When the glitter faded and the screaming stopped, Les McKeown was left standing in a silence that he didn’t know how to face. For millions of fans in the 1970s, he was the energetic, smiling frontman of the Bay City Rollers — the voice of “Saturday Night” and the symbol of teenage euphoria. But new files and personal notes released from his private archive tell a different story: one of exhaustion, isolation, and a quiet descent into depression that shadowed him long after the band’s breakup.
According to a close friend who spoke to The Guardian, Les “just wanted to escape the screams.” At the height of Rollermania, the band’s fame was overwhelming — fans camped outside hotels, ripped pieces of their clothing, and followed them across continents. Les often described feeling “like a puppet” in a machine he no longer controlled. “They all saw the smile,” the friend recalled, “but behind it, he was losing himself.”
The newly uncovered diary entries — written between 1978 and 1980 — reveal a man struggling to adjust to normal life after superstardom. “I can’t sleep. The noise is still in my head,” one note reads. Another entry captures the aching nostalgia of someone haunted by his own past: “I miss the music, not the madness. Maybe that’s what’s killing me — wanting one without the other.”
Those close to Les say the transition after the band’s breakup was brutal. Without the structure of tours, interviews, and studio sessions, he faced a void that fame had once filled. “He went from thousands of people chanting his name to total silence,” said his former road manager. “It’s like he fell off the edge of the world.”
While he attempted several comebacks and spoke openly about his mistakes in later years, the inner wounds remained. Les once admitted in an interview that he felt “trapped between who I was and who people wanted me to be.” He wrestled with addiction and bouts of depression, often retreating from public life to find peace in music on his own terms.
The friend who shared the files says the intention isn’t to expose, but to humanize. “Les wasn’t just a pop idol — he was a man who carried the weight of too much love and too much pressure too soon. He gave everything to make people happy, and it broke something inside him.”
Today, as fans revisit the legacy of Bay City Rollers, these revelations offer a sobering reminder of what fame can take away from those who seem to have it all. Behind the bright smiles, tartan scarves, and chart-topping hits was a young man longing for quiet — a man who, even decades later, was still trying to drown out the echoes of the crowd that once adored him.
“He just wanted peace,” the friend said softly. “Not applause — just peace.”