It’s A Brand New Day for the Bay City Rollers - Rock and Roll Globe (2024)

We are 16, and we are utterly swept off our feet by Power Pop.

Do you remember that feeling? It was like discovering a new country, a land full of chiming, sparkly, shimmering rainbows that boldly went where you hoped pop would always go. Ringing guitars, serpentine hooks, vocals lines that lifted off from the fluffy clouds over our teenage bluest skies and then flew higher, harmonies that knocked our socks off and painted foreign flags on them (usually Union Jack, Irish Tricolour or St Andrews’ Cross!), then a bridge that connected all the dots, and a key change that made you feel like all of of the drugs you have not yet taken.

When I was oh 16/17, the louche dream of the high tension transcendent Power Pop was personified by a handful of bands: The Rubinoos, Sire-era Flamin’ Groovies, the Motors, Badfinger and Big Star, The Nerves, Shoes, oh most definitely Pilot, true, yes. But mostly it was perfectly personified and produced by two acts: The Records and the Elevator-era Bay City Rollers. This music – all emerging in 1979, as it happened — rang like eight dozen teen-dream chimes in my heart and in my ears; it was punk’s hyperactivity and ‘60s AM bubblegum and a little wise-ass eyebrow raising and Byrds Ricky-ness and maybe even a whiff of near-Parsony Prog, all packed into one easy-dissolve three-minute gelcap that purred like one of those too-sexy cars that Marc Bolan was always singing about.

Now, a funny thing about this was that the (early) Records were pretty clearly based on the Bay City Rollers; they were streamlining/de-mainstreaming the ’74 – ’78 Rollers sound, taking the basics but amputating the Manilow cyclamate, leaving us just with the driving, over-syruped-Pepsi hyperpop ecstasy. And then in 1979, the Bay City Rollers parted ways with their lead singer, rebelled against their label, seized control of their own songwriting and artistic direction, and released one of the greatest Power Pop albums of all time, Elevator. Of course, it was a profound commercial failure, but, uh, still, Elevator is a triumph, conjuring what Badfinger might have sounded like if they had been a near-perfect guitar-powered New Wave band dreamed up by Godley & Crème and Glen Matlock (it really does sound like that).

Fast forward 44 years. The Bay City Rollers have a flat-out fantastic new single, “Brand New Day,” that sounds pretty much like an exact cross between Big Country and the Records, and an album coming down from the Highlands in 2024. Today, the band features guitarist Stuart “Woody” Wood (who joined the Rollers at age 16 in 1973 and was a member of the “classic five” BCR line-ups of the mid and late 1970s), keyboardist/vocalist/producer Johnny McLaughlin (a longtime Rod Stewart collaborator with a pile of top-ten songwriting credits under his belt), vocalist/guitarist Ian Thomson, drummer Jamie McCrory and bassist Mikey Smith. We also note that the new single features a stately and moving version of the Proclaimers’ “Sunshine on Leith,” recorded live at Edinburgh Castle (when Sir Rod brought Woody and McLaughlin out on stage with him to perform the song), and a rich and surprisingly moving acoustic version of the BCR classic, “Money Honey.”

I have been taking the Bay City Rollers too goddamn seriously since I was getting my news from Roger Grimsby and Bill Beutel, so it was a great honor to speak to Stuart “Woody” Wood via Zoom from his home outside of Edinburgh.

(Before we jump in, it’s important to say this: The Bay City Rollers story is deep, dark, and fascinating. Rife with profound managerial and record label malfeasance, alleged sexual abuse, and half a dozen premature deaths, it’s one of the more tragic tales in rock and pop history. Others have told this story quite wonderfully [please see postscript], and maybe I will, too, one day. But in this piece, I am choosing only to celebrate the music of the Bay City Rollers, and a ringing, shining return to the Power Pop of our teenage dreams. Now, on with our interview.)

“Brand New Day” is classic guitar/bass/drums power pop, sort of like a mix of the Rollers with a little bit of Big Country, kind of deep but still very poppy…

I’m glad you’re picking that up, that’s exactly what it is. It was really meant to be what people would refer to as an album track – ‘Oh, yeah, that will work nice on an album’ — but it turned out better than what we expected.

I have always thought that the Rollers did their best work after your fame had crested – specifically, the three albums you did between 1979 and 1981 that you released under the name ‘The Rollers’: Elevator (1979), Voxx (1980), and Ricochet (1981). “Brand New Day” really seems to pick up where those albums – especially Elevator – left off.

Elevator was a nice change from the earlier stuff, and then with Ricochet, it was all moving in a very nice direction. Duncan [Faure, who was the Rollers’ lead vocalist for those three albums] was brilliant for the band. But all of that stopped, it ended right there, so you’re right, yes, it’s meant to be a continuation from that direction. It’s certainly more on the path that Elevator and Ricochet were on, but thirty years down the line, so it must reflect that growth, maturity, and wisdom, too. It’s nice to give our fans something fresh, but not too far away from what the older stuff was about. And it’s pop. It’s pure pop songs. Songs that you can whistle if you’re going shopping.

The live videos I’ve seen of the current band, even when you’re playing the old stuff you seem very alive and fresh and loud and engaged.

I think it was instilled in me at a young age, if you’re gonna do something, do it the best you can. For me, when I get up and play – it’s an old cliché, it’s been said a million times – play it as if it’s the first time you’re playing it. Give it that attitude, and that respect. Take “Saturday Night,” I have probably played that about a million times, by rights I should be sick to death of it, but I can recognize it as a great song, and I must be respectful of the song, and its role in the history of the band, and what it meant to people, so you give the song what it wants and needs. We are lucky enough to be able to be in that position, so if you’re going to play it, play it the best you possibly can.

It’s startling that you were 16 when you joined the band. For someone who was world famous when you were 16, 17 years old, you seem amazingly healthy to me. How did you survive that?

Bottles and bottles of whisky! (laughs) Keeping busy, keeping active, having goals, having something you want to achieve…getting up in the morning and getting business done. I guess I’m just lucky that way. A good upbringing that instilled in me what was important, I suppose. But I certainly made loads of mistakes as well. I don’t want to make it seem like I was squeaky clean. Life is about learning and taking as much experience as you can and putting it to good use.

As big as you were in the States, I don’t think people here can imagine how huge the whole phenomenon was in the United Kingdom. I mean, between 1974 and 1976 alone, you had 13 top five singles and four top three albums.

It was like a tartan whirlpool. By the time I was 20 or 21, that was back into normal living again. It was then that I was able to process some of the information I picked up, and which was able to help me down the line. But the five years prior to that was just…madness. But I’d say a good madness. I was 17, 18, 19 during that whole thing – and at that age, especially back in the ‘70s, with the sheer amount of work we were doing — touring, TV shows, interviews, constantly – you didn’t even have five minutes to yourself. My dad probably tried to sit me down and say, ‘Buy property,’ or ‘Watch out for these guys,’ but it would go in one ear and out the other because you’re too young, and too full of your own nonsense at that age.

After Les McKeown left and Duncan Faure joined, and after you split from (long-time manager) Tam Paton, you finally seemed to become the band you wanted to be…after the fame had abated.

I think that was always going to be the length of that course. The hysteria was always going to die down. Though I do think it was a mistake that we took the ‘Bay City’ out of ‘Bay City Rollers.’ We imagined there was a stigma to ‘Bay City Rollers’ – especially in the music business – so we tried to prove ourselves by just being ‘The Rollers,’ which is what people called us anyway – but I think that was a mistake. I think that caused the record company to pull back, they thought people were going to think it was a brand-new band. And in that respect, I think they were correct – from their perspective, they had to market a whole new band called The Rollers, and who the hell were they? I mean, the record company were already backing off – Les had gone off at that point, or fired, or whatever – lots of different stories, but if he hadn’t left he was going to get fired – so all of this was happening at the same time, and all of this other stuff going on with accountants. I think if we hadn’t changed the name, it might have made a big difference, and the record company might have carried on supporting us, even with the music evolving.

Has Eric Faulkner [one of the two other living members of the classic “Famous Five” BCR line-up – founding guitarist Alan Longmuir passed in 2018, and Les McKeown in 2021] heard any of the new material? Are you in touch with him?

Tim, I’ve tried. When the reunion happened in 2016 [the last attempted reunion of the classic line-up], we were still speaking, everything was fine, but Eric couldn’t take part because he had a bad health scare – encephalitis – so there was no way he’d be doing anything, anyway. Since then, we’ve had one chat about five years ago, and it was just about personal stuff and talking about our health, it was fine. But in the part of the conversation where I very much left open the idea that we might do something together, or that he might join us on stage or write some songs together again or get involved in the new album – just nope. Nothing. That was, as I said, about five years ago. And I’ve given up. But the door’s always open from this end.

It’s my understanding that you were finally getting on decent terms with Les before he passed (for many years prior to McKeown’s death, McKeown and Wood had been publicly at odds, and fronting competing versions of the Bay City Rollers.)

We didn’t ‘chat-chat’ with each other, but he did an interview with one of the newspapers in Scotland and he’d said that he’d been willing to give the whole thing another go. To be honest, at that point there was no way I would have done that, but that’s another story. But I did begin to think, well, maybe. I did think maybe it might work again. The door wasn’t closed on it. But my initial reaction was, not a chance, but just the fact that he’d said that made me think, well, maybe, it might have worked again. But unfortunately, we never got to find out.

For the first time in many years, unless I am mistaken, there’s only one undisputed Bay City Rollers on the road or in the studio.

Yes! The one and only. Thankfully. It feels right. It feels back to normal. I do want to say that the door is wide open for the guys who are still alive, and it would be lovely if that happened, but it’s nice to get this thing moving forward, and get it where it should be.

Have you considered the fact that because Les is gone, and Eric isn’t involved, that gives you the freedom to move forward without being completely shadowed by the past?

That’s exactly it. It’s kind of like all the chains are off. I like to think I’m doing the band proud and doing the right thing by the band. Of course, the old songs always have to be played, because that’s what made the band and that’s what people want to hear, and that style should always be at the root of everything – good pop songs. It should be what the band started off as, and what the band, always was, but going forward. As everyone knows, I wasn’t there at the very beginning. The band began in 1966, and I joined in late ’73. So you’re coming into something where the direction has already been set, been decided. But then, you begin to contribute and become part of defining the character more. It’s like when a new character joins an old television series, it grows its own arms and legs and suddenly, there it is, there’s the character. Bands develop the same way. It grows, a harmony develops, new pages and stories get written. And that’s what’s happening again here, now, with the current band. They’re really talented guys and we’re just having a laugh, we really get along, it’s like the Rollers were back in the early days. It’s like that again. It’s like I was told the band was back in ’66, or like it was when I was 16 and first in the band. It’s nice to keep the legacy of the band moving forward. At some point when I’m not here, I’d like to imagine that this music and this band name might continue, might have new life. After all, there’s still a Glenn Miller Band touring. I’m happy to be part of keeping this going.

[The promised P.S.: The phenomenon of Rollers-mania – the good, the bad, the ridiculous, and the sometimes very ugly — is wonderfully chronicled in two essential books: When the Screaming Stops: The Dark History of the Bay City Rollers by Simon Spence, and Bye Bye Baby: My Tragic Love Affair With the Bay City Rollers by Caroline Sullivan. Both books are must-reads for anyone interested in the music industry, 1970s pop culture, or how unscrupulous labels and managers can take advantage of young musicians.]

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