Page 23 - May issue 2021

We Remember Les McKeown
Leslie Richard McKeown (12 November 1955 – 20 April 2021) was a Scottish pop singer. He was the lead singer of the Bay City Rollers during their most successful period in the 1970s.
Leslie Richard McKeown (12 November 1955 – 20 April 2021) was a Scottish pop singer. He was the lead singer of the Bay City Rollers during their most successful period in the 1970s.
McKeown joined the Bay City Rollers in November 1973, replacing founding lead singer Gordon “Nobby” Clark. He was initially reluctant to join the group, later stating in his memoir that it was not “high on my list of bands I’d have wanted to join”.The band was originally founded in the mid- 1960s but only achieved popularity after McKeown joined. His arrival also coincided with an overhaul of the group’s image introducing half-mast trousers, platform shoes and tartan. They had four songs in the Top 10 in 1974 (“Remember”, “Summer love Sensation”, “All of Me Loves All of You”, and “Shang-a-Lang” which featured McKeown as the frontman). This was followed by a UK number one (“Give a Little Love”) and a US number one (“Saturday Night”, which was re-recorded with McKeown as the lead vocalist)[8] a year later. It was during this time, McKeown later wrote, that he was raped by their manager, Tam Paton, and that Paton provided him with Mandrax and amphetamines to help him cope with the pressures of touring.
McKeown left the group in 1978, as its popularity began to decline. He established the pop band Ego trip and released a solo album in 1979 titled All Washed Up, which was successful in Japan. He went on to release eight more solo albums. He rejoined the Bay City Rollers in 2015 for a series of reunion shows, the first
of which, at Glasgow’s Barrowlands, sold out in three minutes. He released his final album, The Lost Songs, in 2016.
McKeown met his wife, Peko/ Keiko, in 1978.They married five years later,and had one child together: Jubei, also known as Richard. In 2008, McKeown stayed at a treatment facility in California for four months, successfully overcoming his addiction to alcohol. One year later, in the Living TV show Rehab, covering celebrities fighting addiction, he disclosed that he was a “secret bisexual” and admitted being unfaithful to his wife with both men and women.
McKeown died at his home on 20 April 2021. He was 65 years old.
Tartan Army
The year 1989 saw Les projected his style and showmanship to the stage with the theatre group, The Tartan Army. The project involved remixing old tunes with contemporary themes. The Tartan Army was totally committed to delighting club audiences with a constantly evolving stage act.
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Often reviewed in music magazines and newspapers, the band was described as “a stage act with a difference” and “putting the show back in performance”. Club owners were quoted as saying, “definitely the maddest act we have ever booked... totally fun and absolutely brilliant”; “masters of reanimation”; “the most fun you can have without having sex”.
As well as taking their stage show to all four corners of the planet, The Tartan Army released several videos, including the critically acclaimed “Bring The Love Back”, a powerful pop-dance cover mix of Bad Company’s “Feel Like Making Love” and Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” created by Les McKeown and Duncan Bridgeman.
Note:
We recently had an interview with Phil Hendriks of Les McKeown’s Bay City Rollers. Phil had a lot of great things to say about Les. That interview can be heard in it’s entirety on Radiodowntown.ca website.
https://www.express.co.uk/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_McKeown