70s Rock Icon Gone at 73

Neil Henderson, the Glasgow-born guitarist who played on the Bay City Rollers' first charting single and later became lead guitarist for Middle of the Road, has died at the age of 73 after a long period of ill health.

His death was announced by his former bandmates in Middle of the Road, in a statement posted to Facebook. The band said Henderson had been ill for some time and had been fighting to recover from a stroke he suffered a few years ago.

"We are sorry to have to announce the death of Neil Henderson, our original lead guitarist, songwriter and friend," the statement read. "We wish to send our sincere condolences to Heather and Shona, his two daughters, and all his family and friends. His memory will live on with all who had the pleasure of sharing the stage with him as will his music."

Henderson is survived by his two daughters.

The news came from the second band, not the famous one

Most people who recognize Henderson's name know it because of the Bay City Rollers, the Edinburgh group that turned tartan trousers into a teenage uniform. But the announcement of his death came from Middle of the Road, the other Scottish pop act he spent years with, and that says something about how his career actually went.

He was with the Rollers at the very start, from 1970 to 1972, a stretch that ended two years before their breakthrough. The screaming, the sold-out arenas, the 100 million records, all of it happened after he walked out the door.

The tributes that followed described him as an original lead guitarist and songwriter, and his former bandmates said his memory would live on through his music. That is the sentence a lot of working musicians end up earning, and it is not a small one.

Two years with the Rollers and one chart single

Henderson joined the Bay City Rollers in 1970, at the start of the decade that would eventually belong to them, and stayed for two years. He played on "Keep On Dancing," the band's debut chart single and their first real break.

That single is the whole of his recorded Rollers legacy, and it is a strange thing to sit on. The song got them noticed. It did not make them famous. Fame arrived years later, with a lineup that no longer included him.

The Rollers had formed in Edinburgh in the 1960s and broke into the mainstream in 1974, after the singles that followed "Keep On Dancing" failed to dent the charts at all. Anyone who has ever been in a band that followed a hit with a string of misses knows exactly what that period feels like from the inside.

He quit over where the music was going

Henderson left the Bay City Rollers shortly after the release of their second single because he was unhappy with the direction the band's music was taking. That account comes from his daughter Shona, who spoke to the BBC about his exit after his death was announced. She also said his love of music stayed with him his entire life.

So this was not a firing and it was not a falling out over money. He had an opinion about what the group should sound like, the group was heading somewhere else, and he picked the opinion.

Timing being what it is, he made that call right before the Rollers became one of the biggest pop acts on the planet. Plenty of musicians have made the same choice and never had to watch the consequences play out on national television for the next five years.

The album he missed

The Bay City Rollers released their debut album, "Rollin'," in 1974. It went straight in at number one on the UK Album Charts and racked up a combined total of 58 weeks on the chart. Henderson had been gone for roughly two years by then.

His departure came just before the band hit global fame at the height of what the press christened Rollermania. Tartan scarves, mobbed hotels, teenagers camped outside venues. The Rollers were the ones getting chased down the street.

Fifty-eight weeks on the album chart is the number worth holding onto here. That is more than a full year of an album selling steadily, from a band whose singles had been going nowhere not long before.

Middle of the Road gave him the job the Rollers didn't

Middle of the Road already had a number one under their belt when Henderson arrived. "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep," their 1971 hit, is the kind of song that follows people around for life whether they want it to or not.

He took on the role of lead guitarist from 1974 onward and wrote as well as played, contributing songs including "Everybody Loves A Winner" and "Rockin' Soul." With the Rollers he had been a player on somebody else's record. With Middle of the Road he got credits.

The band's own words for him after his death were "our original lead guitarist, songwriter and friend." The songwriter part was not a courtesy.

A tour driver remembered meeting him in 1973

One fan responding to the news said he had worked as the group's tour driver and remembered exactly when Henderson turned up.

"During the '73 Middle of the Road, West & East European tour, Neil was introduced as the fifth member of the Middle of the Road group," he wrote. "I was the groups tour driver & had some great chats with him."

That is the kind of detail that only survives in the memory of somebody who was in the van. Western and Eastern Europe in 1973, a pop band, a new guitarist getting introduced to the crew. Not a press release, just a guy who drove the bus and paid attention.

He built a studio at home

After the death of his daughters' mother, Henderson built a recording studio inside his home in the west of Scotland. Shona said he did it knowing he could finally "get away with it."

Most people who spend their twenties on tour buses eventually put the guitar in a closet. He put a control room in the house.

His daughter said music stayed a constant for him his whole life, which lines up with a man who left a band on a matter of taste at roughly 19 years old and was still building rooms to record in decades later.

The Rollers sold more than 100 million records

The band Henderson left went on to sell more than 100 million records, with hits including "Bye Bye Baby" and "Shang-a-Lang," and a look built around tartan outfits that fans copied down to the stripe. In the press they were heralded as the "biggest group since the Beatles."

Les McKeown, Alan Longmuir and Stuart "Woody" Wood, three of the 1970s lineup, reunited for a comeback tour in 2015, and the tickets sold out.

McKeown, the group's frontman, died in 2021 at 65. Bassist Alan Longmuir died in the summer of 2018 at 70. The list of men who were in that Edinburgh band at the beginning keeps getting shorter.

Fans posted their own goodbyes

The Facebook statement drew a stream of replies from people who had followed the bands since the early 1970s.

"I'm so sad to see this," one fan wrote. "I remember him well even though it was a long time ago, we chatted a lot about the band and how much younger he was. It's strange and sad for me to see the demise of that lovely young guitarist. RIP Neil."

Henderson spent his career one step to the side of the biggest Scottish pop story of the decade. He played on the single that got the Bay City Rollers on the chart, left because he did not like where the songs were heading, and found a second run with a band that let him write. For a guitarist from Glasgow who joined his first famous group at the start of 1970, that is a real body of work.