Author:
www.lesmckeown.com
[Edit]
|
Date Posted: 09:54:33 02/15/09 Sun
(adsl-190-38-75.asm.bellsouth.net/74.190.38.75)
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/spectrum/Former-Bay-City-Rollers-front.4980387.jp
Former Bay City Rollers front man, Les McKeown, is ready finally to leave the past behind
Published Date: 15 February 2009
By Catherine Deveney
Feature Writer of the Year
THE first time I interviewed Les McKeown there were a lot of double bourbons consumed (his) and a lot of tears shed (mainly his too, though he'd have brought tears to a glass eye that day).
All the cuttings about the former lead singer with the Bay City Rollers suggested he was cocky and cheeky and a bit sexist, and I suppose he was all of those. But what you think of someone depends on what time of their life you meet them, really. At that point, he was an alcoholic and he wasn't in control: he was simply stripped naked by his vulnerabilities. Come to think of it, McKeown would probably make a dirty joke at that phrase, but all that stuff is a bit of a front for a man who gets very stressed and is simultaneously chippy and sensitive. He had lost both his parents the year before we met, and it had triggered a kind of mourning that felt simply infinite to him. He was in bits: talking and crying and laughing, and crying some more.
Five years later, he responds within ten minutes to an e-mail, and we talk on the phone. I've read that he has given up drink. It's true, he says. We agree to meet at his local Italian restaurant but come the day a few cryptic calls lead – eventually – to scanning the crowds for him at Canary Wharf shopping centre (I think he always has some scheme on the go.) He looks physically better than the last time I saw him, though perhaps a bit pale still. Before he went into rehab, his doctor had told him he shouldn't expect to live beyond six months. Not that he listened to her. "I didn't really care. I thought, 'So what. The world's shit, I'm shit, you're shit, f*** off. F***, f***, f***…'"
I remember that anger mixed in with the tears, the bit of him that wanted to tell the rest of the world to love him unconditionally or get lost. The bit that loved and loathed himself all at once. He was in denial when told he was killing himself. "The day she told me, I reckon I got more drunk than I'd ever got. Just to somehow prove her wrong… Or prove her right… Whatever. I thought, 'What do you know? I'll drink half a bottle less and last longer than six months.'" At that point, he drank a bottle and a half a day of Wild Turkey, a superstrong bourbon. He almost lived in the pub, seeing his Japanese wife Peko and son Jubei only when he came home to sleep off the alcohol between sessions. It was complete self-destruction.
Six months after that first meeting, he agreed to another interview, television this time. I wondered if the intensity of his grief about his parents would have abated. Clearly, the grief was genuine; McKeown adored his mum and dad. But it was also abundantly clear that bereavement had become a dumping ground into which he had thrown every other grief and disappointment of his life too. The bitter jealousies of his relationship with the other members of the Rollers, particularly Eric Faulkner. His hatred and fear of their manager, Tam Paton. His fury at the "missing millions" that he claimed Arista Records owed the band. The death of his parents became the focus for everything bad in his life.
Within minutes of the camera rolling, he was again on the verge of tears. It had the potential for car-crash TV, and yet there was an emotional honesty, a kind of desperate bravery, that made it poignant. "I just want to be a better person," he said. And he meant it. At the end, he hugged me in the middle of the set while the cameramen wrapped up uneasily. I think we all wished we could pull him from the wreckage his life had obviously become, but it was like viewing him from behind glass. Nobody could reach him; he was going to have to walk clear for himself.
WE FIND THE quietest spot in Canary Wharf, which means an unimposing sandwich bar. McKeown doesn't mind; he has no demands. He is very well mannered that way. The honesty is still there too. It's startling to listen to someone saying searingly awful things about themselves and continuing to eat a sandwich. Then you realise that he has already done his crying, his denial, in rehab; what he is saying now is what he has been forced to come to terms with. "I have been a complete shit. A bad husband, a bad father. I was in complete denial about that, the damage I have done to my own family… My wife, she has been unhappy for years. My son has had an absent alcoholic, you could say abusive, father. Abusive in the way of neglect. I've had no time for him. 'Oh, f*** off, I'm too busy… Ask your mum… Piss off… I'm away for a drink.' That kind of thing is abuse. You're not being a father; you're being a complete twat. So I had to face up to that, and it was f***ing hard to face up to it. But that was then, and this is now."
He went to Passages, a rehab centre in Malibu, California, the result of a request from a television company that wanted to follow celebrities through their various addictions. McKeown knew how expensive Passages was, and what a rare chance it offered him to change his life. He has no memory of the first few days. His body responded badly to alcohol-withdrawal and he needed medication to help him adjust.
During the subsequent therapy, Peko and Jubei were asked to fly out to visit. Jubei had his own issues with addiction, and was asked to stay. "You're sitting there and the guy says, 'Okay Jubei, what would you like to say to your father?' And that's when you find out," McKeown says sombrely. What did he say? "That for all the years he just wanted my love… That he wanted me to be a proper father… He didn't want to see me killing myself. It all came out. My wife said similar things, and I suddenly realised, 'I don't want to be here. I need a drink now because I don't want to think about how shitty I have been.' You con yourself into thinking, 'I'm all right. This is the way people behave, and it's the way I behave and it's perfectly all right.' But in the real world it's not."
Once he had faced that fact, therapists helped him find the root cause by discussing the major traumas of his life. When was the first time he had felt fear? He was five or six year old, the baby of his family, and his brothers objected to him being the pampered kid. "One of my brothers in particular didn't like it. I just remember being threatened with a knife, and being terrified and trying to fight back."
The therapist asked him to stop at that memory, to forgive his brother and forgive his parents for not being there to protect him. The idea of forgiveness was to become central to his recovery – as was the idea that his subconscious was causing his drinking by harbouring traumas. "I don't sit around thinking, 'Oh, I was nearly stabbed to death when I was five,' but it was obviously there." By forgiving everyone in his life who had hurt him – including Paton and the Rollers – he found they no longer had any power over him.
Most of the Rollers were just boys. Paton was more than 20 years older. In our first interview, McKeown had claimed Paton made passes at band members, and admitted that despite his own streetwise quality, his self-confessed problem with anger-management, he was frightened of Paton. In therapy, he finally admitted his fear stemmed partly from a sexual encounter with the manager. When asked if force was used, he acknowledges that it wasn't. "There wasn't force, as such. There were drugs involved, and the next minute it was all going on. I kind of think I was cajoled into it." The drugs were Quaaludes, a form of methaqualone taken recreationally to enhance sexual desire – sometimes indiscriminately. Did he know he was taking them? "I knew I was taking the drugs, but I didn't know what that was going to do."
The whole incident involves a lot of guilt. "I wasn't going to tell anyone in the whole of my f***ing life. I felt guilty about being in that situation, about playing a part in my own seduction. I felt violated, and then guilty for enjoying it. I enjoyed the sexual feelings – and that's what makes me feel ashamed. I still think to myself, 'I did that…' I have to stick with it, the reality. I can't turn back the clock. It's hard to deal with that – or it was. Now I've dealt with it, it's not hard any more. There's a certain freedom in that. I am what I am. Take me or leave me."
He seems to see Paton as some kind of trigger, but was he aware of being attracted to men before that incident? Yes, he acknowledges. And there were more later. He does consider himself bisexual, though sometimes he thinks it's emotional attraction as much as sexual attraction. How does he feel about Paton now? "I kind of feel… Not a lot, really. I did absolutely hate him, and the mere mention of his name would make me think, 'F***ing Tam Paton…' but I suppose he's inconsequential now. I even say daft things to my wife like, 'Maybe I should phone Tam up and go for a meal and talk about things. Maybe I should just see him as a human being who makes mistakes too. Something has obviously happened in his life to make him the way he is.'"
The list of his grievances against Paton was endless. "I said to the psychiatrist, 'Can't I just give him blanket forgiveness?'" To forgive, he had to face up to reality first. Part of that was acknowledging his heavy drinking hadn't started with the loss of his parents, as he'd convinced himself. It had been going on a lot longer. Weeks after we meet, he sends a long e-mail. "I can see that most of my life I have lived in a constant state of extremes, all of the good tragically poisoned by all of the bad," he writes.
Bereavement did, though, cause a breaking point. "I've come to terms with the loss now. I still get a little bit choked up but I can talk about them, whereas before, even the mention of their names had me in bits. It was one of the things I looked at in rehab." He laughs. "I've forgiven them for dying. How f***ing dare they! I know it sounds like a joke but I was angry. Now when I think of my mum and dad, I think of all the good things and think what a lucky boy I was to be brought up by two beautiful people."
PEOPLE WHO HAVE visited Paton's Edinburgh mansion paint a slightly debauched picture of a beautiful place gone to seed, a dovecot in the garden and rottweilers prowling the territory. "The worst bachelor pad imaginable," one tells me. "Filthy towels in the mouldy, smelly Jacuzzi… Clutter… Smell." And always full of troubled, vulnerable young men. Paton usually says he offers lodgings and help with their troubles. When I say I'd like to talk to Paton, McKeown is unperturbed. "You're just doing your job." Paton may have a reputation for being intimidating, but on the phone his voice is light, high and affable, punctuated with giggles. The affability does not extend to McKeown. "Truthfully, the band's problems were created by Les," he says. "I feel quite bitter. I worked hard to build up the Rollers, and he worked hard to destroy them. He wanted to be the centre of attraction. There was horrendous jealousy between him and Eric Faulkner. I think Les has got terrible problems with himself."
Was McKeown insecure? "I don't see why he would be insecure. He came from the most wonderful mother and father. His father was deaf and a lovely man, and his mother, Florence, couldn't have been any nicer. I sent flowers to the ward she was in not long before she died, but he never mentioned that."
There were some good lads in the Rollers. "Woody was a nice guy. The Longmuir brothers were perfect." Hardly. Derek Longmuir, the band's drummer, pled guilty to possessing child pornography in 2000. But McKeown? "He's one of the most bitter, twisted liars I've ever met in my life."
When I tell Paton that McKeown claims they had a sexual encounter, his laughter trills down the line. "I have never had a sexual encounter with Les. I wouldn't take him in a prize draw. I would say that I think Les is confused about his sexuality." They didn't have sex while under the influence of Quaaludes? "Quaaludes," he exclaims. "I think he would need more than Quaaludes." Minutes later he says, "I don't even know what Quaaludes are." Then he says he thinks they're mentioned in a David Bowie song, and Les was a fanatical Bowie fan. So does it bother him to have this accusation made? "Not at all," he says. "As long as you print that I think he's deranged."
Paton says he's going off to Portugal to write his book about the Rollers years. When I say McKeown thinks he could sit down with him these days and talk, he says, "I wouldn't want him anywhere near me." At the end of the call he says suddenly that he's had a very sad day today. His little red Staffie had a brain tumour and had to be put to down. The dog is there with him; he has let it lie for a few hours before burying it. "I'll tell you something," he says. "The more I know about human beings, the more I love my dogs. You get wonderful love from them and never get anything nasty."
McKEOWN COULD DO with a cigarette. He'll get round to giving those up when he's sure he has finished with the drink. We leave the sandwich bar to find another café outside the mall. He returned from rehab in November, but has a respectful wariness of his own sobriety still. It's too fragile to take for granted. My heart sinks when he says he had a tipple at New Year. He didn't get drunk, he insists. How does that work, then? He's the only alcoholic I've ever heard say it's possible to have an occasional drink and stay sober. "I did think, 'This is nice,'" he admits. "'I could do this until I'm really f***ed up, but then I'm going to wake up tomorrow and have a hangover – and I don't want that.'"
His therapists didn't call him an alcoholic. They said he had an addiction problem. Certainly, he told me before that he'd stuck a fortune up his nose in the course of his life, but he finished with drugs some years ago. He thinks if it's somebody's birthday he can maybe have a glass of champagne. "I can't say I'm perfect. I can't say that I won't have a drink again, but I hope… No, not hope… I will only choose to drink in a social situation, and won't drink to get drunk. But I'm not going to make a habit of that."
The temptation to drink comes from stress, the voice in his head that tells him to escape into alcohol. But at least now he also has a different voice giving a contradictory message. It sounds risky. Shouldn't he just stay out of pubs? On the whole he does, but there are a couple of old guys he used to drink with, and he worries about them. He checks on them occasionally. But only for half an hour, and he drinks Pepsi or non-alcoholic beer. One of the guys is drinking too much. McKeown thinks he's having a good influence on him, being off the booze.
The incentive is that he likes the way his life has changed. When I go to get coffees, he ends up on the phone to Jubei. They do things together these days, share a work space in the house. "My son's relationship with me is coming on great. It's not something that gets fixed overnight, but he sends me texts now – 'I believe in you, Dad', 'Don't drink, Dad', 'We love you', stuff like that. It almost brings me to tears when I read it. He has been able to forgive me for the last 20-odd years."
Life could change even more in the future. The Rollers' "missing millions" have been the subject of speculation for many years. The band claim Arista Records failed to pay full royalties on the 100 million-plus records they sold worldwide. The band members should have been set up for life, but McKeown left with only a credit-card debt and several of the others returned to their old day jobs. The animosity between them, the fact that McKeown was an alcoholic, meant years of disunity in the fight for the money. But now they have joined forces to take legal action. Four members of the band are represented by one person, McKeown by another. It was always that way: McKeown against the rest.
But one company represents them all in America. Holland & Knight has 1,100 attorneys and offices all over the US. It is not the kind of company to take a punt because the Rollers are a bunch of nice boys. A return is expected. "This is very serious litigation, involving many tens of millions of dollars, against Arista Records," says a legal representative for McKeown. "The claim is sub judice but we have certainly filed pleadings, and we wouldn't have done that unless we fully believed in our cause."
The wheels of American justice are squeaking just as loudly as British ones under the weight of cases. The end of pleadings in the proceedings against Arista was in June 2007, and given that most cases are heard within two years, a preliminary hearing is finally expected this summer. The judge may find for the Rollers, or for Arista Records (now owned by Sony BMG), with the possibility of appeal on either side. But the case may also be sent for full trial, which would inevitably mean at least another two-year wait. "This may be the first chapter in a lengthy War and Peace-type book, but we hope it's the final chapter in a long story of fighting for justice for the Bay City Rollers," says McKeown's representative.
Paton, who insists he can prove that all he received from the Rollers was £70,000 (his money has come from property deals, he claims), insists there are no missing millions. The Rollers spent it like you wouldn't believe. Hiring David Bowie's studio in Switzerland, buying limousine firms… So Paton's not making a claim, then? Well, he has lawyers in the US too. And if it looks like the Rollers are getting anything, "We are just going to go in and freeze the whole lot."
Arista's defence is based mainly on legal arguments about the time taken to claim the money, rather than moral arguments about whether it's owed. In fact, the Rollers have fought for the money behind the scenes for many years. McKeown believes if there's justice they will get it. But he's not banking on it. His life has to be based on something more stable.
He's still working with his version of life with the Bay City Rollers, and would continue working even if he got rich. Looking back, he seems a bit ashamed of the acrimony in the original band. "It was pretty egotistical, petty stuff. I held on desperately, loyally, to my hatred for years. 'I've got a reason to hate him' – what was it again?"
He wears a wrist band that says, "It's Perfect", to remind him to live now and not in the past. "I've never been happier," he says. There's nothing to be ashamed of in genuine tears, and it's sometimes a sign of an honest interview. But I can't help thinking, as we say our farewells, that it's significant this is the first time I've met McKeown and he hasn't cried.
Rehab is shown on Wednesdays at 9pm on Living TV
[ Post a Reply to This Message ]
Replies:
 This is such an inspirational story and well-written article. Thanks to the author for bringing us this story in an unsensational, caring way. Les' heart and humanity shines through. I applaude his strength, courage, and ability to forgive and move on with his life. Best wishes to him and his family always. (NT) -- DebbieG, 10:27:51 02/15/09 Sun (74-142-201-35.dhcp.insightbb.com/74.142.201.35)
- Wow. I keep reading and rereading this article. This is truly as Debbie says an inspirational story!! Wow..His heart and humanity (as Debbie says) shines thru...his humanness...no pedestals, no God persona's....human..He has gone thru what many do but I am inspired by his wanting to share this, his life, his ups, downs...warts and all...and to show that it can be done. I applaude your ablity to be so open and honest. I aplaude you showing emotion. I aplaude you...for being YOU!! I love ya!! (NT) -- Kat, 12:43:14 02/15/09 Sun (NoHost/67.204.218.170)
- Like Kat, I have read this over and over, and am just so amazed and touched by it. I agree, Les goes thru what many of us do, we are all just souls struggling in this world....but he shares it with others and I think that gives other people hope, comfort, a feeling they are not alone in trying to figure it all out. I am always amazed at how much he can touch my heart. Keep it up Les, we are all in your corner! (NT) -- Kym, 07:31:59 02/16/09 Mon (ip24-252-37-192.om.om.cox.net/24.252.37.192)
- Les you are a constant inspiration & lesson to us all, I found this interview amazing and like others here I had to read it over again , but no matter what the love I have for you & the Rollers is even stronger now than ever before. I take my hat off to you Les ! Love you always ! (NT) -- Tracey ( kiwi-girl ), 16:55:51 02/16/09 Mon (219-89-129-171.jetstart.xtra.co.nz/219.89.129.171)
|
Play me on Jango
