THE free concert in Glasgow’s George Square on June 11, 1965, was supposed to be a fairly quiet affair, with 200 office workers expected to sit through it during their lunch break. When the city fathers had invited the Beatstalkers to play, they hadn’t known about the teenage rebellion that was building around the band.

When at least 5000 (and probably more) people invaded the square, destroyed the stage, and sent frontman Davie Lennox, bassist Alan Mair, keyboardist Eddie Campbell, guitarist Ronnie Smith and drummer Tudge Williamson running to the City Chambers for protection, the city father knew better.

After having formed as a school band, then reinvented themselves by performing American R&B music with a Scottish twist, the Beatstalkers had spent two years building their reputation in the cafes, clubs and ballrooms of Scotland. After what became known as the George Square Riot, they experienced scenes just as big as Beatlemania down south.

Shows were abandoned, airports were mobbed, and the band members couldn’t sleep for he hordes of girls waiting for them and wanting them in the tenement stairways. Lennox said: “It got the point that, if we only got the response other bands got, we were disappointed.”

In the aftermath of the “riot,” Scottish media opened up to the “beat boom” more than they ever had before. It was the first time a home-grown band had made the front pages, and made it possible for others to do the same. It was a moment of revolution in Scottish music – and every band, from that Friday afternoon to yesterday, have followed the trail blazed by the Beatstalkers.

They sold out a record 14-night residency in the Barrowland Ballroom and even sold out the Dennistoun Palais when they weren’t there, with fans paying to see full-sized cardboard cutouts and hearing a piped-through phone call from Lennox. With Scotland too big to hold them, they headed south and sold out London’s iconic Marquee Club two weeks running.

By 1966 they were managed by David Bowie’s svengali, Ken Pitt, who paired them up with the future Ziggy Stardust. He wrote three single for them and can be heard singing backing vocals and playing guitar on “Silver Tree Top School For Boys,” “When I’m Five” and “Everything Is You.” Lennox, who described the tie-up as a “mismatch,” recalled his horror at being asked to sing a song about a scandal at a private boys’ school. “I remember glaring across at David in the recording booth. ‘Silver Tree Top School For Boys’? I’m fae Govan – I’ll lamp you!”

(Not that there was any negativity for Bowie himself, although Lennox says he resented having to buy charity scratchcards from him all the time, along with a seemingly endless supply of borrowed cigarettes. “Every time I met David I lost money,” Lennox said with his trademark Victor Meldrew humour.)

But just like their earlier singles, the Bowie material wasn’t what the fans expected or the band wanted to play. Still in their teens, the Beatstalkers believed that the management knew best, and so did the management, and it wasn’t true. Infrastructure also played against them – with only two chart return shops in Scotland registering sales figures for the hit parade, debut single “Everybody’s Talking ‘Bout My Baby” reached No.37 with 5000 purchases, when in fact it should have been in the top five with real sales of 80,000.

While their live shows continued to impress, the band began to feel like they’d hit a glass ceiling; and when their van and equipment were stolen in 1969, they called it quits. “I retired when I was 23,” Lennox said. “I didn’t want to be a pop star any more. I wanted a proper job.”

The fans never forgot them, as is proved by their sold-out reunion at the Barrowland in 2005, and an equally crowded show at the Arches in 2013. But with the end of the 60s dissolving into the myriad of music that defined the 70s, the rest of the world soon forgot them. I felt it was important to record their story for posterity before it passed out of living memory.

As a former band member who’d struggled to achieve my own rock’n’roll dreams, I understood their experiences were a lesson in life to anyone else who has their own dreams. The most important lesson to be learned from the Beatstalkers is that, thought it all, they remained close friends and never let anything get in the way of that. I suspect it’s unique in the annals of pop history.

In my desire to help secure their legacy I wanted a phrase that summed it up. I got it when Eddie Tobin, former manager of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Nazareth, the Glasgow Apollo and countless other successes, told be: “The Beatstalkers ARE the history of Scottish music. They were the first, and they were the greatest.”

[ends 809]