Bilbo (shortened from Bilbo Baggins) was a band from

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...

who used to be the support act for the Bay City Rollers, sharing the controversial

Tam Paton Thomas Dougal "Tam" Paton (5 August 1938 – 8 April 2009) was a pop group manager, most notably of the Scottish boy band the Bay City Rollers. Biography Born in Prestonpans, Scotland, he was the son of a potato merchant. Paton initially drove a ...

as manager. Their 1978 single, She's Gonna Win, peaked at No. 42 on the

UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart (currently titled Official Singles Chart, with the upper section more commonly known as the Official UK Top 40) is compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC), on behalf of the British record industry, listing the top-s ...

Legal demise

In 2014 the UK's

Intellectual Property Enterprise Court The Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (IPEC; previously the Patents County Court or PCC) in London is an alternative venue to the High Court for bringing legal actions involving intellectual property matters such as patents, registered desi ...

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 Rawlins ...

, 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 fictional setting of much of the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy. The term is equivalent to the '' Miðgarðr'' of Norse mythology and ''Middangeard'' in Old English works, including ''Beowulf''. Middle-earth is ...

franchise. Guitarist Gordon McIntosh died on 26 February 2021.

References

Scottish pop music groups {{Scotland-band-stub