Steve Meets the Bay City Rollers archived

stevew

Sep 15, 2009 at 3:03am Edited

*I wrote this on piece on Facebook earlier this year, reprinted here at Extuscan's request.*

For a brief, glorious moment in the late 1970s, the entire inhabited Earth was captivated by the look, sound and spirit of a Scottish pop band known as The Bay City Rollers. Ok, maybe it was just a few million pre-teen girls in the US, but that's how these stories evolve.

They were, in fact, just five guys in bellbottoms and shag haircuts who's crowning glory was hosting "The Krofft Superstar Hour". They had one true hit, "Saturday Night" (don't lie, you know you're already singing "S-a-t-u-r-d-a-y NIGHT!" in your head).

It was Halloween 1977 or '78, and word got out The Rollers were renting a house in our hometown of Maplewood, NJ., supposedly put up by their record label while recording an album in New York. As luck would have it, the house was right in our neighborhood. My friend Peter's older sister Wendy, who worked for the junior high school newspaper, hatched this scheme to Trick-or-Treat to the house, meet The Rollers and secure an exclusive interview.

Now let's backtrack a moment and recall how Trick-or-Treating worked in the 70s. It went something like this: You put on a costume, met some friends and canvased the neighborhood for hours on end, amassing somewhere between 10-15 pounds of candy. Parents did not accompany. You stayed out well after dark. You crossed busy streets without holding hands. In short, things that would get any parent thrown in jail today.

So there we were, a rabble of kids working our way up the steep Lewis Drive in Maplewood, dragging our sacks of candy. Wendy had her reporter's notebook in hand. In short order, our quarry was in sight, a Tudor-revival house at the top of the hill. We walked up the path to the stone-arched doorway. We rang the doorbell.

A woman answered the door, wearing tight leopard-print spandex from head to toe. Her hair was large. She looked down at this bunch of funny kids, and said how cute we were in an utterly condescending manner. She invited us into the house. The living room was trashed. The coffee table was littered with funny objects; papers and tubes and things.

There were a bunch of adults milling about, mostly women dressed like our slinky friend, and I guess the Rollers themselves, but I don't really remember talking to them (despite the title of this story). The entire thing lasted maybe five minutes, really. If Wendy made any headway, I don't know.

Here's an example. As we left the house, I called out to the gang, "Wow, did you see that cat lady!?" Well, Cat Lady was still at the door and heard me. Wendy got really steamed and blamed me for ruining her chances at the interview.

So Wendy, I apologize, 30 years later, for sabotaging your interview, I hope there are no hard feelings.