osmonds or the Partridge Family did America.

They were wholesome enough looking lads, causing harm to no one. Their music might have been bubblegum, but they were no blowhards. They were just local boys, taken over by a sudden elevation to fame. With that comes terrible pressures that few young folk can withstand, without recourse to drugs, alcohol or peculiar sexual practices.

The last-named was more particularly associated with the band’s manager Tam Paton, whose alleged sordid shenanigans will not sully these virtuous and respectable pages.

Various estimates put the band’s record sales at between 120 million and 300 million worldwide, so those young gals must have been enjoying the music as much as gawping at the boys’ troosers. It’s been said they were all image and no music, but folk surely don’t put on a record unless they like the tune.

When respectable, prog-loving ratepayers play Genesis’s seven-section Supper’s Ready sequence, it’s not because they admired singer Peter Gabriel’s partially scalped hairstyle. It’s for lyrics like: “Yes, we’re happy as fish and gorgeous as geese/And wonderfully clean in the morning.”

Influenced by Burns and Wordsworth, the Rollers’ lyrics similarly yearned for cosmic meaning, as in this section from Shang-a-Lang: “Yeah, we sang shang-a-lang/And we ran with the gang/Doin’ doo wop be dooby do, aye.” To be fair, I thing that’s actually “eye”.

But, aye, the Rollers surely made a notable contribution to pop. They brought innocent happiness to their young female constituency, who screamed in ritual reverence at … oh, right, I’ll can that now.