Bay City Rollers' favourite Stuart 'Woody' Wood looks forward to an exciting 2025 - including trip to Bilston

Or, at the very least, you might be talking to someone who just harks on about the 'good old days' with the Bay City Rollers when 'RollerMania' was rife and Tartan-clad armies of fans embraced the band, not just in the UK but globally.  

Yet, as we chat, on the phone, you immediately pick up on the fact that Woody still has the same youthful energy he had all those years ago as an original member of the band which brought us hits like Shang-a-lang and Bye Bye Baby  and sold over 300 million albums worldwide. 

Yes, he looks back on past glories with the band with fondness. After all, experiences included performing on the iconic Saturday Night Live in 1976, with the suitably titled single "Saturday Night" selling 12 million copies and reaching number one on the US Billboard chart.  Success followed in Europe and Japan. 

But Woody is also forward thinking too. He's excited for the future and  what 2025 has in store. These are exciting times for the Bay City Rollers, with gigs, new music and an album, a visit to Canada and a new musical on the horizon.  

"I feel exactly the same now as I did 50 years ago,"  Woody enthuses. "I am energised and really into everything we do.  There's life in the old dog yet!   

"I was 16 when I got asked to join the band and I was performing with them from 1974  when I was 17. 

"When you are that age, you have bags of energy. I am the type of person who is quite adventurous. 

"So it was one big, fun adventure, to be travelling from towns to cities, getting up on stage and seeing different people all of the time. 

"There was just a lot of excitement, hanging out here and there. 

"It's a feeling that has not changed much for me - it's always been great fun. 

"One of the questions, as a band, we used to get asked back in the day was: 'What do you think you will be doing in 10 or 20 years?' 

"I never thought for a second that 50 years on, I'd still be playing the songs. I  remember I went through a period in the 1980s and 1990s where I'd gone off Shag-a-lang, Bye Bye Baby  and all for a time.  

"But we had a reunion in 2015 and just playing the songs again and getting the reaction we did from fans, it just reinvigorated the whole thing and reinstalled that feeling that, you know, these are really good songs. 

"They give off a good message, especially with all the things going on in the world today. It balances up from the misery a little bit!

"Having these really lovely, good, clean pop songs bring s a feel-good factor and it's a pleasure and an honour to still be involved with the band and performing. 

"I think there are certain songs in history that really do stand the test of time  and I think we are lucky to have had one or two ourselves."      

Quite a year lies ahead for Woody and the Bay City Rollers. A new album titled Keep On Rollin' dropped in November and was the band's first studio album since the late 1970's. 

"We actually started that album just before the lockdown and it would have been out a couple of years ago," he recalls. 

"But obviously events threw everything sideways. Some of the tracks became a bit old and so we rewrote them. 

"We got back into the full swing of things and released it. We'd had the album Rollin' back in 1974 so we felt that Keep on Rollin' was a great title for it and we were thrilled with it. 

"We didn't change the sound - it is a continuation of what had gone before and we are going back in the studio this year to do another album."

 "We also decided to redo nine of the original tracks, giving them a wee spring clean so to speak, with new energy." 

The band is also getting ready for Rollers Forever, a brand-new musical featuring the songs of the legendary Scottish band. 

“This is going to be a lot of fun and I can’t wait to see all the fans rockin’ the tartan at the shows and having great fun singing along to all the hits," Woody adds. 

"It will be the story of a couple of Roller fans wanting to meet the band, and it has our music, all the way through. I am an advisor for it and it's something I am really looking forward to." 

And what's more, the band - whose hit Bye Bye Baby was the theme to The Grimleys -  is also on tour at present and they will be visiting Bilston, playing the Robin 2 on Sunday,  February 2 as part of 50-year anniversary celebrations. 

"We have these gigs now  which I really love," said Woody. "I am really looking forward to visiting The Robin. 

"It will be brilliant to be in the West Midlands. 

"Wherever we tend to play we get that same kind of reaction at the start.  As soon as we start that first chord and do the songs, you could be anywhere in the world - it's  the same reaction. 

"In the 1970s we had so much hysteria around us and those fans are still with us. They are my age and just switch into whirlwind of nostalgia and turn 16-17 all over again. It's brilliant.  

"The thing now is that  those fans now come with their sons, daughters, nieces or nephews. By the end of our gigs you can see the the youngsters as I call them, in their 30s, they have grabbed their parents' scarves and are shaking them about their heads and really in the swing of things. 

"I know people who attend will have a great time," he adds. "The music will be what everyone wants to hear -  all of the greatest hits, Saturday Night Remember, Summerlove Sensation and more plus some of the new ones." 

And, for Woody, it's the reaction  of those fans which have kept him going through the 50 years. 

"For me, when it started, it was just the excitement and fun, picking up a guitar and finding like-minded people," he says. 

"It's always been like that and I've always loved our amazing fans who come to gigs -  long may it continue

"They do it because they love the songs and we do it because we love the music as well. We are looking forward to 2025 and bringing more of that music. 

"We will be all over the place and I feel very lucky. It makes all the difference when you enjoy something."     

To see the Bay City Rollers on February 2, book tickets now at https://therobin.co.uk/js_events/bay-city-rollers/