BMX Bandits - 15 Big Ones BMX Bandits

Can you believe...40 years of BMX Bandits. 15 Big Ones is a greatest hits of a sort, but with a twist. The collection features their most successful single releases over the years but also tracks that should have been singles but weren't. I Wanna Fall In Love, And It's You and Love Me Til My Heart Stops are among their most beloved tracks but were somehow missed when it came to choosing the singles from albums. I Wanna Fall in Love could have been their best chance at a proper hit but the label just couldn't hear that in it. So, in a way the collection is partly about presenting what should have and could have been.

"For the bonus album I wanted to bring together tracks that weren't given enough attention at the time or have slipped through the holes in the net by being released as part of more low profile releases, tribute albums and limited releases."

"I started BMX Bandits in 1985 with my friend Sean Dickson (A.K.A. Hifi Sean). Sean surprised me by saying he would be up for helping me with a new band project and that day we decided on the name BMX Bandits, it made us laugh a lot and we liked that it seemed anti-cool. An added bonus for me was when Brian Wilson started The Beach Boys surfing was the big youth trend but their leader didn’t surf.

We decided to make a demo of 4 songs with Jim McCulloch, who we had met while busking in Glasgow, and his friend Billy Wood. I decided that I would give copies of our new cassette to 4 people who had influenced us and so I sent copies to Jonathan Richman, Daniel Treacy of the Television Personalities and Jowe Head ex of The Swell Maps.

I didn’t know Stephen Pastel but I would see him in the audience at shows I went to in Glasgow and he was the fourth person I wanted to give our music to. And here is where good luck and timing worked for us. The next time I saw Stephen at a show, after he’d been given our tape, he informed me 1. That he really liked the tape. 2. He had just started a new record label, called 53rd & 3rd, with David Keegan of The Shop Assistants, and 3. They would like to release a single by BMX Bandits.

Others came along and joined BMX Bandits extended musical family, writing songs with me, playing shows, making records, perhaps disappearing for a while and returning or not years later.

40 years on BMX Bandits have remained musical outsiders. We never had the hits that Alan McGee predicted for us but as outsiders we’ve been able to grow as a musical entity doing things our own way and not trying to fit in with whatever else is going on. Almost everything wonderful that has happened in my adult life has come out of me being in BMX Bandits, including my children and key relationships. BMX Bandits is who I am.“ Duglas T Stewart, August 2026.