Les has got life as a Roller covered..

Published on Thursday 25 September 2003 01:00

TWENTY-FIVE years after quitting the band in the middle of a tour of Japan, bad boy Bay City Roller Les McKeown is about to tell all for the first time.

He is to lift the lid on life inside Britain’s first mega-successful boy band in a book.

Edinburgh band the Bay City Rollers were a major worldwide hit in the 1970s with a following of thousands of mostly girl fans.

The mobbing of the band members by huge numbers of fans even sparked a new word - Rollermania.

The book - Shang-a-Lang, Life as an International Pop Idol - by the former frontman is to be published next month.

But Evening News readers will be able to read extracts starting on Thursday next week.

The News will be serialising the book exclusively. In it, McKeown reveals the inside story of the girls, the gigs, the drugs and the fights.

The book from Edinburgh-based publishers Mainstream is a no-holds-barred account of Rollermania and beyond, charting the rise and fall of the celebrated former pop pin-ups.

"The book provides a candid insight into the less savoury aspects of the music industry," said a Mainstream spokesperson.

McKeown, from Broomhouse in Edinburgh, was just 18 in 1973 when he became the lead singer of the Rollers, who had already had one British chart hit.

But over the next few years the band transformed into an international supergroup, consistently reaching number one all over the world, selling an estimated 300 million records with hits such as Shang-a-Lang, Remember and Summerlove Sensation, and gaining a massive following.

The group provoked mass hysteria not witnessed since the days of Beatlemania.

Their trademark short wide-legged trousers and tartan- trimmed outfits even sparked an unlikely fashion craze.

Managed by controversial Edinburgh man Tam Paton - who was jailed for sexual offences against teenage boys in 1982 - the band even hit success in the United States and were biggest in Japan.

But by the end of the 1970s McKeown was homeless and penniless after quitting the band.

Shang-a-Lang traces the story of how the teenager went from the back streets of Edinburgh to the top of the charts, the wrangles that led to McKeown leaving the band, and his subsequent solo career.

It includes the singer’s true feelings about the tragic death of Edinburgh woman Euphemia Clunie, who was hit by a sports car the star was driving at Western Corner in the city in 1975. Two years ago the Evening News helped McKeown research the book by tracking down members of his first ever band to piece together memories from his most formative musical years.

The singer joined Threshold in 1973 after Rollers’ manager Tam Paton recommended him to band leaders Alan Wright and Alex Valente.

The group toured Scotland in an old Transit van as 16-year-old McKeown honed the voice that later launched the Bay City Rollers to international fame.

McKeown is still performing Rollers hits on the road, works as a top DJ in London and Germany and is still writing and singing his own material.

McKeown will be launching his book in conjunction with Ottakar’s at Acanthus on Waverley Bridge on Wednesday, October 8, at 7pm.

Tickets are 2 and available from Ottakar’s. The following day, the star will be signing copies of the book at WH Smith at the Gyle at 1pm.