Bay City Rollers: Palladium Pandemonium

One Night as a War Correspondent, 1977.

It's so hard to be a fan today. This morning I was reading "The Darkside of Fandom," the latest post by musician/writer/statistics wizard Chris Dalla Riva on his Substack,

Can't Get Much Higher

. It's an interview with a woman who was "exiled" from the One Direction "stan," or super-fan community, for some act or acts of apostasy. It made me sad, these internecine wars that so often characterize K-Pop, Swiftdom, boy bands, hip-hop, and other fan communities in the rotting world of social media.

During the last week, I've been pondering a more innocent era of fandom: The brief but intense love affair girls of a certain age (middle school/high school) had in the mid-1970s with the Bay City Rollers. A huge phenomenon in the U.K., the Rollers, from Scotland, owned the front pages of the music weeklies and tabloids, in which they were covered with the fervor given to the activities of the Royal Family. Their first U.S. single, "Saturday Night," went to number one at the end of 1975, and for at least two years BCR maintained its niche as a teen girl phenomenon here in the states.

Last week I got a message from a member of a Rollers Facebook fan group, who had posted my 1977 Newsday review of the BCR concert at Manhattan's Palladium. The reviews of my review were enthusiastic, she told me, because it was fair, and kind, and not the reflexive, condescending slap to which Rollers fans were used to being subjected. I had gone to the show not to judge the band's music, but to observe the phenomenon of fandom in all of its passion. Some of the references struck me as odd: O.J. Simpson was then just a great football player, and magican David Copperfield was the opening act.

As occurrences of mass hysteria go, the Bay City Rollers concert Saturday night at the Palladium in Manhattan was right up there with Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast, and the early peak days of Beatlemania.

For an hour before the Rollers went on stage, the audience of mostly plaid-wearing preteen girls shrieked, stomped, cried, and waved tartan banners in deference to their Scottish heroes.

They screamed when disc jockey Bree Buchaw of WYNY-FM introduced the opening act, magician David Copperfield, as a "very very good personal friend of the Rollers." They screamed through the 20-minute intermission and sang along with the Beach Boys oldies that were played on the loudspeakers.

But such enthusiasm was itself only a warm-up. When the lights dimmed and "Pomp and Circumstance" was pumped through the hall, the delirious Rollermaniacs counted down along with the overdubbed voice from NASA control: "Thirty seconds and counting . . . 25. . . 20 . . .15 . . . 10 . . .9 . . ." At "contact," the Rollers were plugged in and playing "I'm a Rock and Roller," and the audience was in a state of foaming frenzy.

For the next hour and 15 minutes, it was total war at the edge of the stage. There is no orchestra pit at the Palladium, and between the vulnerable Rollers and their rabid, adoring fans, was a contingent of beefy jocks, the hired security team. These burly ex-football players and wrestlers would have had no trouble with any mob of booze- or drug-crazed wiseguys at a typical Palladium hard rock concert. But they were no match for the kamikaze attacks of the Rollers fans, who were out to get a piece of Eric, Leslie, Woody, Derek, or Pat. It was as if 500 O.J. Simpsons were running at once against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive line. It was no contest.

At one point, guitarist Eric Faulkner was floored by a fan who broke through the defense. When his tackler was pulled off, Faulkner managed to get up, strum his guitar, wave to the audience, and hit his harmony note right on cue. At another point, drummer Derek Longmuir showed incredible stamina as he maintained his rhythm while one fan clung to his arm. For a few seconds, she let go of his arm and seemed to be gently hugging his back before she was led away.

During the course of the show, at least 50 (the point where we stopped counting) girls were carried away from the stage, either attempting to maul their favorite Roller with love, or because they had fainted in the maddening crush of bodies.

The Rollers, who are used to these displays of affection-gone-berserk, handled it all with consummate professionalism. They wave frequently to the loge and balconies, and never appeared ruffled by the relentless assaults until the end, when singer Les McKeown was wrestled to the floor by a 12-year-old girl during "Saturday Night." At that point, there were so many girls onstage that a moment of discomfort set in until security reinforcements could get the Rollers backstage, alive.

Musically, the Rollers played a competent set of good time right rock and roll. The music isn't brilliant, but it is a satisfactory introduction to rock for a young person. The harder songs, like "Too Young to Rock and Roll," were performed with special fizz and vigor. While it remains to be seen whether the Rollers can or should grow musically as the audience matures, that growth doesn't seem impossible.

The experience, though, was summed up by a young teen redhead who sat collapsed and weeping in an upstairs hall after the show. With tears streaming down her face, she kept repeating to her similarly immobile friends: "Eric saw us!" To make the fans of a teen phenomenon feel seen, to feel that outpouring of love seem validated, well, that's no small accomplishment.

© 1977, 2024 Wayne Robins.