| Les McKeown | |
| Birth Name: | Leslie Richard McKeown |
| Birth Place: | Edinburgh, Scotland |
| Birth Date: | 1955 11, df=yes |
| Death Place: | London, England |
| Occupation: | Singer |
| Genre: | Pop rock |
| Associated Acts: | Bay City Rollers |
| Years Active: | 1973–2021 |
| Instrument: | Vocals * guitar |
Leslie Richard McKeown (12 November 195520 April 2021) was a Scottish singer. He was the lead vocalist of the pop rock band Bay City Rollers during their most successful period in the 1970s.
Leslie Richard McKeown was born in Broomhouse, a suburb close to the south-western city limit of Edinburgh, on 12 November 1955.[1] [2] His father, Francis, worked as a tailor and was deaf;[1] [3] his mother, Florence (née Close), was a seamstress[2] who moved to Scotland after getting married.[1] Both moved to the United Kingdom from Ireland.[4] [5] The family communicated with his father via hand signals.[1] McKeown was raised in a city tenement block,[6] attended Broomhouse Primary School, then nearby Forrester High School, and volunteered in the Boys' Brigade.[1]
McKeown's mother, Florence Close McKeown, was born in Banbridge, Northern Ireland[7] and died on 24 December 2002.[8] Florence's mother died from a miscarriage when Florence was ten years old, something that Les said she still talked about daily until she herself died. For six months after her death, Florence's father, Hugh Henry Close, raised her, her two sisters and one brother by himself before marrying her step-mother. Her step-mother verbally and physically assaulted Florence and the family, and by age twelve, Florence had developed chronic asthma, an illness she believed was brought on by her mother's beatings, and had left school. When Hugh Close died aged 52, Florence was kicked out by her step-mother but was then "begged" to be brought back in when she wanted her to do all the housework. She would soon met Francis (who was from Ballymena), the two eloped, and Florence left home for good. The couple were officially married in 1949 and had moved to Scotland.
He left school at 15 and became a member of the band Threshold.[9] He was employed at a paper mill in between the group's gigs, which earned them £20 per show. In his autobiography, Shang-a-Lang: Life as an International Pop Idol (2003), he admits he had a happy childhood in Broomhouse, but Edinburgh, in his view a drab place to live, became a place to escape from. Among the core members of the band, McKeown was the only one, after the band ran its course, who did not go back to live in Scotland.
McKeown joined the Bay City Rollers in November 1973,[2] replacing founding lead singer Gordon "Nobby" Clark.[5] He was initially reluctant to join the group, later stating in his memoir that it was not "high on my list of bands I'd have wanted to join".[2] The band only achieved national, and then international, popularity after McKeown joined.[10] [11] That said, the locally well-known band, with a recording contract with a minor label, was already established and the newly recruited singer, in his autobiography, maintains that there always was a chasm between him and the rest of the band, despite the fact they were of, more or less, the same age and shared similar backgrounds. The rest of the band members were all from Craigmillar/Liberton, suburbs of similar character to Broomhouse, but near to the southern border of the city, and as the subtitle of his autobiography suggests, McKeown had no pretension to be a rock musician/artist unlike some members of the band.
His arrival also coincided with an overhaul of the group's image introducing half-mast trousers, platform shoes and tartan.[12] They had four songs in the Top 10 in 1974 ("Remember", "Summerlove Sensation", "All of Me Loves All of You", and "Shang-a-Lang" which featured McKeown as the frontman). This was followed by 2 UK number ones ("Bye Bye Baby", "Give a Little Love") and a U.S. number one ("Saturday Night", which was re-recorded with McKeown as the lead vocalist) a year later.Their manager Tam Paton, who was concerned about the inadequacy of the band's musical capabilities, apart from McKeown's singing talent and good looks, chose songs for them and hired song writers and competent studio musicians for the recordings. As a result, often in the Bay City Rollers' recordings, McKeown's vocals were the only musical contributions from the band.
McKeown later wrote that he was raped by Paton and that Paton provided him with Mandrax and amphetamines to help him cope with the pressures of touring.[2] [13] McKeown left the group in 1978 as its popularity began to decline. He was replaced by South African singer Duncan Faure, who sang on three albums with them, who by now were called "The Rollers".[14] In 1982, McKeown, Alan and Derek Longmuir, Stuart Wood, Ian Mitchell, and Pat McGlynn reunited for a tour of Japan that lasted until the next year.
Throughout the 2000s, McKeown and several other members of the band were in court trying to receive unpaid royalties.[15] [16]
He established the pop band Egotrip and released a solo album in 1979 titled All Washed Up,[17] which was successful in Japan. He went on to release eight more solo albums. He rejoined the Bay City Rollers in 2015 for a series of reunion shows, the first of which, at Glasgow's Barrowlands, sold out in three minutes.[18] [19] He released his final album, The Lost Songs, in 2016.
Prior to the Bay City Rollers reunions, McKeown had toured the UK as "Les McKeown's Bay City Rollers".In 2019, McKeown accused Stuart Wood of "exaggerating" his friendship the death of Alan Longmuir to promote shows Wood was performing at.[20]
McKeown revealed in 2009 that he was sexually assaulted when he was seventeen.[21]
McKeown accidentally killed an elderly neighbour in 1975 as a result of reckless driving, for which he was banned from driving for one year and fined £100. He later revealed how the guilt he felt over the event played a key role in his alcoholism. He was fined and banned from driving for 18 months after another incident in 2015 when driving while drunk.
McKeown married Peko Keiko, a native of Japan, in 1983.[1] They had a son.[2] In 2008, McKeown stayed at a treatment facility in California, US for four months, successfully overcoming his addiction to alcohol.[2] One year later, in the Living TV show Rehab, covering celebrities fighting addiction,[13] he disclosed that he was a "secret bisexual" and admitted being unfaithful to his wife with both men and women.[22] [23]
McKeown died on 20 April 2021, at the age of 65, after going into cardiac arrest at his home in London.[17] [24] A coroner's report concluded that his death was from "a combination of natural causes"; he had cardiovascular disease and hypertension, at least partially caused by years of drug and alcohol abuse.[25]
See also: Bay City Rollers discography.
| Title | Year | |
|---|---|---|
| All Washed Up[26] | 1979 | |
| The Face of Love | 1980 | |
| 100% Live | 1980 | |
| The Greatest | 1980 | |
| Sweet Pain[27] | 1981 | |
| Heart Control | 1982 | |
| It's a Game[28] | 1989 | |
| Love Letter[29] | 1993 | |
| The Lost Songs[30] | 2016 |
| Title | Year | |
|---|---|---|
| Shall I do it / Do it all[31] | 1979 | |
| Replaced by a micro chip / Everything with chips | 1979 | |
| Long distance love / Long distance love (live) | 1979 | |
| Sayonara / Dedicate this record | 1980 | |
| Sylvie my love / Your're the woman for me | 1980 | |
| Tender love / Love shine on me | 1981 | |
| Roller days / Heart control | 1981 | |
| She's a lady / She's a lady (Instrumental) | 1988 | |
| Love is just a breath away / Differend mixes | 1988 | |
| It's a game / It's a game (Instrumental) / It's a game (Radio Version) | 1989 | |
| Love hurts and love heals / Love hurts and love heals (Instrumental) / Love hurts and love heals (Radio Version) | 1989 | |
| Nobody makes me crazy / Looking for love | 1989 |