Bay City Rollers - Rock n' Roll Love Letter

Let's play musical jeopardy.

"I'll take bands that made me want to poke a pencil into my ear drum for 100 Alex."

"That's today's daily double. What band sold over 120 million records and turned the world tartan?"

"What is Nazareth?"

"No, I'm sorry that is incorrect. The answer was Bay City Rollers."

Bay City Rollers were a big deal here in Canada for what seemed an eternity but was probably all of two years. Despite watching them on TV when The Krofft Superstar Hour first aired, and later changed to The Bay City Rollers Show, it wasn't cool to listen to their music. Oh, you had to give it up for "Saturday Night" because that was just pure fun ... but generally they were a bunch of guys who wore tartan shirts and were '70s teen idols, who along with David Cassidy and Donny Osmond were hanging on posters in little girl's rooms all over the country.

I was rummaging around in the dollar bins, and I stumbled across Rock n' Roll Love Letter, and for a moment I was hoping it would have the previously mentioned "Saturday Night" as I thought that could be fun. I did recognize "Money Honey" and initially I had confused it with "Honey Honey" by ABBA. I figured for a dollar just the silly factor would be worthwhile. I'd never really given them a second thought, and in terms of credibility the guys didn't have any ... at all. So who knows what I was in for. I had my pencil ready just in case.

Rock n' Roll Love Letter was released in North America on Arista in 1976, with Clive Davis behind the scenes grooming the band for North American success. Clive Davis was a pretty big deal and he'd signed bands such as The Outlaws, and artists like Aretha Franklin ... somewhere in the middle stylistically were Bay City Rollers.

This album is a bit of a compilation, with the cover and most of the tracks and the cover art being pulled from the band's 1975 release Wouldn't You Like It? Along with a couple of other earlier songs and two new ones.

I always thought the guys were a prefabricated band like The Monkees and there was a team of writers and performers behind the scenes. Like The Monkees before them they initially didn't play or write a lot of the sings. Turns out the band was a real band, and all but one of the songs on the album were written by the band's guitar players Eric Faulkner and Stuart "Woody" Wood. The ban's rhythm section was Alan Longmuir on bass and his brother Derek on drums. Fronting the band was Leslie McKeown.

This was actually a real surprise, and as I listened to the album I had to sheepishly admit this was a lot of fun. It was also very campy in a good way and was the best kind of bubble gum pop. This could easily have been marketed differently and appealed to fans of The Sweet, Sweeney Todd and Suzi Quatro and a shitload of other '70s glam infused bands. No doubt they'd have been successful, but would they have been the tartan wave that washed over the world?

Now as much fun as this was, and truly it was so much better than I ever imagined. There were some incredibly horrific moments, like "Don't Stop the Music" a song that was probably in step with some of the early disco nonsense that was starting to come out, but good lord it was horrible and Leslie McKeown's vocals drifted in and out of pitch.

Then again there were some surprises where things shouldn't have worked but did like "Shanghai'd In Love" that aside from the weird flute or keyboard trill was a really pretty pop song that would have been at home on an album by Bread, or America.

The best moments were when the boys were pushing the pace and actually rocking out a bit. Heck I suspect a young Joan Jett was a fan (I bet she had a poster of Eric on her wall. That's the real reason she wanted to play guitar). The album's closing track "Too Young To Rock & Roll" sounds like the blueprint she'd follow in her career.

For five guys from Edinburgh they did pretty well for themselves for a couple of years. Here's to Alan, Derek, Leslie, Woody, and my favourite Eric. They were the original boy band, and as I'm discovering they were a heck of a lot of fun.

I still cannot fathom how they managed to sell that many records in

6 Cylinder

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