Between 1975 and 1977, Scotland's Bay City Rollers enjoyed the sort of Stateside success that most bands dream about, with near-constant Top 40 radio airplay, sold-out arena concerts, numerous national TV appearances to promote each new album, and, most noticeably, wall-to-wall coverage in every magazine with the word "teen" in the title.
"Saturday Night" wasn't just the band's first U.S. hit, it was a chart topper for which the band is most fondly remembered, but the hits didn't end there. "Money Honey" also went Top 10 and proved the band was no one-hit wonder. Four more Top 40 hits followed, including the group's final U.S. Top 10 hit, "You Made Me Believe In Magic" in 1977.
By then, the group's management used their leverage to secure the band's participation in a Saturday morning kids show by the name of "The Krofft Superstar Hour" that aired on NBC in 1978.
Sadly, the band's star had dimmed considerably by then despite the return of Alan Longmuir after a 17-month absence. This reunion was marked by the release of the Strangers In The Wind album, which, despite the visibility of a weekly national TV show, failed to hit the Top 100.
When you consider the fact that their previous album, It's A Game, had gone Top 40, the band hadn't just hit a speed bump, they'd run smack into a brick wall and there was nothing they could do to climb over it, dig under it, or go around it.
Singer Les McKeown took the album's failure the hardest, leaving the group to record a solo album called, believe it or not, All Washed Up.
A lesser band would have packed up their guitars and counted the years until those once-adoring teenage fans hit their thirties and suddenly became nostalgic for the "good old days", at which point, they'd reform for a long-overdue payday, but the remaining band members had other plans in mind.
Obviously well aware of the power pop explosion that was taking the industry by storm in '79, thanks to the runaway success of the Knack, the remaining four members hired new singer Duncan Faure (formerly of South African rock superstars Rabbitt, featuring a pre-Yes Trevor Rabin) and set their sights on the rapidly-filling power pop bandwagon.
It is worth noting that Faure was not without options of his own, having relocated to L.A. and teamed up with super-manager Freddy DeMann, who is best known for representing the likes of Lionel Ritchie, Michael Jackson, and Madonna. By joining the Rollers, Faure essentially walked away from what could have been a very lucrative solo career.
Meanwhile, the band's U.S. label, Arista Records, showed unusual allegiance to a band in commercial free-fall by extending the band a further line of credit to record with UK producer Peter Ker, who had manned the boards on recent breakout efforts by the Motors and Bram Tchaikovsky.
The resulting album, Elevator, was an inspired effort that charged out of the gate like a young thoroughbred, only to fall victim to the collective deaf eyes and ears of a once thriving teen audience that had clearly moved on. In fact, the only attention the album seemed to attract was a bit of controversy over the appearance of a red pill on the album cover.
Those who did buy the album, surely noticed that the band was now writing their own material and, quite surprisingly, doing a bang-up job of creating high-octane, hooky pop that was tailor-made for the radio. Unfortunately, no rock stations in the U.S. would touch the album with a ten-foot pole. As a result, Elevator failed to chart in America.
Hell, it failed to chart anywhere - even in the band's homeland.
For a band that had seen everything they touch turn to gold for the past few years, to see their first "adult" record go completely ignored must have felt like a gut punch. Adding further insult to injury, Arista refused to release the band's next album, Voxx, in the States in 1980, thereby sealing the band's fate with the label once and for all.
Despite being a bit of an odds n' sods collection of unused studio tracks, with a live version of Bowie's "Rebel Rebel" included for good measure, the album had a cohesive feel throughout and a noticeable similarity to recent efforts by Wings and Badfinger.
For 1981's Ricochet, an album that showed the band truly coming into their own, both as writers and musicians, the band knew they needed to start fresh with a new label, thereby leaving Arista for the friendlier confines of Epic Records.
Sadly, instead of deciding on a new name for the band altogether, the band agreed to allow the label to release the album in Canada sans any name at all in hopes that radio programmers and rock critics would judge the album on its musical merits alone.
While this created a buzz that led to scant mentions in trade weeklies such as Billboard and Cashbox, by the time the label released Ricochet with an actual name on the cover (and the record label), whatever interest there was had already subsided.
Meanwhile, the album's US release came and went with little fanfare as the power pop fad was now two years past its sell-by date and the band would call it a day just as MTV was picking up viewership market by market and playing any videos they could get their hands on.
In hindsight, it is amazing that Epic went so far as to finance not just one, but two music videos (for the album's two most ELO-adjacent tracks, "Doors, Bars, Metal" and "Life On The Radio") when they seemed completely hesitant to spend any money on traditional forms of promotion.
Listening to the album today, this writer is actually floored at just how well the album holds up.
Stephan Galfas's production is relatively non-intrusive, relying upon energetic studio performances and beautifully layered vocals that recall Roy Thomas Baker's work at the time.
Even so, due to the glut of similar-sounding bands at the time all vying for limited space in a marketplace increasingly enamored by the burgeoning new wave movement, one can barely visualize any scenario where such an album could find the audience it deserved.
After all, it was a brand new decade and a new generation of teenage music fans were hungry for something to call their own and there would be no competing against the likes of the Pretenders, The Cars and the Police.