Big payout due for Bay City Rollers

Published on 25/06/2012 12:00

THE Bay City Rollers are on the verge of a massive payout according to singer Les McKeown.

The Edinburgh band were heralded as the biggest act since The Beatles after shooting to fame on both sides of the Atlantic and around the world in the 1970s.

A string of chart-topping singles and albums should have made them rich but the royalties never materialised.

It wasn’t until 2007 that the band members put their differences aside to launch a multi-million dollar lawsuit against their record label.

Now, Mr McKeown said a court in America is to rule in their favour. The next step will see an army of forensic accountants try to calculate how much the band are owed by Arista Records.

Mr McKeown said that will open the door for the Bay City Rollers’ reunion world tour – beginning in 2014.

The 56-year-old said: “They claim they don’t have royalty statements and pre-computerised records. We are getting forensic accountants who are historical royalties experts to reconstruct the past by going to Billboard chart positions to determine how many, for example, a No.1 for six weeks in 1975 would sell.”