BAY CITY ROLLERS – "Give A Little Love"

“Weedy and horrible” has always been my opinion on this one, and it’s not going to change now. For some reason I remember a “Magpie” feature around that time which showed Jenny Hanley in 50s beachwear to the backing of some choice rock’n’roll, 60s beachwear to the backing of some choice Beat Boom song, and a 70s bikini with “Give A Little Love” playing in the background. The bikini was welcome…

Re the Rollers and guitar solos – you may well remember that an integral part of the “Shang-a-Lang” programme featured Eric and Woody being given guitar lessons by session player Big Jim Sullivan, whose Wikipedia entry credits him with playing on no less than 59 Number 1 singles from “Tower of Strength” to “January”. Sullivan also toured with Eddie Cochran, gave Ritchie Blackmore guitar lessons and loaned Jimmy Page the acoustic guitar he used on Zeppelin’s first album. So you’d hope Eric’s guitar bit would be OK.

A memorable letter in “Record Mirror” in late ’75, as I recall it: “Why didn’t “Money Honey” get to number one? Cos the boring old sods who never buy records except during the silly season went out and bought boring old B——- R——- and the like, that’s why! But the Rollers’ll be back, just you wait…”

Lots of people remember “the Matt Bianco incident” on Saturday Superstore; perhaps less well remembered is the time the “new Roller”, Ian Mitchell, was on the phone-in on Swap Shop soon after replacing Alan Longmuir.

Caller: “Ian, what did you think of the Rollers before you joined them?”
Ian: “Err, I thought they were all right, you know…”
Caller: “Oh, because MOST BOYS THINK THEY’RE POOFS!”

Just listened to this for the first time ever and reckon it’s a pretty weak tune to have as a birthday Number 1. As Marcello hints in #5 though, it could’ve been a lot worse.

Not being lots of people, dare I ask what the Matt Bianco incident was?

Thank you, Erithian. So, basically, a juvenile Bill Grundy moment?

Did you make up that last bit, MC?

Not as such – I associate the start of Swap Shop with the “Cloggie Cretins” referenced by Marcello in a previous thread, which makes it autumn term ’76 (hope that appeases Spoiler Bunny). Saturday morning BBC around this era included the Banana Splits, athletics coaches showing you how to do the long jump and a German language course called “Kontakte” which really should exist somewhere on YouTube. I think Tiswas had started by this time, but in Granadaland we didn’t even get to see it for many years, so I wondered what the heck Jasper Carrott was on about.

Billy (#15) – another case of same title/different song I’m afraid. The Rollers song was by John Goodison and Phil Wainman, the Aswad one by Diane Warren and Albert Hammond senior.

I remember once when Roger Daltrey guest-hosted TOTP and introduced The Village People, as the camera zoomed in on the band you could hear him shout “mind your backs!”

In a similar vein, Peter Cook hosting the great punk/new wave show Revolver and declaring “My God, they’re black!” when Hi-Tension came on.

I’m surprised at the critical reaction here. I rather like this song. I accept, of course, that there’s something very soft-centred about it, and it’s hard to remove Westlife from its image repertoire, as Barthes would have said, if he’d lived to know Westlife. But I think it’s a rather enjoyable tune; I like very much the gradually rising chords and melody in the chorus, and the simple three notes that underpin ‘sun comes shining through’ which are pleasingly coordinated in the dying seconds of the song as the lyric simplifies to ‘sun shines through’. The attempted lushness of the strings sounds to me rather well done, fairly minimally interwoven, given the era. The violins under the chorus first and second times are rather taut and dramatic, I think. There are some false notes of course: the spoken passage, as has been noted, which is even more unconvincing than Johnny Nash’s attempt, and the triplet that introduces the verse is a limp cliche. But the song works for me as a rather sunny and simple sentiment.

I should say, of course, that this is pure hindsight. I was only seven at the time and had a bizarrely patchy sense of contemporary music. I don’t remember the Bay City Rollers at all, except for girls in the lunch queue singing, to the tune of ‘Nick Nack Paddywack’, ‘B-A-Y B-A-Y B-A-Y-C-I-T-Y, with an R-O double-L E-R-S, Bay City Rollers are the best’.

We used to sing “Shag-A-Slag” instead of “Shang-A-Lang”

But those two US hits aside, what was it about the Rollers that made them, to my mind, the worst teenpop idols ever – yes, EVER, and I haven’t forgotten about Westlife?

Maybe it’s the all-pervading cynicism of the exercise. Listening to the old hits, and watching the old performances, it seems to me that no-one, at any stage of the process, gives two shits about the quality of the experience that they are providing. All I hear is joyless hack work, laced with an opportunism that borders on the sleazy. With “Give A Little Love” in particular, its very sluggishness suggests a deep-rooted ennui: can we really be bothered to slog through the motions, just to rake in the dosh (the management) or perpetuate the myth (the band)?

I also find it impossible to believe that any of the band members even liked the material they were performing, and this above all else is what sets them apart. For example, I am perfectly prepared to believe that the members of Westlife, and the people around them, genuinely think that they are providing a Quality Product, for instance – however restrictive and enfeebled that product might seem to the rest of us. (Their live shows have quite a reputation for consistently delivering, incidentally.)

So if the Rollers themselves thought they were serving up trash, then what can we possibly gain from listening to them?

It isn’t a question of “respect” or artists’ own opinions of their output – it’s a simple matter of which we prefer; it’s been released, the notes are in the air, up to us to assimilate, Eric Dolphy etc.

Re: 27 – I think that means that I have more respect for Westlife (as hardened people of show) but more sympathy for the Rollers (as weary men on a nightmarish treadmill burdened by doubt).

That play is ‘City Sugar’, by a young Stephen Poliakoff.

Aha, but Wikipedia says it was first performed on stage in October 1975. The theory stands!

See Simon Reynolds and Joy Press’ ‘The Sex Revolts’ for a very good critique of McLaren’s preoccupation with sexual exploitation of the young in his projects, culminating with Bow Wow Wow. He doesn’t come out of it very well.

Well, McLaren did enourage the rest of the band to have sex with Lewin and think that it would be a fantastic lark to attempt to turn the Cambridge rapist into a cult icon. Finding all of this distasteful isn’t really being “anti-sex”, surely?

A long way in the future, but I wonder if we’ll also be getting the two other number ones that they lied about and said that they weren’t, once we get to 1981 and 1990…

1990: Statistics show that both records sold precisely the same amount, but the chart company put the (inferior) one – whose sales had increased by the higher percentage that week – at number one.

1981: I only knew about this one because Marcello has written about it, but it was deemed ineligible for the charts because it was sold too cheaply.

1977; Despite this being a thrice-told tale, I really don’t know.

So, if not “lied” then certainly “did not permit the highest-selling single of that week to be listed at number one in the charts” in at least two instances…

Re#46-I don’t know anything about the “fake” number 1 in 1981 but there was a genuine ‘lost’ charttopper at the end of the previous year- unless thats what you’re talking about, Billy?