Band's downward spiral led to alcoholism and depression

Alan Longmuir of the Bay City Rollers on stage

The late musician has lifted on the lid on his long-running battles with alcoholism and depression in his autobiography, which is about to be published five months after his death.

Longmuir spent years with his former bandmates trying to recoup millions of missing royalties from worldwide record sales of more than 120 million.

In the book, he recalls how he was even left homeless at one point after being forced to sell his house in Dollar, in Clackmannanshire, the break-up of his first marriage and the sell-off of a hotel they had been running.

The book, written with Martin Knight, recalls how Longmuir was left facing a “miserable and humiliating existence” after the various members of the Rollers started to suing each other, which he described as “a stupid thing to do when none of us had any money”.

Longmuir said: “I was rootless now. I stayed in friends’ rooms. Today they call it sofa surfing which puts a jocular spin on what is a miserable and humiliating existence. I eventually settled in a flat above the Dollar Arms, which was not ideal, and you don’t have to imagine too hard where most of my time was spent.

“I didn’t own a bean. I was drinking heavily. I had been celibate for a couple of years, such was my fear of entering a relationship.

“My dear dad died on 1 February 1989. He had suffered but managed with vascular dementia for some time but oesophageal cancer finally took him. I felt even more sorry for myself.

“I was 40 years old and an orphan. It was my lowest ebb and I feel sad now thinking about it. It makes me want to cry, almost 30 years later.

“The absolute nadir, though, was when I lost the flat at the pub and had nowhere to go so for a few days I kipped down in one of the pub’s outhouses. Only now, as I recall this, do I realise I was not only homeless but sleeping rough.”

Longmuir said he managed to start turning his life around after meeting Eileen, his second wife in 1994.

He said: “I don’t just believe, I know, that if I hadn’t met Eileen when I did I’d not be here now. I was drinking myself into a premature grave, had lost selfconfidence and self-esteem and had not a penny to my name.”