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Bye Bye Les McKeown (RIP)

To be honest, I thought that he was quite some while no longer with us - cancer or ethanol, or both. He has surely not been a well man for some while? (I have not checked online)

RIP Les
 
The first record I purchased was a BCR 7” from a record shop on the old Kent road, I couldn’t have been older than 5 or 6 and was so chuffed, I picked it out, took it to the guy at the counter and he put it on, wow......
R.I.P.
 
Walking back from university to my lodgings past the Fender Soundhouse, Tottenham Court Road, 1976. Never seen or heard the like, before or since. The Rollers were inside and a solid mass of screaming tartan 100 metres across was outside. I can’t begin to imagine what life was like for them at that time.
 
RIP Les. From what I remember much of the money they were due at the height of their fame was 'siphoned off' somehow/somewhere. Shame when you don't get due reward for your 15 minutes of fame.
 
One of my sisters was a big fan - quite a few double page colour pictures from either Record Mirror or Disc weekly on her bedroom walls. Even a tartan scarf at one point but not the Brutus Gold jeans with tartan trim. At University in the 1980's a few of us ran a student disco and in the midst of The Cure/Ramones/Iggy Pop you could put on "Saturday Night" or "Shang A Lang" and on the dance floor they would all go.

See:-
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/sep/23/how-we-made-shang-a-lang-bay-city-rollers
 
I did even buy a Rollers best of a few years ago. Some songs that are just time machines. amazed to think he is only 9 years older than me. They must have hit fame at a very early age.

Thanks for the memories. RIP.

.sjb
 
This hilarious story from a Rollers gig in Mallory Park in 1975 was recalled by John Peel. The phrase 'you couldn't make it up' springs to mind.

The finest event that I’ve ever been to with Radio One was a Radio One Fun Day at Mallory Park. The Mallory Park circuit has a large lagoon in the middle of it and a couple of small islands at one side, and the Bay City Rollers were billed to appear, so hundreds and hundreds of small people in very expensive and badly fitting Bay City Rollers chic – if such a thing is not a contradiction in terms – turned out there as well.
The Bay City Rollers were being helicoptered onto the small island one at a time. Now the only security available were – for reasons that I have never known, but I don’t want to know really, it’s just the whole thing is so wonderful – were members of the BBC sub-aqua club.
So you got these rather short and stubby, sort of like tree trunks dressed up in tartan, and they are coming across the grass, and they start wading across this weed-filled water, which was disgusting. And the sub-aqua people were sort of standing there in their rubber outfits, with flippers and stuff like this, catching these strange children and carrying them back and sort of dumping them on the other side of the bank, who were pushing them back in the water. And the helicopters coming overhead and Bay City Rollers and lots of car noise and screaming.
While all of this was going on, Tony Blackburn was speeding backwards and forwards on the lagoon in a speedboat, driven by a Womble. And I just thought, “If I live to be 200 years old, I am never going to experience anything like this again in my life.”
 
120m records it said yesterday on the BBC. Shame they didn't see more of the cash from what I read.
RIP Les.
 
This hilarious story from a Rollers gig in Mallory Park in 1975 was recalled by John Peel. The phrase 'you couldn't make it up' springs to mind.

The finest event that I’ve ever been to with Radio One was a Radio One Fun Day at Mallory Park. The Mallory Park circuit has a large lagoon in the middle of it and a couple of small islands at one side, and the Bay City Rollers were billed to appear, so hundreds and hundreds of small people in very expensive and badly fitting Bay City Rollers chic – if such a thing is not a contradiction in terms – turned out there as well.
The Bay City Rollers were being helicoptered onto the small island one at a time. Now the only security available were – for reasons that I have never known, but I don’t want to know really, it’s just the whole thing is so wonderful – were members of the BBC sub-aqua club.
So you got these rather short and stubby, sort of like tree trunks dressed up in tartan, and they are coming across the grass, and they start wading across this weed-filled water, which was disgusting. And the sub-aqua people were sort of standing there in their rubber outfits, with flippers and stuff like this, catching these strange children and carrying them back and sort of dumping them on the other side of the bank, who were pushing them back in the water. And the helicopters coming overhead and Bay City Rollers and lots of car noise and screaming.
While all of this was going on, Tony Blackburn was speeding backwards and forwards on the lagoon in a speedboat, driven by a Womble. And I just thought, “If I live to be 200 years old, I am never going to experience anything like this again in my life.”

Brilliant. I love the image of Tony Blackburn being driven around in a speedboat driven by a Womble. I can hear John Peel’s voice in my head as I read that.

RIP Les (but I do miss John Peel)
 
My brother was a big fan -pictures from Look-In all over the wall. He used to put rubber bands on his plastic beach spade and sing along using his bed as a stage. Magic.
 


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