Song of the Day 4/23: Bay City Rollers, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Love Letter”

You know rock is over the hill when the lead singer of the first boy band dies at age 65. Les McKeown, the lead singer for the Bay City Rollers in their heyday, died suddenly on April 20, cause still unknown. He was with the band for only five years, from 1973-78, but that included the peak of their popularity, when they were sold to British teeny-boppers as the new Beatles. They’re remembered in the U.S. mainly for “Saturday Night,” which hit No. 1 in late 1975, but they managed to churn out five gold albums between September 1975 and July 1977. This was among their string of follow-up singles.

The Rollers wrote some of their own songs, but “Love Letter” was a cover of one of America’s overlooked pop songwriters of the ’70s, Tim Moore. The Rollers’ production was a little slicker, but they also speeded it up just a tad, never a bad move with pop songs.

The first time I heard the song it was by new wave power popsters The Records (“Starry Eyes”), who released it as a stand-alone single in 1979 after producer Mutt Lange lost his argument to include it on their debut LP, “Shades in Bed.”