Robbie McIntosh was my dad's uncle, though they were all around the same age. My gran had a hand in raising him. Not long after the band made it, he came home to Scotland and took my dad and his four brothers out on the town. Robbie was wearing a long trench coat. He wouldn't let any of them buy a round all night. Every time it was his turn he pulled a fresh note out of his wallet. He told them about the celebrities he was hanging about with, and the life he was living now. At the end of the night he scooped all the change out of his trench coat pockets and put it on the table. It was close to a month's wage for each of the brothers. He was the drummer in the Average White Band, a group of Scottish lads playing funk better than most of the bands they were opening for in America. In September 1974 they played the Troubadour in Los Angeles. At a party afterwards Robbie and Alan Gorrie were given something they had been told was cocaine. It wasn't. Gorrie was kept awake and walking by Cher until it passed through him. Robbie didn't make it. He was 24. The man who supplied it pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter. Five months later Pick Up the Pieces went to number one in America. Robbie never saw it. He's buried in Barnhill Cemetery in Dundee. His stone says he was of the Average White Band, and that he died at Los Angeles. At the foot of it, from his mum: Tenderest thoughts are oft unspoken, unexpressed lie feelings deep. – at Carnoustie, Scotland