When the Bay City Rollers Mailed Us a Rock ‘n’ Roll Love Letter – A Vibrant Burst of Devotion Penned in the Language of Rock
In March 1976, Bay City Rollers unleashed “Rock and Roll Love Letter”, a single that soared to number 28 on the Billboard Hot 100 and danced its way to number 6 on Canada’s RPM 100 chart, though it never saw a UK single release—ironic for a Scottish band ruling Britain’s teen scene. Pulled from their North American album Rock N’ Roll Love Letter, it was a glitter-dusted missive that landed in the thick of their Stateside invasion, a time when tartan scarves and platform boots were badges of fandom. For those of us who lived it—flipping through AM stations on a transistor radio or crowding around a TV for their Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell debut—it was a song that stuck, a sticky-sweet earworm from an era when music felt like a secret handshake. Now, peering back from 2025, it’s a time machine in three minutes flat, spinning us to a world of innocence and amplifiers cranked loud.
The story behind “Rock and Roll Love Letter” starts not with the Rollers, but with Tim Moore, an American singer-songwriter who penned it for his 1975 album Behind the Eyes. Moore’s original was a soft, introspective plea, but when Bay City Rollers—Les McKeown, Eric Faulkner, Stuart Wood, Alan Longmuir, and Derek Longmuir—got hold of it, they turned it into a rollicking love note, all swagger and stomp. Arista’s Clive Davis, sniffing a hit, snatched it up for the band’s U.S. push, recording it with producer Colin Frechter in a whirlwind session that kept Moore’s poetry but swapped his quiet for their roar. Released as their fame crested—fresh off “Saturday Night”’s number 1 glory—it was a pivot from bubblegum to something edgier, a nod to rock’s roots amid their teen-idol shine. For the Rollers, it was a chance to flex, to prove they were more than just pin-up posters in Tiger Beat.
The meaning of “Rock and Roll Love Letter” is pure, unfiltered yearning—a musician’s vow to pour his soul into sound, to send it soaring to the one he loves. “This is my rock and roll love letter to you,” Les McKeown belts, and it’s less about romance’s frills and more about raw need—“I need to spend my body, I’m a music makin’ man.” For those of us who came of age in the ‘70s, it’s the echo of a basement jam session, the thrill of a first concert, the way we’d scribble lyrics on notebook margins, dreaming of someone to sing them to. It’s not polished or profound—it’s urgent, messy, alive, a shout into the void that says, “Hear me, feel me, through this guitar’s wail.” That “gonna sign it, gonna seal it, gonna mail it away” hook? It’s the promise of connection, sealed with a riff and sent across the miles.
Bay City Rollers were the soundtrack to a million teenage summers, and “Rock and Roll Love Letter” caught them at their peak—before the cracks showed, before Alan’s exit and the fade from the spotlight. It followed “Money Honey” (number 9 in the U.S.) and paved the way for “You Made Me Believe in Magic”, a trio of hits that briefly made them America’s tartan darlings. I remember the frenzy—girls screaming at the Steel Pier in ’76, the way the song blasted from car stereos on humid nights, the fleeting feeling that this was forever. For older ears now, it’s a postcard from 1976—of flared jeans and feathered hair, of a world before playlists replaced vinyl stacks, of a band that burned bright and fast. “Rock and Roll Love Letter” wasn’t their biggest hit, but it’s their spirit in a bottle—a loud, loving scribble from a time when rock was young, and so were we.