I Ran With The Gang: My Life In And Out Of The Bay City Rollers

by Alan Longmuir, Martin Knight

The Bay City Rollers were one of the brightest things to happen in the tumultuous 1970s, illuminating a dark decade marred by falling stock markets, a plummeting economy and industrial unrest. Alan Longmuir, an apprentice plumber from Edinburgh, was inspired by The Beatles to form a band in the 1960s. Firstly, he enlisted his brother and then his cousin and via throwing a dart at a map they eventually became the Bay City Rollers. Success was slow in coming but when it did it was beyond Alan’s (and almost everyone else’s) wildest dreams. A string of million selling records led to Rollermania – a mass-hysterical fan reaction not seen since Beatlemania. Like a wildfire it spread across the world. The Rollers’ juggernaut was out-of-control. Alan Longmuir recounts his surreal journey from the Dalry backstreets to the Hollywood hills and back to being a plumber. Along the way he punctures some of the myths and untruths that have swirled around the group. Most of all, though, Alan captures the great adventure that a bunch of young boys from Edinburgh embarked on that for a few years threatened to turn the whole world tartan. Tragically, while finishing his memoirs Alan Longmuir was taken ill while on a holiday in Mexico marking his 70th birthday and died back in Scotland a short while later. It was his great desire that I Ran With The Gang should be released.

288 pages, Paperback

Published May 15, 2021

Reviews

[Ray Smillie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't a fan of Bay City Rollers back in the day. Just wasn't. I started the 70s listening to glam rock and moved on to prog rock then punk came along. Finally music my teenage plukey self could relate to. If someone had told me back then that (a) I would read a book written about the Rollers and (b) enjoyed it, I would most definitely not believed them.

In the fullness I time I can appreciate that they did release some decent songs and fully deserved the hero worship they got from young lasses all over the world. The fact that they never got the financial rewards they should have got is down to mismanagement and naivety. Alan Longmuir sadly died before this was published but comes over as a decent bloke who had his troubles, both financially and healthwise, and found happiness in the latter years of his life.