BBC News Online: Entertainment

The rise and fall of Rollermania

It was 1975, the time of The Bay City Rollers.

Les, Derek, Eric, Woody and Alan first burst on to the scene in 1971. Over the next few years they had 11 top 10 hits and rocked the nation.

Songs like Bye Baby, Give a Little Love and Shang-a-lang captured the hearts of thousands of teenagers - hearts that were to break when the Rollers finally split amid rows over money, drug abuse and depression in 1977.

But now the boys are back - minus their half-mast flares, tartan scarves and winsome grins.

In the BBC documentary The Bay City Rollers - Remember? the five band members recall their heady days of success and their inevitable decline.

They have also been persuaded by their new manager, Mark St John, to unite and try to trace the millions they earned in their heyday. When the boys split-up much of the band's money went missing, and has not yet been recovered.

Boys next door

The teenagers came up with the band's name after sticking a pin in a map of the USA.

Previously called The Saxons - they wanted something more exotic sounding - and Bay City near Michigan sounded magical to five teenage boys from an Edinburgh council estate.

The Bay City Rollers are best remembered for wearing tartan and inspiring their fans to make it a 1970s fashion statement. The band say this came from a genuine desire to assert their Scottish identity rather than a marketing ploy.

The Rollers were set apart from their 1970s rivals by their whiter-than-white image. They were the lads next door any girl wouldn't mind taking home to her mum.

The band's manager Tam Paton nurtured this image and started the myth that the boys preferred drinking milkshakes to alcohol.

Band member Eric Faulkner recalled: "We would go to a press conference - everybody gets wine or whatever now - but we would get jugs of milk.

"It was all a bit surreal really. And we were thinking, 'Are people actually going to buy this? Are they going to believe that we drink milk?' But it seems that the media wanted that."

In 1975 the band got their own TV show on Granada Television - Shangalang - and this helped to seal their popularity.

Rollermania swept the UK and reached as far as the US and Japan.

"Their popularity worldwide was just incredible. I remember arriving in Toronto and there was 75,000 at the airport," said manager Paton.

The end of the high road

But in the best rock and roll tradition, disaster was just around the corner. The lead singer Les McKeown was involved in a car crash which killed a female passenger.

Guitarists Eric Faulkner and Alan Longmuir were revealed in the press as having attempted suicide and Stuart 'Woody' Wood was hospitalised after suffering from exhaustion. Finally the band went their separate ways amid much bitterness.

Len Brown the producer of the documentary, said: "The Bay City Rollers were the Boyzone, Take That and Duran Duran of their day all rolled into one. They were one of the most successful commercial bands of all time.

"Even today, most teenagers who were not even born when the Rollers were at the height of their fame, can tell you who they were."

The Bay City Rollers - Remember is on BBC One at 2150 BST, Monday 5 April.