When the Screaming Stops: The Dark History of the Bay City Rollers

The shocking story of the boy band that became immersed in the cult-like world of their manager

What happened to the Bay City Rollers is one of the greatest scandals of the music industry. This unflinching book reveals the dark truth behind “Rollermania,” which gripped the UK in the 1970s and spread around the world as the Edinburgh boy band scored number one international hits. When the Screaming Stops exposes the sinister undercurrents that ran beneath the band’s phenomenal success.

Former band manager Tom Paton controlled his charges and promoted them as wholesome teen idols while subjecting them to various forms of sexual abuse. In Paton, the industry cliché of the manipulative and venal pop manager found its most grotesque expression. Dazzled by sudden global fame and corrupted by Paton’s unquenchable sexual appetites, the Bay City Rollers soon became part of his world of depravity, victimhood, crime and psychosis. Band members became hooked on drugs, and their fall was almost as rapid as their rise, leaving them penniless and emotionally destroyed. Three years after they fired Paton, in 1979, he was finally convicted of gross indecency with teenage boys.

That such exploitation could have happened to one of the world’s most famous boy bands is a brutal reminder that conspiracies of silence about sexual exploitation were once the norm in the music and entertainment business. When the Screaming Stops is a no-holds-barred exposé of sex, drugs and financial mismanagement based on over 500 hours of interviews with many of the band’s closest associates, including former members.