Bay City Rollers (1975) Tour Programmes

BAY CITY ROLLERS. Scottish tartan-clad teeny-bop group who created "Rollermania" hysteria in rising to worldwide fame with a string of hits during the 1970s. Their first single "Keep on Dancing" (1971) reached No9 in the charts and was produced by Jonathon King. It was however two years later in 1973, before the classic line-up of the group ; (Les / Alan / Derek / Woody and Eric) were to repeat success with hits ; Remember and Shangalang. 1975 was to become "their year" with the classic "Bye Bye Baby" No1 for six weeks in the spring (selling over 1 million copies) and "Give A Little Love" becoming No1 in the summer. They also scored a rare US No1 hit for a British group in 1976  with "Saturday Night". Between 1973-1978 the Bay City Rollers sold over 100 million records (including having eleven UK Top 10 singles). The strain of success started to take its toll on various group members by 1976 (original founding member Alan Longmuir left the group) being replaced by 17 year old Ian Mitchell. The group slowly and controversially imploded, finally splitting in 1978 when both Les and Eric left (supposedly to pursue solo careers). During the following decades, there has sadly remained continued acrimony between the group members over rights issues and various court cases concerning unpaid royalties (thought to be worth in excess of 30 million pounds). The original members as of 2007 finally agreed to try to resolve these and fight together in an attempt to recover "the lost Rollers millions" The group's bass player and founding member Alan Longmuir died after a short illness at the age of 70 on July 2nd 2018. Ian Mitchell died of throat cancer aged 62 on September 1st 2020. Singer Les McKeown sadly died aged 65 on April 20th 2021