The Rollers sneaked up on everybody. The astute observer would have first noticed their presence two and a half years ago when their initial success was coming via intermittent hits. Since British radio is generally awful, most “serious” rock fans barely listen to it; the only way most people hear hits is on TV’s Top Of The Pops.

The Bay City Rollers are geared for TOTP. They’re slightly prettier than average TOTP prettiness, which isn’t saying much—no Robert Plants here— and they had a rather amusing gimmick to exploit: their Scottish heritage, with tartan trimmed clothing of hideous taste and pants that ended at the shin.

Manager Tam Paton says one of the first things he noticed about the group was their ability to attract young girls. The group has existed since 1969; nowadays it seems that every Edinburgh pop group has at least one alumnus of the BCRs: you can count Pilot’s David Paton for one. They asked Tam to manage them after scuffling around the lower rungs of Scotland’s rock hierarchy for a few years. As their female power became more apparent Paton began to emphasize that aspect. With those first hits bedroom walls throughout Britain found BCR posters and pix replacing the Osmonds and David Cassidy as objects of adoration.

Occasionally one would see a spread on them in the teenybop music papers, but the “serious” rock weeklies didn’t even notice their existence. Thus their rise was almost unchroiiicled, until suddenly last summer their first album entered the charts at Number One, selling 125,000 copies in two weeks. Most British chart albums are lucky to sell half as many.

From then on Rollers singles were guaranteed success. Most of them were rather forgettable, the epitome of their style being a reworking (slight) of the Four Seasons’ “Bye Bye Baby.” At one point they approached Mick Ronson as a producer; they settled for former Sweet producer Phil Wainman.

This spring, they commenced what shall be known as The Tour. Utter pandemonium. Not since a fifteen year old girl was crushed to death at a David Cassidy concert had teenybop-gore freaks so much to drool over. Uncounted faintings, the odd broken or dislocated limb...all good clean fun. As the tour progressed it seemed to pick up momentum, each night of concert hysteria seeming to grab more Fleet Street coverage than the evening before.

Reports from the front line suggested that if you could hear the group underneath all the screaming the level of proficiency wasn’t too astounding. The Sun, a cheesecake and sex-scandal daily, revealed that the group didn’t play on their first singles. “I went to one session and asked, ‘Please can we play on our next single?’ I was told to get lost,” was one of the more poignant quotes attributed to an ashamed BCR. Paton denied the story.

As the press homed in on the hysteria, Paton got more protective. Photographers had a harder time perfohning their vocation. The phalanx of hulking American bodyguards effectively blocked off nosy reporters. Then one midnight nineteen-year-old singer Les McKeown ran down a seventy-yearold lady as she crossed the road on a pedestrian crossing, subsequently demolishing his Mustang against a brick wall. He was all right, his brother’s girlfriend — a passenger — was hospitalised for shock, the lady died. Oddly enough, Les’ brother had had a similar accident in the same car just a few weeks before.

That night’s concert was postponed, but the evening after, at Portsmouth, went ahead as scheduled. CREEM contributors Joe Stevens and Kate Simon, tired of late night phone calls offering heady sums for Rollers pix, had planned pn seeing the Portsmouth show. Door security was heavy but they, managed to bluff an entry. Two men from the Sunday Times weren’t so lucky and were reduced to interviewing the band’s bus.

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Although bouncers were rampant, the two started shooting. During the fourth number McKeown started crying mid-song. Stevens knew something was up and started clicking. He had four frames off when a large American descended. “I know your type — you’d sell this to the Daily Express in a flash!” He ripped the film from the camera. Les meanwhile had run from the stage and the concert was halted. Ms. Simon was pushed about, had her film forcibly removed and was threatened with smashed cameras.

Later, at a Newcastle Hunter/Ronson gig I overheard the hall manager boasting about how he had told his boys at the BCR gig to bust any camera bigger than an Instamatic: His scorn for the press had no limit.

But all this was just pissing in the wind if America wasn’t inveigled into the scheme. Promoter Sid Bernstein came over to view a few concerts and announced that the group’s attendant reaction was the biggest he had seen since the Beatles. (It didn’t take critical insight to determine that; wasn’t that half the appeal of conquering America?) Bernstein also believed their appeal would make them huge in America with the female under tweleve set. Sid would handle their American affairs. They would debut at Shea Stadium in September.

Also attending were CREEM’s Lisa Robinson and 16/Spec’s Danny Fields, expert opinion on the group’s projected colonial appeal. Whatever efforts they may have devoted to the cause, the Shea Stadium debut is no longer mentioned. In fact, things have been mighty quiet of late, with only a fresh single to remind us of their all-conquering existence. (The accompanying promo film has them sitting atop Rolls Royces with their names on the license plates.) Supposedly they are filming their world tour, currently shooting in the Caribbean. ' _ l

All in all it’d be quite amusing if it wasn’t so depressingly mindless. After all, I haven’t told about the sight of BCR fans slavishly following their fave raves’ affectation for tasteless costumes. The sight of them would make anyone blush. .>