Bay City Rollers We Love You by Nick Lowe

Album: Pink Boots & Lipstick (Rare Glam & Bubblegum from the 70s) (1975)

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Nick Lowe started off his career as vocalist for Brinsley Schwarz. The rock group secured a recording contract with United Artists and gained an excellent reputation on the London pub rock circuit. By the time Brinsley Schwarz broke up in 1975, Lowe was established as an inventive songwriter and producer. United Artists were keen on keeping him under contract, but Lowe desperately wanted to leave so he could pursue his own projects. After wracking his brain about how he could exit UA, Lowe had the idea of submitting some unmarketable records to the label so they'd be forced to get rid of him. This tongue-in-cheek fan club tribute to Scottish pop sensations Bay City Rollers was his first effort.
Released under the moniker "Tartan Horde," Lowe wrote the spoof song pseudonymously under the name "Terry Modern." Penned in mock adulation to the teenybopper phenomena of 1975, the single got taken seriously by many Rollers fans. It even became a substantial hit in Japan, so Lowe's contact-breaking scheme backfired and he was even obliged to record a second Tartan Horde single called "Rollers Show." This one flopped, and after Lowe submitted another intentionally awful and ridiculous song titled "Let's Go to the Disco," credited to the Disco Brothers, UA kicked him out.
Now free to record for the fledgling independent label, Stiff Records, in August 1976 Lowe released "So It Goes," the first single on the Stiff Records label. A few months later he dropped "I Love My Label," a stroppy serenade to United Artists. During the late '70s, he clocked up three UK Top 40 hits, but achieved greater success as a producer.
According to George Gimarc's book, Punk Diary: The Ultimate Trainspotter's Guide to Underground Rock, 1970-1982, "Bay City Rollers We Love You" was Lowe's first solo-written song. "I couldn't be obvious about it by turning in Country and Western songs with sitars [not a bad idea!]... so I decided to make one of those fan type records like in the '60s," he said. "At the time there was no escaping the Bay City Rollers they were everywhere! So I wrote this stupid little song. I recorded it and it was actually the very first thing I'd done all by myself."

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