Bye Bye Baby

[Gangster Octopus]

Les McKeown's died.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

The good old days, eh. I wonder when Danny Boyle and Richard Curtis will do their biopic. Was he the nonce or the one who ran someone over? It is a hell of a story.

[Satchmo Distel]

The latter.

[MsD]

He was a heavy, problem drinker. Lived near me in Clapton.

[Jah Womble]

RIP. Three of the BCRs gone in the space of three years.

McKeown claimed in later years that the car accident - which caused the death of a pensioner and occurred when he was just twenty - was what drove him to drink.

Met him once and he was sh*tfaced then. Seemed a nice guy, though.

[G-Man]

A voice from my late childhood. He and the other BRCs had some huge trouble after the glory days,including stories of Woody and another Roller beating Les up. For his part, Les once hijacked a BCR concert, coming on to the stage uninvited, Must've been 1978 or so. In his later years, he'd wear the tartan in his public appearances.

[johnr]

I really liked Les's voice, and my mum bought me a BCR vest, which unfortunately was spotted in the school changing rooms, to much ridicule. My best mate, who worked in the business, met Les a few times in the 2010s and told me that Les drank too much. My mate died in 2011 from the booze, and I was sort of surprised to hear tonight that Les was still here, until now. RIP.

[Nocturnal Submission]

He and the other BRCs had some huge trouble after the glory days

Well, Florentino Perez was selflessly trying to help but everyone just got nasty about it.

[G-Man]

Well, Florentino Perez was selflessly trying to help but everyone just got nasty about it.

Applause

[MsD]

I didn't mean to sound dismissive about his death, btw, I was going to tell an amusing anecdote then stopped myself.

Seemed to have been generally not a bad fellow, despite his problems and a few views I don't agree with, mostly of the "PC has gone mad" variety.

And as noted, he did have a good voice, and the BCR songs were tuneful enough. I enjoyed hearing them on the radio.

Finally, tartan is ace.

[WOM]

I was right into them as a ten year old. They famously did a free concert at Toronto City Hall which they expected ten or fifteen thousand people to show up for...and 40,000 did. I learned about it the next day in the paper and was more than a little pissed off.

[elguapo4]

I was talking about his death with a colleague today. Back at their height of fame, they played a gig at the Star cinema in Crumlin in Dublin. They were the only main teen band to play Dublin in the 70s, and the place was packed. My colleagues brother was employed as security, and after a hectic evening, they were told the band wanted to thank them for their efforts. They went backstage, hoping to get a few pounds for a pint, instead the band gave them their sweaty used towels as a keepsake!

[Sits]

Mrs. S and I were discussing our surprise at his relative youth. Being primary school kids during the BCR peak, they just seemed like younger “grown ups”. Had no idea how young he actually was at the time.

[Sits]

It just happened that my Mum and Dad had bought me a tartan duffel (sp.) bag when I started at said primary school, and within a couple of years it became quite coveted by one or two of the class. Christine James springs to mind. “I like your bag” she said.

[Gangster Octopus]

Made the mistake of trying to take the piss out of the girls queuing for tickets outside Sheffield's City Hall for the Bay (as no-one used to call them) back in 1975. Never again.

[WOM]

I mentioned this to [young] Mrs WOM today and she said 'who?' Not to Les McKeown but to BCR. Apparently they didn't cast a long cultural shadow.

[ursus arctos]

Tell her they were the BTS of their era

[Jah Womble]

Made the mistake of trying to take the piss out of the girls queuing for tickets outside Sheffield's City Hall for the Bay (as no-one used to call them) back in 1975. Never again.

What in God’s name possessed you to do that? Rollergirls were fughing terrifying - plus they had the numbers...

[Satchmo Distel]

I don't think any of the boy bands since then have been associated with anywhere near as much mass hysteria, although several had longer peaks and more No. 1 singles due to marketing becoming far smarter. There had also been a big David Cassidy wave the year before. It seems generational to me; girls in the late 70s were OK buying into Grease and Blondie without recreating Beatlemania and going mad at airports and so on. Or the kids buying singles got even younger and too young to form a subculture of that kind.

The lads themselves didn't have the talent to take The Beatles path of quitting touring and being a studio band. And the singles declined, as always seemed to happen (T Rex, Slade, BCR all had runs of top singles with great hooks but then failed to hit the spot because, unlike, say, Westlife, they didn't have teams of writers).

[Sits]

So in retrospect Donny Osmond >> David Cassidy >> BCR were the last flames of the Beatlemania phenomenon.

Mrs. S was definitely a Cassidy girl.

[Satchmo Distel]

Yes I believe so. Teenagers of 1963-75 are a distinct phenomenon and the next set had different priorities or were subjected to different forms of marketing. There also seems to be a type of boy next door these girls saw in the singers which made them want to scream in public at them, which wasn't quite the same later (or they expressed their desire differently).

[ursus arctos]

Have you seen K-Pop audiences?

Particularly BTS fans?

[Gangster Octopus]

And the bobby-socksers from a previous generation.

[WOM]

Duranies in '84.

[tee rex]

Teenyboppers were constantly in the news when I was "their age" in the '70s, causing much moral panic. It wasn't just music. Staid old Wimbledon officials coping with Bjorn Borg's screaming fans was a highlight, people inhabiting two different planets. I don't think my doe-eyed adoration of Glenn Turner and David Steele was quite in the same category.

In the 1980s and 90s security was invented, which put a lid on things a bit. Without being over-nostalgic, it was quite a privilege to have grown up in a time when you basically just turned up at events and went where you wanted, only some jobsworth standing between you and your heroes (and then the heroes told you to fuck off).