It’s been nearly 50 years since Stuart ‘Woody’ Wood joined Scottish sensations the Bay City Rollers – but with a tour, new album and Christmas EP all on the go, Woody feels like he’s “back in the 70s again”.
“I can’t believe it’s going to be 50 years next year,” says the 66-year-old guitarist and producer, as he gears up for a stint of winter gigs in Tayside and Fife.
“I got into this business just by sheer chance.
“Being at school, a couple of mates wanted to form a band and asked if I wanted to be in it. I was playing trumpet and clarinet back in those days, I didn’t have a guitar.
“The bass player said: ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got a couple of acoustics, you can borrow one’. And I just loved it.
“Sometimes it does feel like 50 years ago I joined the Rollers – other times it feels like five hours ago. Life just zooms on past!”
Over that flying 50 years, Woody was part of the line-up which shot the Bay City Rollers to fame with hits like Shang-A-Lang and Give A Little Love.
However, the ‘fab five’ shone bright and burned fast – selling 100 million records in a handful of years, and ending in a blaze of glory with Woody famously punching late frontman Les McKeown on stage for ‘stepping into his light’.
Subsequently, the band changed their line-up several times due to feuds and fall-outs.
‘I used to have a problem with Les’ says Stuart Wood
“There’s been quite a few changes over the years, some guys have come and gone. A couple of the guys have unfortunately died,” says Woody, referring to McKeown and bass player Alan Longmuir, who passed away in 2021 and 2018 respectively.
“When you’re on the road with the same people constantly, you’re going to fall out,” he continues candidly.
“Brothers, sisters, families, everybody falls out at some point. The tensions got high at times, there were fights and all kinds of things, but generally, we all got on.”
Addressing the elephant in the tour bus, he adds: “Les – I used to have a bit of a problem with him back in the day. He eventually left, or was fired, a bit of a mixture, back in ’78.
“But Alan Longmuir and myself, we remained buddies right until he died. There was a bit of a fallout there, but nothing to do with us, it was the people surrounding us,” he says cryptically, possibly referring to a rumoured fight between Alan’s wife Eileen and his own wife Denise.
“Alan was a gem, a gentleman. Best guy I knew,” adds Woody with a hitch in his voice. “But people change as they get older, they don’t have the same tastes or like the same things anymore.
“Out of the ‘fab five’, as they called us, there’s only really me left out on stage,” he muses.
“Well, me and those amazing songs. It’d be a shame not to keep them out there.”
‘When we play Shang-A-Lang now, it’s like the first time’
Mind you, when it comes to the classics like Bye Bye Baby, Woody admits he’s come “full-circle”.
“Songs like Shan-A-Lang and Bye Bye Baby, I’ve gone full-circle with them. When we first played them and they were first hits back in the 70s, it was great fun to do. Then over the decades I got a bit: ‘Ugh, are we playing that one?’
“And then when we did a reunion back in 2015, to see the audience reaction, it just injected a new feeling into the songs. I started to really enjoy playing them again.”
Part of that enthusiasm, Woody credits to the ‘new’ band, made up of Ian Thompson, Jamie McGrory and Mikey Smith.
“They’re all in their mid-30s and they’ve injected a new energy into things,” the veteran Roller explains.
“When we play Shang-A-Lang now, it’s like playing it for the first time.”
Despite his career of teenybopper hits (which he stands by) and tartan suits (which he loves wholeheartedly), Woody wasn’t always into pop music.
“I was more into Louis Armstrong and jazz when I was a teenager,” he recalls. “But the band I was in at school started off playing pop music, the stuff that was in the charts. Bowie, Mark Boland, that sort of thing. And I just got a liking for it.”
Now he knows that pop – and its devoted fans – have always been where his bread’s buttered, and he’s got no snobbery around that fact when it comes to the new record.
“If people weren’t still wanting to listen to these songs, we wouldn’t be doing it,” he says matter-of-factly.
“We put an EP out a couple of months back; one track was called Brand New Day. And that kind of represented where the band is. The album will sway either side of that, it’ll get a bit more ballad-y and bit rockier. That song was right in the middle.”
Rollermania: ‘I can go for a pint of milk now’
In 2023, Bay City Rollers fans are just as dedicated as ever according to Woody, who now has the pleasure of watching a new generation of fans raised on the band’s music from his vantage point on stage.
“You see the mums and the dads – mainly the mums, let’s be honest, they were the ones doing most of the screaming in crowds back in the day – bringing their sons and daughters,” he smiles.
“And by the end of the set, the kids have stolen their mum’s tartan scarf and they’re jumping up and down!”
But nothing can hit the heady heights of ‘Rollermania’ in the hippie age – and Woody’s not complaining about that.
“It’s nothing like it used to be, and I’m quite happy about that!” he laughs. “I can go for a pint of milk without getting mobbed.”
He recalls chaos at the Caird Hall at the height of Rollermania.
“Dundee’s Caird Hall, we played there a couple of times, and it was just mayhem!” he exclaims.
“Back in the ’70s, it was all mayhem. In the early ’60s you had Elvis Presley and then the Beatles came along, and in the ’70s it was The Osmonds, David Cassidy, and us.
“It was sweet – but we probably tipped things into that mass hysteria, that mania that used to go on.
“When we were in New York for the first time, we obviously wanted to get out the hotel and going to Central Park,” he recalls.
“Alan Longmuir and I, we managed to sneak out an emergency exit. We’d been out for maybe five seconds, walked about 10 yards and then this mass of couple of hundred screaming teenagers just descended on us, so we had to run right back inside!
“We just could not go out, which was a real shame, because we were in all of these beautiful countries, but we could only see them from the car window or hotel windows.
“It’s only now that I’m getting to see all these places when we travel, and smell the roses.”
Roller surprised by famous Bye Bye Baby scene in Love, Actually
He puts the deflation of that manic bubble down partly to the increasing accessibility of celebrity thanks to mobile phones and social media.
“Back then, you only had Top of the Pops once a week, a couple of magazines that came out, and newspapers. Not everybody had a phone. Now I think it’s desensitised a lot of people, you don’t get that same hysteria,” he observes.
“Because everything’s so accessible these days, it’s lost a bit of that mystique.”
The Rollers have been tied to British Christmas since 2003, when Richard Curtis’ festive favourite Love, Actually hit the silver screen, and immortalised the band’s hit By Bye Baby in a darkly funny funeral scene featuring Liam Neeson.
“I remember watching the film when it was just out, and I hadn’t heard that we had a song in it,” Woody reveals. “It was quite funny to hear Liam Neeson to give his speech at the funeral and then have them play Bye Bye Baby, that was fun.”
But he’s feeling extra festive as Christmas approaches this year, as the Bay City Rollers are releasing a brand new Christmas EP, Rollin’ Into Christmas.
And Woody’s a particular fan of original track It’s Christmas, which he insists is “very nostalgic”.
“I’ll probably get sick of it in a year or so,” he laughs. “But at the moment, I’m loving it.
“I still love everything about this job. The live band, rehearsals, working on new stuff.
“It’s been 50 years and I still can’t imagine doing anything else.”
The Bay City Rollers will play the Rothes Halls in Glenrothes on December 18, and Forfar’s Reid Hall on December 22. Their Christmas EP, Rollin’ Into Christmas, will be released on December 10, with a new record due early 2024.
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