S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y NIGHT: a tale of family treachery and the Bay City Rollers

by editor Michele Catalano

Thirteen is such a strange age; you’re somewhere between little kid and full-fledged teenager, just trying to find a space to fit in. Part of you wants to embrace being a teen, but there’s a deep part of you who wants to stay in that pure, wholesome, unbothered phase of just being a child. 

And so it happened that I became a Bay City Rollers fan. It was 1975, and while I had started listening to Led Zeppelin, the Who, and Black Sabbath, I was also still clinging to my childhood. I loved the hard rock I was finding, but I still had a penchant for pop and, when these guys burst on the scene with “Saturday Night,” I fell in love. How could you resist a song that started with what sounded like a cheer?

“S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y Night!”

Not only was it the greatest sing-along, but the members of the band looked and dressed in such a way that my parents and older friends and cousins made fun of them, which meant I had this fandom to myself. I thought they were cute; my friends thought they were funny-looking. I thought they were personable and fun, my older cousins called them freaks. I think I started listening to “Saturday Night” as a novelty, but it grew into such a personal anthem that I asked my mother to buy me the album. 

The record was chock full of pop songs I loved. “Saturday Night” was no longer a novelty, but just a good song amid other fun, danceable tunes. I holed myself up in my bedroom, eschewing nights in Eddie’s garage fort listening to Zeppelin and drinking stolen beers like a proper teenager. The Bay City Rollers album was my attempt to hang onto childhood, to innocence, to the idea that music was supposed to be fun and not deep or meaningful or filled with guitar solos.

I grew to genuinely love the album, which gave me pause because I had to hide this love from all my teen friends. But listening to it was such a good time that I couldn’t give it up  just to fit in with those friends. 

And then one day the album was gone. Just like that, it vanished from its little perch by my cheap record player. I looked high and low, under the bed, on the windowsill, all over the bedroom. I asked my sisters if they had borrowed it. Jo, my 11-year-old sister laughed; my seven-year-old sister, Lisa, shrugged. My parents, who had no use for the Bay City Rollers but didn’t care what I listened to, said they hadn’t seen it. I was at a loss. 

I didn’t linger on the loss for too long. I was a child, and an easily distracted one at that. I had recently convinced my mother to buy me David Bowie’s Young Americans, and I took up an obsession with that album. Once the Bay City Rollers played a few variety shows on television, it was over for them as far as I was concerned. Too many people joined the “Saturday Night” chorus, and I slowly backed out of the fandom in favor of more mature rock like Young Americans.

Years went by. My sisters and I grew closer as we aged, and we each branched out into our own musical fandoms that we tried to share with the others. Lisa was fond of Iron Maiden and Metallica, while Jo leaned toward Eric Clapton, The Band, a lot of the stalwarts of classic rock. I dabbled with the Grateful Dead and southern rock before settling in with early prog rock like Genesis and Yes. Every once in a while I’d bring up the missing Bay City Rollers record but never got closer to an answer as to its whereabouts.

It wasn’t until much later—during a drunken confessional at a bar one night when I was maybe in my late twenties—that Lisa let slip that the record that had mysteriously disappeared all those years ago had actually been broken and thrown out.

I stopped mid-shot. We had been doing Alabama Slammers and I was feeling no pain.

“What??”

She said it again. Jo looked down at the floor while Lisa talked, and I homed in on that. Was her averting my glaze a sign that she was guilty of breaking my record and not telling me? I asked Lisa to tell me more, but she broke off from our little shot party and headed for the bathroom. I was left flabbergasted and zeroed in on Jo, peppering her with questions for which she had no answer. She did another shot and split to greet a group of friends who had walked into the bar. “Welcome to the Jungle” was playing. This felt like a pivotal moment in my life. My sisters had all but confessed to breaking my record, and I was putting my money on Jo being the actual culprit. 

More years passed. We shared so much music between us and, whenever we talked about our records or the hits of the past, the Bay City Rollers would inevitably come up. Everyone would make fun of me for being a former fan, and I would glance at Jo out of the corners of my vision, suspicious and mad.

It went on like this for a long time. I’d be sitting in Lisa’s bedroom while she introduced me to Incubus and S.C.I.E.N.C.E, or we’d be stoned and wildly dancing to R.E.M.’s “Superman,” and it would come up. I’d be on a car ride with Jo, listening to a Sirius classic rock station, and suddenly we’d be regaled with “S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y night!” I’d sing along and laugh, all the while waiting for Jo to slip up and reveal that she was the one who broke the record.

Cut to 2015, on the occasion of my fifty-third birthday, when things finally came to a head. I was opening presents from my family; a book, a sweatshirt, some sweet cards. And then it was Lisa’s turn to give me her gift. I knew it was an album from the way it was wrapped and excitedly started to open it. I was really hoping for either Joyce Manor or Modern Baseball, two albums I had asked for. I slowly undid the wrapping paper and was shocked to see what it was: a copy of the Bay City Rollers’ self-titled album from 1975. The one that disappeared. The one I assumed Jo broke and hid from me.

It was then that Lisa confessed. It had always been her. She broke the record. She hid the evidence. She kept quiet for 40 whole years while I stewed over it and secretly blamed Jo. I was stunned, but it was also the funniest thing that ever happened on my birthday. I started laughing. I told Jo how I had blamed her all those years. I good-naturedly yelled at Lisa. And I felt a deep sense of closure. I now knew that my then seven-year-old sister broke my record. I assumed it happened when she tried to work the record player and didn’t think to ask for help. I was just relieved to have the whole thing behind us, and to once again have the album, Even if I wasn’t going to listen to it often. It was just good to have it back.

But the story doesn’t end there. Cut to two weeks ago, when I mentioned the incident on social media. When Lisa saw it, she sent this text:

She what? 

I had to take a moment to digest this. It was no accident that this seven-year-old brat broke my record. She flung it. Into the wall. It apparently broke into a zillion pieces (“I didn’t realize it would break!”), and she stuffed the pieces in a baggie and threw them out. 

I sat with that for a few minutes before I responded:

And then I laughed. I laughed hard and long about the absurdity of it all. I did tell her I was going to kick her ass the next time she came to visit. I deserve no less than to be allowed that. But I found the whole thing rather amusing, given that Lisa was only seven when she committed the crime. I thought about her making the choice to fling the record. I thought about the brains of young children, and how this was probably not an act of sabotage so much as an act of curiosity.

I finally, 50 years after the fact, have closure. I have peace. And I have the Bay City Rollers’ self titled album on vinyl. Think I’ll listen to “Saturday Night,” just for old time’s sake. Oh, and deeply apologize to Jo for assuming all these years that she was the culprit.