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Rollerstralia
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Date Posted: 04:12:07 06/23/07 Sat
'Countdown' to rock down memory lane
Saturday Jun 23 14:00 AEST
By Annette Basile
ninemsn
Countdown was an Australian institution. On Sunday nights at 6pm, Aussie teens, tweens and often their parents tuned in for the ABC pop program that defined the landscape of the Australian pop charts.
Hosted by Ian 'Molly' Meldrum, Countdown was born in 1974 and departed some 13 years later. In 2006 Countdown made a comeback — not to the small screen but to the stadium.
Last year's Countdown Spectacular toured the country with a host of the show's favourite Aussie acts. More than mere nostalgia, it was a lot of fun, and many songs scrubbed up better than expected for the new millennium.
This year, the Spectacular returns with an international and local line-up straight from the 1970s and '80s hit parade.
Countdown's ability to sell a song is illustrated by the fact that Scotland's Bay City Rollers would fly to Australia specifically for the program.
"It was a bit of a journey just to do a TV show," laughs the band's front man Les McKeown. "These days people just send a DVD."
If you can divorce the Rollers from the teenyboppers and tartan, what's left are a clutch of joyful pop songs. Love them or hate them, they were a phenomenon. McKeown remembers the pandemonium of a Rollers' live performance on Countdown. "Quite a few times there were almost riots," he tells ninemsn. "I remember it quite fondly."
Today, McKeown is making his own solo albums but also tours as the only original member of a resurrected version of his '70s' band who will join the Countdown Spectacular bill.
The original band members, however, are still "in touch on a friendly business level", he says. "I suppose it's a bit like a marriage, after we got divorced we don't get on that well on a social level but we still get on and do the things we have to do."
And one of the things they have to do is fight a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Aritsa Records over royalties.
In 2003 the singer released his autobiography, which contained a shock for rusted-on Rollers fans: McKeown did not get along with guitarist Eric Faulkner.
And now he's working on the next installment: "It's dealing with, for want of a better word, the darker side of those days and also post-Bay City Rollers extinction, what happened to me in my life."
McKeown, who is active working for children's charities, is making a reference to well publicised drug battles. "It's a daily fight for me," he says, "because I have had a lot of problems … every day's another challenge and you get through it. Sometimes you fall off the wagon, then you get yourself back up on it again."
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What’s the story with . . . the Bay City Rollers?
GERRY BRAIDEN June 23 2007
He sang shang-a-lang as he ran with the gang but all Eric Faulkner really wanted was a decent wage for all and a proper health service. The former Bay City Roller, who always wanted to be a protest singer, will appear on Glastonbury's Left Field stage tomorrow in support of Tony Benn.
Benn, appearing for the fifth time, is a big draw, but for many, the rebranding of Eric Faulkner is the more intriguing offering. The where-are-they-now stories of any band are guaranteed to interest, but in the case of Scotland's 1970s sensation, the stories have been more fascinating, and notorious, than most.
The cheery, clean-cut popsters looked so uncomplicated, from the outside. The band were formed by brothers Alan and Derek Longmuir in 1967 as The Saxons before they chose a new name, supposedly by throwing a dart into a US map.
After being discovered playing in an Edinburgh club they had their first hit in 1971 with Keep On Dancing. By 1975, they were one of the UK's most successful acts. Success in the US followed with Saturday Night in 1976. But then, partly as a result of their relentless schedule, the cracks started to show.
Compared with how he was back then, the transformation of Faulkner into a political singer in the Neil Young mould may seem incongruous - when Young was singing The Needle and the Damage Done, the Rollers were grinning through All of Me Loves All of You. But the 53-year-old says political songwriting was part of his upbringing - his father was a senior official with the Boiler Makers' Union, forerunner of the GMB.
"Even when I was in the Bay City Rollers I used to talk about issues," he says. "But it didn't fit the agenda. The record company and management just wanted the boy-next-door thing. Now I do stuff by Pete Seeger, Ewan McColl and my own songs. It's not a soap box but I want to challenge the apathy in music and help bring back the protest song."
Although engaged in a law suit to recover royalties from the Roller days, Faulkner prefers to dwell on his current music, the themes of which range from surveillance, apathy and the legacy of the collapse of heavy industry, and politics.
Not all his former band mates have such a positive tale to tell. Drummer Derek Longmuir left the band in 1981 and trained as a nurse, working at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. He was sentenced to community service after admitting possessing child pornography yet maintains it did not belong to him.
His elder brother, Alan, the bassist, quit at the height of the band's fame in 1976 after claims he attempted suicide. He has suffered health problems, including having a stroke, and lives in Scotland with his wife. Like Faulkner, Les McKeown, who lives in England with his Japanese wife, is still involved with music, touring with Les McKeown's Legendary Bay City Rollers. In 1990 he attempted to become the UK entrant to the Eurovision Song Contest. He admitted being a drug user in 2006 but was acquitted of cocaine dealing with former Roller Pat McGlynn.
Stuart "Woody" Wood, the guitarist and later bassist, lives in Edinburgh with his wife, Denise. He is still active in the music industry, producing Celtic music, and has worked with X Factor-finalists the MacDonald Brothers.
But the most notorious figure from the Rollers' days is Tam Paton, the manager, who was fired by the band in 1979. He built up a multimillion pound real estate business based in Edinburgh. In 1982, he was convicted of gross indecency with teenage boys and served one year of a three-year jail sentence. He was convicted of supplying cannabis in 2004 and fined £200,000.
Maybe a reunion is a bad idea, then?
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