Mon 13 Oct 2003
THE LES McKEOWN STORY
Les McKeown has lifted the lid on life as a Bay City Roller in his new autobiography. He tells Gina Davidson the death of his mother and father has left him depressed as he stands on the brink of new fame.
LES McKeown wants to see his parents’ house. He’s spent a lot of time alone there since his mother died last Christmas, just months after his father. It’s his Scottish bolthole, but not for much longer as the housing association which owns the East Craigs flat wants it back.
Sitting in the back of a black cab coming from Edinburgh Airport McKeown rails against the "uncaring, unfeeling b******s" and looks on the verge of tears. "I’ve just not been the same since they went," he admits. "I’ve been pretty depressed. I’ve been coming back and getting drunk in there and talking to ghosts."
It’s hardly an auspicious start to meeting the teenybopper king of the 1970s. This, after all, is the man who sang Shang-a-lang as he ran with his gang, who wore three-quarter length jeans trimmed with cheery tartan, who always had a cheeky grin plastered on his face - a grin which made countless teenage girls swoon. You just don’t expect Les McKeown to be sad.
Yet in his new autobiography it seems he has played out the traditional role of the sad clown all his life. While the world was going Roller-mad and he had countless women breaking down his hotel doors and every luxury life as an international pop idol could afford him, he wasn’t happy. Behind the tartan scarves and madcap TV shows, McKeown was miserable.
"My problems started when I had that accident with the old lady," he says. We’re now ensconced in a suite at the Howard Hotel, and McKeown lights up another of the countless cigarettes he’ll get through today. "That’s when they started, because of the amount of work we were doing, it all got shoved to the back of my head and didn’t resurface again for a few years."
The old lady was Edinburgh pensioner Euphemia Clunie, who was killed in 1974 despite McKeown trying to avoid her while driving near Western Corner. He was only 19, yet almost 30 years on he can take you through what happened, step by step, as if the tragedy is indelibly etched on his mind.
"I always wished I’d spoken to her family afterwards, but with Tam Paton and others telling me not to get involved I just had to get on with things. But I took it all very seriously. I was going to go down for ten years. In court it was said I was doing at least 100mph. I was lucky there were eyewitnesses there who told what really happened."
Suddenly he smiles. "I really lost the plot afterwards. I had to do a gig the next night and I broke down, sobbing uncontrollably, and so all the fans were wanting to cuddle me or something and started trying to jump over the orchestra pit to get to me and there’s all these photographers standing all over them, so I jump in and start beating up a couple of photographers," he laughs. "I gets huckled by the police and end up with a two-year suspended jail sentence."
You get the impression that if it hadn’t been for the Rollers, McKeown might really have ended up inside. Despite his years in the limelight and the trappings of success, he looks and sounds exactly how he would have if he’d stayed in Broomhouse. You can imagine his childhood brushes with the law would have become increasingly serious.
As for his boyish charm, that’s long gone thanks to the drink and drugs. Indeed, later, when we’re on our way to meet another former Roller, Pat McGlynn, McKeown admits he’s desperate for a drink. He was late for his plane from London that morning so didn’t have his customary two pints of Stella for breakfast. Lunch, though, will offer the opportunity to knock back his preferred tipple, Jack Daniels and Coke. I ask him if he’s an alcoholic. "The amount I drink? Yes," he replies without flinching.
Drugs have been a problem too. He claims to be clean now, thanks to the love of his Japanese wife Peko and their son Jube. Yet the death of his parents has knocked him back. "I got into cocaine when I was in the States with the Rollers," he says. "It was everywhere and totally available."
The most famous drug moment he’s written about is giving Mandrax to the others - Eric Faulkner, Stuart Wood, Alan and Derek Longmuir and even Tam Paton - while touring Australia, so he could go off to meet female fans. "I couldn’t sleep because I’d ran out of Mandrax, so the hotel doctor wrote me a prescription. All those buggers loved them because it helped them cope with whatever they were doing. I didn’t sprinkle it in their drink, though - they asked for it."
Cocaine came later, followed by heroin, although he skips over it in his book. "I don’t really want to tell you about the great times I had on it in case anyone thinks it sounds like a good idea," he says. "I still want it. Right now I could do it. If I’m having a great time with friends that’s the first thing that comes into my mind. The last 19 years it’s been my boy and my wife that’s stopped me and I’m not saying I’ve been completely clean all that time.
"It happened when I went to Hollywood and I thought, ‘I’ll have a bit of that’. The smack was after I’d left the band, but it wasn’t injecting, it was smoking."
It seems McKeown, the youngest of four sons born to Irish immigrant parents, has always looked for some kind of escape. As a youngster he had no desire to be the gas fitter the school suggested. He wanted to join the Merchant Navy, but after being expelled from school for carrying out a "dirty protest" in a school lift as retaliation for allegedly being beaten up by two teachers, that door closed to him.
So he chose showbusiness. It was Tam Paton, though, who chose him as the Rollers’ lead singer. The success of the band in the 1970s has been well-documented, but McKeown says he was unsurprised by it. "I just thought it would happen," he laughs. "I was definitely arrogant when I was younger and I don’t know if I’ve lost that bit of my personality. I’ve always thought that if you want something, you have to just go get it. I joined the Rollers because I wanted to be a professional singer. The money was crap and the band had a dubious sexual image even in those days. I told a friend Paton had offered me the job. He said I should join because I’d get paid. I said, ‘What about this stuff about them being a bunch of poofs?’ and he just said ‘Well just watch your a***!’ "
McKeown says he was never bothered by the band’s gay manager. Guitarist Pat McGlynn alleges Paton tried to rape him. McKeown has backed McGlynn’s claim and they recently made the allegation to Lothian and Borders Police.
We meet up with McGlynn later. A nervy character who is trying to build up a property business in Edinburgh, he still has a recording studio in his house. He’s vitriolic about Paton and seems deeply scarred by his time with the Rollers. So why now? "I’ve been thinking about it for years. I witnessed some of what went on. I’ve said nothing and I think people’s lives have been damaged. I think if I know something and keep silent about it I’m complicit, so even if what I’ve got to say isn’t used by anybody, if the police don’t do anything with it, at least I’ve done my bit," says McKeown.
"I was also thinking about what happened to my brother Hari, how that one incident [he was raped in a children’s home], if it never happened, what he could have done. He’s a talented guy and I’m sure he would have blossomed in the arts. So I think that anyone who’s been abused or knows of anyone who has, they should tell someone. It’s really only fear that stops them - and I’m not afraid anymore."
McKeown adds that while he constantly faced up to Paton, he was physically afraid of his manager. "I think he didn’t touch me, though, because of what happened when I joined the Rollers. They’d been a one-hit-wonder then I come in, go on telly and we skyrocket to the top. Put two and two together and I was untouchable. So I told him I’ll s*** who I want and he could shut his fat face. We did come to some agreement that I wouldn’t let the other members know what I was doing, but I was getting special treatment. That’s really why they hate me." Despite his numerous conquests McKeown insists there are no unknown children out there. "They would have come out the woodwork by now," he laughs.
He’s obviously proud of his family in London, but relations with Edinburgh relatives aren’t so good, especially since his mum died. He fell out with brother Brian in the 1980s over a snooker hall business. McKeown says he lent his brother money to start it up, but when he was skint couldn’t get it back. They’ve hardly spoken since.
Since his mum’s funeral he no longer sees eldest brother Roni either. "When it was all happening Roni loved it, then when it went the other way, it was like Peter denying Jesus. It’s funny, times change, and people’s opinion of you changes. One minute you’re the bee’s knees, the next you’re just trash."
The Rollers are almost as famous for their acrimonious split as the Rollermania they inspired. For McKeown, leaving the band was the first time he realised he was actually skint. "I’d been protected in a wee bubble, flying first class, eating caviar and smoked salmon and drinking champagne. And then it was over. What I couldn’t understand, though, is how we could sell so many records and so much merchandise and I was left £24,000 in debt. And then it was sinking ship syndrome - no-one wanted to know. Found out the people who said they were friends, weren’t. When you were on top they’d have licked your a***."
There have been occasional reunions, but none successful. These days he’s concentrating on his new band titled, appropriately, Damaged. "They still want me. They want the old stuff, but also what I’m doing now. Damaged is a band of people who are all a wee bit damaged. We write about things in our heads and that gets them out.
"We’re off to tour Australia soon. I’m going to try and stop smoking and get healthy, get myself together. My bandmates will look after me - I might even go for a run."
The writing of his book has helped McKeown. "Now was the right time to write it, it has been a cathartic process," he says. "I’m glad it’s all out and have no regrets about writing it." It seems, then, that for this Roller, the running is finally over.
