Bilbo (shortened from Bilbo Baggins) was a band from
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...
who used to be the support act for the
Bay City Rollers
The Bay City Rollers are a Scottish pop rock band known for their worldwide teen idol popularity, as a band in the 1970s. One of many 70s acts heralded as the "biggest group since the Beatles", they were called the "tartan teen sensations fro ...
,
sharing the controversial
Tam Paton as manager.
Their 1978 single,
She's Gonna Win, peaked at No. 42 on the
UK Singles Chart.
Legal demise
In 2014 the UK's
Intellectual Property Enterprise Court halted the band's attempt of a revival following an objection from the
Saul Zaentz Company in the United States. SZC, which owns the rights to the works of
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''.
From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlinson ...
, had their complaint upheld because the band's name "did not differentiate it clearly enough from the famous
hobbit
Hobbits are a fictional race of people in the novels of J. R. R. Tolkien. About half average human height, Tolkien presented hobbits as a variety of humanity, or close relatives thereof. Occasionally known as halflings in Tolkien's writings, ...
Bilbo". The American company has often taken action against any perceived infraction of its
Middle-earth
Middle-earth is the Setting (narrative), setting of much of the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy. The term is equivalent to the ''Midgard, Miðgarðr'' of Norse mythology and ''Middangeard'' in Old English works, including ''Beowulf'' ...
franchise.
Guitarist Gordon McIntosh died on 26 February 2021.
References
Scottish pop music groups
{{Scotland-band-stub