Leslie McKewen was born on November 12, 1955 in Edinburgh (Scotland). His parents are Irish. The height of the vocalist is 173 cm, the sign of the zodiac is Scorpio.
Currently has pages in popular social networks, continues to make music. He is married, lives with his wife and son in London, the capital of Great Britain. The main genres of the artist are pop, glam rock, pop rock.
During the Bay City Rollers
Musician Leslie McKewen began his career in the Bay City Rollers in 1969-1979. In the most eventful years, he was the vocalist of the band.
By 1975 the group had become very popular in Britain, but the hype around them ended as quickly as it began.
In 1978, the Bay City Rollers was renamed The Rollers and changed its line-up, but this did not leave the artists on the wave of fame and recognition; three years later, the group broke up before the subsequent revival.
This group has 9 albums to its credit, some of them have been re-released in North America and Japan. Rollin' and Once Upon A Star's solo albums kept the band in the top for 99 weeks.
Not everyone knows that the first name of the band was THE SAXONS, only after some time, after the name of the city of Bay City, the group adopted the familiar name Bay City Rollers.
Bye Bye Baby (one of the authors is McKewen) became the most widespread song of the group, the record success brought the musicians to the world level and allowed the Scottish team to move to the USA. From there, the world tour of artists began.
McKewen's first public appearance as a member of the group was on Saturday Night Live, an American show hosted by Howard Kosel.
As a reminder of their own success, the musicians released the song Saturday Night, which entered the American tops.
The notableness of the artists was that they went on stage in kilts - the national Scottish men's clothing, with traditional scarves.
Leslie was a member of the group until 1978, later the composition of the participants changed, and the musicians went their own ways. With McKewen's eventual departure from the group, the members could not even find producers for themselves, as public acceptance plummeted.
Out of group
The Rollers continued their touring without Leslie, with Breakout (which the remaining members toured in the 1980s and 1990s) being almost entirely written by McKewen.
Leslie has always been interesting to the opposite sex, his singing style and playful features were good for his image.
Over the years, he overcame alcoholism and drug addiction. They began to appear during the triumphant years of the Bay City Rollers. Now McKewen has conquered his ailments.
He found his inspiration in the form of Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon.
He starred in a dozen TV series in which he played the role of himself ("Time Shift", "Beyond Music", "Free Women", etc.).
He took part in the production of the play "The Scottish Army" at the personal invitation of the Scottish director Sen McCluskey.
In March 2007, six former members of the group (the "classic line-up") announced legal action against Arista Records, hoping to recover what they described as tens of millions of dollars in unpaid royalties.
In September 2015, Leslie McKewen, Alan Longmuir and Stuart Wood announced their intentions to reunite to play Glasgow Barrowlands in December of that year.
Solo career
After leaving the group, Leslie began a solo career, he recorded the track All Washed Up, which did not enjoy the desired popularity. Almost 10 years after that, McKewen spent outside of music, living in Edinburgh.
In the late 1980s, Leslie came out of a break and began his collaboration with Dieter Bohlen.
This twist of fate allowed him to enter the music tops again, his song She's a Lady reached high sales levels. His song became the title track of the series Rivalen der Rennbahn.
Collaboration with Bohlen is a good step, as both had a similar tone of voice and approach to work. Both of them tried to put aside Leslie's past and take a new breath of fresh musical popularity, but the pressure of the past rise did not allow this to be done.
Bohlen specialized in dance hits, which was perfect for Leslie's timbre.
In 1989, the solo album It's a game was released, consisting of eight tracks. Half of Leslie's songs were written by himself, and half by his producer Dieter Bohlen. With the same name in 1977, the Bay City Rollers released an album in which Leslie was the soloist.
As an individual artist, Leslie achieved his greatest success in Japan, for Europe his music did not have such an impact.
The artist has 8 solo albums in his arsenal, the last of which was released in 2016.
A new group
McKewen assembled a new line-up in 1991, with which he re-performed hits from the Bay City Rollers with additional effects and arrangements.
In the late 1990s of the last century, in collaboration with London musicians, the new line-up was replenished with individual material.
