Lori's Reviews > Shang-A-Lang: My Life With The Bay City Rollers

I knew Les McKeown of the Bay City Rollers -- the boy band that consumed a couple of years of my teenaged life back in the mid/late 1970s -- had written a memoir (originally published in 2003) -- but when I'd checked it out a few years ago on Amazon, it was out of print and used copies were priced higher than I was willing to pay.

Earlier this week, I heard of his death at the age of 65. :( In scanning the news, I stumbled on a link to the book again, and discovered that a Kindle version was available. I happily downloaded it to the Kindle app on my cellphone and started reading. That was Thursday, and I finished the book this (Saturday) morning.

"Shang-a-lang: My Life With the Bay City Rollers" (titled "Shang-a-lang: My Life as an International Pop Star" in some editions) was written by Les along with Lynne Clarke and Irvine Welsh, who wrote the foreword. There's a section at the end with fan comments about the impact Les and the Rollers have had on their lives, as well as photos.

Les grew up in a tough neighbourhood of Edinburgh, with a chip set firmly on his shoulder -- the youngest of four brothers from a poor Irish immigrant family As a teenager, he started singing with a local band called Threshold, which put him on the radar of Rollers manager Tam Paton. When the Rollers' lead singer, Nobby Clark, abruptly departed the band, Les was called in to replace him. He bought his mother an electric dryer with his first big Rollers paycheque.

Les's voice comes through clearly here -- including the use of Scottish dialect ("couldnae," "didnae," "wouldnae," etc.). Some of the terms I was familiar with from my teenaged Rollermaniac days (e.g., "trews,"chip butties"), while other references (Mary Whitehouse? Will and Gareth??) went right over my non-British/Scottish head. These could have been clarified/explained for a non-UK audience. There are also some typos/continuity errors, particularly near the end, that should have been caught by an editor. (As a former editor/proofreader, this kind of stuff matters to me!)

Typos and head-scratchers aside, the book is also somewhat marred by Les's snarky comments about the other band members -- Eric Faulkner in particular. He also doesn't have much nice to say about the band's ultra-controlling manager, Tam Paton (although he is far from alone in that respect!). (After Paton's death in 2009, Les claimed the manager raped him.) Personality clashes are one thing, and some of Les's criticisms about how the band was run are valid -- but I also think some of his personal insinuations were uncalled for and could have easily been left out.

Those reservations aside, I mostly enjoyed this trip down memory lane. It's ultimately not a very happy story, but Les tells it with wit and humour. This comment, for example, about the advent of punk rock, cracked me up:

The birth of punk rock did nothing to make me feel more secure in my job. I daydreamed about what it would be like to spit and puke along with the best of them, but I quickly realised the idea was just a hopeless dream and downed the rest of my glass of milk.

I'm obviously pretty familiar with the Rollers' story by now, but I was glad to have the opportunity to read Les's side of things, and to learn more about his life over the past 40 years. The book ends in 2003, with Les promising to start work on a sequel. I am beyond sad that we'll never see a full reunion of the classic lineup (or that promised sequel), but thankful for the memories, and for this book that brought them flooding back again.

3.5 stars on Goodreads, rounded up to 4, because I'm feeling generous and nostalgic. :)