ROLLERMANIA was madness and the feeling of imprisonment was growing. Tam built on it by making sure we were always in our beds by 10pm in our shared rooms, with guys from Artists Services stationed along the corridors to protect us from wily women.
We never had the same roommate twice in a row; we always swapped around, the unlucky fifth one having to share with Tam. It was another way to make sure none of us got too close.
If I sound bitter and twisted about Tam Paton it’s not surprising, really. The one thing I’ve realised since I started writing this is that I’ve always been in denial about how Tam has affected me.
I’ve continually told myself and other people that I was the one that stood up to him. I can see now that it’s not 100 per cent right. I may have thought he couldnae get to me at the time, like he did with the others, but I can see now that I didn’t escape unscathed. He did get inside my head, and he did cause disruption there.
My relationship with Tam from the moment I joined the Rollers was felt to be different to the relationships he had with the rest of the band and I’m sure that was the biggest single reason why I never became really close to any of them. The special relationships that you might think would start to develop between five young guys on the verge of superstardom just didn’t happen.
It would have been so much better if we could all have been best mates, but even in those very early days, my sixth sense was telling me there was something odd going down. I couldnae put my finger on it, but it was as if there was a secret that everyone knew except me.
Each one on his own was OK, but when they were all together, with Tam controlling them, they were a different entity altogether. I used to try to figure it all out. I’d never seen compliance like it. He certainly came across as a real hard bastard. That, together with the fact so many former Rollers had fallen by the wayside so far, made them a wee bit twitchy. The implication was usually unspoken but clear - toe the line or you’re out; there’s plenty more where you came from.
Even at the top of the charts, the band was literally living in fear and there was no way they’d risk anything that might make Tam angry.
But I was experiencing levels of sexual frustration greater than any man could ever imagine. I was surrounded by hot girls and women, and I couldnae get near them. During tours, Tam did everything he could to keep us and the fans apart. Sometimes, a few were allowed backstage after a gig but they were hand-picked by Tam and were usually the ones he fancied himself. Unfortunately, they weren’t the right gender for me.
When it all got too much, which was often, I ran the risk of humiliation and many times all I could do was watch in amazement as he literally dragged girls from my bed and threw them out the door. Outfoxing him became a sport and I started hiding my companions in wardrobes and under my bed.
I started anonymously booking rooms in fake names so that I could install girls in them and sneak out later on when he thought I was safely tucked up in bed. It was a never-ending war which drove us both to distraction.
In Stockholm once, I hid a girl out on the fire escape. Along came Tam and by the time he eventually left she was literally blue with cold. That same tour in Copenhagen, I was accosted by about ten fans in a hotel corridor. I legged it back to my room and while I was fumbling with the key and lock, they managed to literally rip off all my clothes. In Helsinki, after a gig, about 40 girls got wind of us back at the hotel and the chase was on. Up and down corridors, staircases, even through the sauna. I’ll never forget the expressions of sheer disbelief on the faces of the big old boys trying to soak out the strains of the day in the sauna, as a bunch of tartan-clad lads followed by a horde of hormonal teenagers fell in, realised they’d picked the wrong door and fell out again.
At first, I was the only one willing to risk a sexual liaison. I had to keep my activities secret from the other Rollers because I couldnae take the chance that they’d maybe grass me up. On tour, I would have to wait for them all to go out, or claim exhaustion or sickness before I could even think about getting any action. Then, as soon as the coast was clear, I’d dig out my stash of phone numbers - a stash that would normally consist of a few hundred names and numbers left at the hotel before we checked in, or been slipped to me by fans in crowds, or stuck under my hotel room door. To heighten the anticipation, I’d do eenie-meenie-minie-mo on a shortlist of candidates for a wee while, then start phoning around the numbers and literally binge-s***, not knowing when the next opportunity might arise.
A new way of evading Tam presented itself soon after arriving in Australia for the first time, late in 1975. I had really bad jet lag and my mum had given me a couple of Mandrax sleeping pills to take, but the jet lag was still there soon after I woke up again. A local doctor was called in to sort me out fast. The Mandrax were very, very effective. Then it occurred to me that if I could get Tam and the others to take them, I would be free to explore the local delights without fear of being discovered. So, I got them all taking the tablets and off I went.
If that sounds devious, it was nothing compared to some of the schemes dreamed up by the girls trying to get to us. The less imaginative would book themselves rooms in the same hotels. The ones slightly higher up the evolutionary scale would try and get hired as chambermaids or receptionists in the relevant hotels.
Far more likely to succeed was the full frontal approach or getting hold of a lift key and riding the elevators until a Roller got in. The lift then got jammed between floors while the lucky Roller got jammed against the wall.
I’ll probably get slated for having taken advantage of gorgeous, silk-skinned, eager girls and women so indiscriminately. But it’s the essence of being a pop or a rock star - always has been, always will be. It was f****** wonderful, and I’m not going to admit to any kind of retrospective guilt about my behaviour. Knowing that I shouldn’t have been doing it and the ever-present danger of being discovered by Tam made the thrill of it all indescribable.
At the dawn of 1975, everyone was focused on what we’d done so far and where we thought we were going. For once, the band had a bit of an input. It was agreed that Martin and Coulter had done their best with us and there was a danger we would be stuck in a rut if we did many more songs with them. Bell Records had also just established the Arista label under Clive Davies and the Rollers were transferred to it.
At that point, the Rollers were in the middle of a scandal the like of which had never been seen before in the world of pop. The tabloids found out we’d been using session musicians and told the world the boys couldnae play their instruments. Manna from heaven! You could feel their sneering delight coming off the pages as they exposed the Rollers as fakes.
Let’s think for a while about where they’d got their information. Was it sour grapes on the part of our former songwriters? Did one of the session musicians we’d used see a chance to make a few quid? One theory suggests that it was a certain Mr Paton who spilled the beans at a time when there wasn’t really much going on in the press about us. I know some say that any publicity’s good publicity and maybe someone told Tam that and he put the story out to test the advice. I cannae think of any other reason he’d do something so stupid.
The most frustrating thing about the whole episode was that it really wasn’t a big deal anyway - we’d have happily admitted to using session musicians if we’d been asked. Everybody except the real musical geniuses did it; it was just a simple matter of economics and minimising expensive studio time. Less time in the studio meant bigger profits for the record company, which benefited everyone.
Interpreting that we used session musicians to mean Eric, Woody and Alan couldnae play their guitars was daft. Of course they could play . . . how on earth could we have performed over a hundred gigs by the time the story came out if they couldnae? The simple fact was that their standard was acceptable when they first started out, and later on the audience noise levels would drown out far worse than one bum note or chord. They only fell down when they had to be consistent and accurate in a studio.
But Arista gave the order that on all future Rollers recordings, the band must play their own instruments.
For, Eric this was a dreadful time. From the day I joined the band, he’d been uneasy about my presence. I’d come in at the last minute and hit the big time while he’d had the struggle and poverty. He resented that I had as rivalries at the heart of rollers much say as he did, which was stupid as none of us really had any say at all. On top of all that, it seemed Tam couldnae control me.
Worst of all was that as the lead singer, I got more attention. There was a serious popularity clash.
When the piss-taking about the band’s musical aptitude started, I’m surprised he didn’t end up in a psychiatric hospital. With all of those problems festering away inside, he was now being forced to face the fact that I was the only one, a few backing tracks and "Angel Angel" aside, who actually performed on the early stuff. He wanted and needed more profile and more say and he wasn’t getting it.
Enter Phil Wainman, probably the most successful producer of the day. Phil came to meet us in Edinburgh to sell himself to us. He wanted us to have a productive, two-way relationship, rather than to dictate how things would be done. We liked the idea and Eric perked up a bit.
The next thing we had to do was choose some songs to record with Phil. We put forward the Four Seasons’ Bye Bye Baby. Our first recording session with Phil arrived. To everyone’s amazement, "Bye Bye Baby", "Give A Little Love" "It’s For You" and "Maryanne" (both Faulkner/Wood compositions), were all wrapped up in just three days.
That was my happiest time with the Rollers. We were all fired up with enthusiasm; we had a feeling in our bones about Bye Bye Baby and we knew Give A Little Love was a winner too. Eric was ecstatic about having a guitar solo on Bye Bye Baby and having not one, but two of his and Woody’s songs on B-sides at long last.
Bye Bye Baby was rushed out in February, charted immediately, and helped along with a few Top Of The Pops airings, was No. 1 by March 22.
If things had been hectic before, Bye Bye Baby made the early months look peaceful. Tempers were getting more and more frayed and we all just wanted to be away from each other.
After such a good start with Phil, things took a turn for the worse when Eric found out that Phil wanted five songs on the new album, Once Upon A Star. Now it was Eric who was coming on like the proper pop star, protesting that his and Woody’s songs should dominate. Phil said he just wanted the best songs on the album, which he obviously didn’t consider the Faulkner/Wood compositions to be. Eric didn’t want anyone else earning royalties that would be the band’s if his songs were used, which was admirable but not very practical.
He flounced off and wrote Money Honey, which was about the greed he perceived in the industry and the people around him.
Tam wasn’t happy with Eric at all, mainly because he was making a stand and showing he had balls . . . though hopefully not literally. But Eric got his way on this and lots of other occasions.
We got there in the end and "Once Upon A Star" was released in early April. Bell kept it back again and it charted straight in at No. 1 again. We got presented with our gold discs at the start of our second tour. It was only when our third album came out later in the year that Star dropped out of the charts, after 37 weeks. The three successive albums kept us consistently in the album charts from October 1974 until the spring of 1976. There was then a short reprieve and by the autumn, we were back in with our fourth album.
Once Upon A Star was the second top seller of 1975 and we sold more copies than Tubular Bells. So b******s to anyone who says we were a five-minute wonder!
Five-minute wonders don’t get their own magazines or TV shows. The mag may have been s***, but at least we had one. The Official Bay City Rollers magazine was launched early in 1975 in glorious full colour and crammed full of bulls***. It was written by editors and copywriters with a PR brief to satisfy and big expense accounts to cover.
Tam used the magazine to say anything and everything that needed saying, for example that there was no fear of the Rollers using drugs or booze as an escape like Hollywood stars did because they were too happy and too well balanced.
The TV series Shang-A-Lang, which we started recording in March, was a lot better and aired for the first time on the first of April. In Britain, we were the first band in pop history to have our own programme.
By this time Eric and Woody had bought their doomed farm, near Edinburgh. It was supposed to be their little sanctuary where they could write classic songs undisturbed, so Tam had the Shang-A-Lang crew go visit and film them there. Thanks to the programme fans invaded and four moved in and lived there for more than a week before anyone found out.
The final straw came when the place nearly burnt down. It was a good publicity story for Tam, though, as was Eric checking into the Forest Mere Health Farm in Surrey for a rest. That too was filmed for Shang-A-Lang.
All the hot acts of the era were guests on Shang-A-Lang. On the day that Cliff Richard guested, tragedy struck. After Cliff had done his bit, he left the Granada studios to go back to his hotel. The fans, not knowing who was inside the van leaving the studios, assumed it was the Rollers and stormed it.
The police, who were always there to keep the crowds under control when we were recording, moved in. One of the policemen had a heart attack and died. The dreadful news filtered through into the studio and we were all devastated. We felt responsible and useless, but we were made to carry on recording the other shows scheduled for that day.
There was no room for tragedy in our schedule, but none of us realised exactly how unfeeling the Bay City Roller machine had become until some months later in the year.
• Shang-a-Lang: Life as an International Pop Idol (£15.99 hardback) by Les McKeown with Lynne Elliot, foreword by Irvine Welsh is published by Mainstream on October 20. To receive your copy (p&p free) call The Book Service on 01206 255800 or visit
www.mainstreampublishing.com Les McKeown will be launching his book in conjunction with Ottakar’s at Acanthus on Waverley Bridge on Wednesday, October 8 at 7pm. Tickets £3. To purchase tickets, call Ottakar’s on 0131-225 4495. Les will be signing copies of his book at WH Smith’s at the Gyle shopping centre, Edinburgh, on Thursday, October 9 at 1pm.
