Being a Bay City Roller gave me PTSD, says Stuart 'Woody' Wood

The Herald Scotland

25-06-2025

Anyone who grew up in the 1970s will remember the Bay City Rollers, the biggest boy band of the era, Edinburgh tartan teen sensations in trademark cropped trousers and platforms, screaming girls fainting at their feet.
Now Stuart 'Woody' Wood, of the classic line-up of the Seventies, recalls the band's whirlwind rise to fame when he joined aged 17, the 'Rollermania' hysteria, fall-outs, reunions and bitter court cases, in his memoir Mania.
Wood, 68, won't chart the well-documented abuse he and others suffered at the hands of their powerful and dominating manager, Tam Paton, a sexual predator and bully, who died in 2009. He says in the foreword, "all the disgusting things said about him are accurate", but he wants to draw a line under it.
"I moved on a long time ago and don't want that beast to be any part of things concerning my life. I don't need therapy; I have coped in my own way and have no need to spill my emotion," he writes.
The current Bay City Rollers line-up (Image: free) Today, he's still gigging in a different Rollers line-up, as the only original from the classic Seventies band, and seemingly remains a glass half-full type of person, despite setbacks including the missing millions, court battles, reunions and an arduous rift with lead singer Les McKeown, who died in 2021 after years of drug and alcohol abuse.
"It's like you come away from school and many years later you only remember the good things," he says of those heydays which began in 1974, when the classic line-up included McKeown, Wood, guitarist Eric Faulkner, bassist Alan Longmuir and his brother Derek on drums.
"It was like falling into a whirlpool for about four or five years, getting spun around and thrown out the other end. I remember quite vividly it was just madness - good memories, lots of energy. I just think of the audiences we used to play to, lots of smiley, happy faces, crying faces, mascara running."
Yet the reality was that they were mobbed wherever they went, holed up in hotel rooms, often thrown into the boot of cars to escape the hoards of screaming girls, unable to really enjoy their newfound success because of the hysteria that surrounded them.
That, coupled with a gruelling tour schedule instigated by Paton at home and abroad - they found fame worldwide - meant something would have to give.
The classic line-up of the Bay City Rollers in the 1970s (Image: free) He recalls several times when the crowd behaviour was terrifying.
"We were in a limo in Toronto, driving to do a radio interview, and they (the fans) were surrounding us and they were on the roof and the roof was caving in. We physically had to duck down for fear of getting squashed. And there were faces up against the window and lipstick smudges, the hysteria.
"I was 17 or 18 at that point. At that age you're not so much scared as the adrenaline is in full flow. I'd be terrified if that were to happen now."
The bodyguards had to pull the band, one by one, out of the side window and they ended up crowd-surfing on top of the security guys through to the hotel lobby, he recalls.
They became prisoners in hotel rooms. They travelled the world, but there was no sightseeing.
"I remember being in New York for the first time, looking out of the skyscraper, desperate to go out. We wanted to go to Central Park and order a hot dog, but that just wasn't going to happen."
In an environment where drugs were readily available, Wood says: "I didn't do any of the bad stuff. I tried a couple of lines of coke and thought, no, this isn't for me. Smoking marijuana was about as bad as it got for me."
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"The music kept me going," he continues. "The whole reason I got into doing this was that it was fun with my pals at school and it was great fun to get in a van and travel to venues and play my guitar and people are reacting to what you are doing."
In the book he recalls that someone thought that Rollermania would have given him PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).
"It probably did but you don't know these things until you're away from them," he says now. "It's like if you put your finger in cold water, then somebody pours in hot water and you don't realise how hot it's getting."
By the time McKeown announced he was leaving the band in 1978 - "the rat departing the sinking ship", Wood describes it in the book - those mania days had peaked.
He and McKeown always had a volatile relationship.
"Everybody clashed with Les, he was just that type of character," he says now, although in the book he doesn't hold back on the vitriol of their acrimonious relationship, painting McKeown as an egocentric control freak.
"He was a brilliant frontman, but behind the scenes, the band, especially myself, just never got on with the guy from day one.
Stuart 'Woody' Wood (Image: free) "We tried reunions a few times but it always just went sour. The 2015 reunion was just a nightmare. He never really wanted the reunion. He thought he was the Bay City Rollers. It was all about him."
Although another band member, Duncan Faure, was recruited after McKeown left, those mania days never returned.
"We just wanted to keep playing. The Rollers never disbanded, it was just Duncan and myself went off to LA (where he remained for three years) and formed a three-piece."
He later went to South Africa for seven years making music with a multicultural band, where he wasn't particularly famous.
"Suddenly there was a breathing space, a quietness, away from the whole Roller thing entirely. You could walk about the place and not worry about people screaming your name or chasing after you. I had a freedom to do just what I wanted."
"The fame has never interested me. If anything it was a burden," he continues. "You can have all the fame in the world and be absolutely skint, which we kind of were when I was living in LA and South Africa, where doing gigs was my worth. It didn't bother me because it was a great band and we were having great fun."
He returned to Edinburgh and now lives in the countryside outside the city with his wife Denise and dog Elvis and tours with the Bay City Rollers, although it's a very different line-up these days.
He doesn't think the hysteria of the 1970s would be revisited in today's pop world, because of social media and the access fans can get without physically following their music icons.
Mania by Stuart Wood (Image: free) "Back then, you had a couple of magazines like Jackie and one music show on the telly once a week. There was no Facebook or TikTok so it made it harder to connect with your idols.
"In the Seventies there were The Osmonds, David Cassidy and ourselves who had that screaming thing, as did The Beatles in the 1960s and Elvis. But I think that climaxed in the Seventies.
"Now, fans can see them (their idols) every day. They can click on Google and it's right there."
What advice would he give to wannabe boy bands who are just starting out?
"Do it for the right reasons. If you really want to be in a band, make sure you enjoy playing music, writing music or being involved in that whole lifestyle."
Mania: Tartan, Turmoil And My Life As A Bay City Roller by Stuart 'Woody' Wood with Peter Stoneman is published by Blink, priced £22. Available now.