Bon Scott's pre-AC/DC Fraternity and Mount Lofty Rangers episode in 1970s Adelaide has rebirth in sound/vision
An updating of Bon Scott's recording of Peter Head's song "Round and Round", made in Adelaide in the mid 1970s, was later released by Australian label Blue Pie Records, along with Scott's compositions, "Been up in the Hills Too Long" and "Clarissa", from that time when Scott sang with the Mount Lofty Rangers (top right). Scott (at left, bottom right) first sang with AC/DC at Adelaide's Pooraka Hotel in 1974.
The sounds and vision of Bon Scott’s time in Adelaide, before his AC/DC era ended with his death in London in 1980, had a rebirth in the mid 1990s.
Scott was brought to Adelaide in 1970 by young Adelaide millionaire Hamish Henry to sing with Fraternity, one of two groups Henry managed. The other group was Headband, led by virtuoso pianist Peter Head. Henry gave former art student Head a job at his North Adelaide Galleries where he did the bands’ bookings. Scott worked part-time at Henry’s adjoining mansion doing the lawns and clearing rubbish. That’s how Head and Scott met and became close hard-drinking friends at places like the Large Pier Hotel.
Head recalled that Scott carried around “an exercise book full of lyrics” that the “very artistic” that Fraternity thought were rubbish but AC/DC later regarded as “magic; that’s for us”. When both progressive blues rockers Headband and Fraternity split at the same time, Head formed a country rock act called the Mount Lofty Rangers in 1974. The group took members from Headband and Fraternity but also an ever-changing collective.
Scott did 12 gigs with the Mount Lofty Rangers, including one at Adelaide’s Yatala Gaol, where Head taught guitar, and received a heroes’ reception from the prisoners, many of them inside for possessing marijuana – a drug enjoyed by Head and Scott (also formerly a prisoner interstate).
Another Head-Scott friendship legacy were songs they wrote and recorded together. Head taught Scott to play beyond basic guitar and refine two songs “running around” in Scott’s head. The songs were the ballad “Clarissa” – about an Adelaide girl – and more rambunctious “I’ve been up in the Hills Too Long”. In return, Scott sung on demos for two of Head’s songs: piano-boogie rocker “Round and Round" and the pastoral “Carey Gully”. They booked a two-hour session at Adelaide’s Slater Studios, the city’s first eight-track recording studio, for then-expensive $40. The lineup for the recording was Peter Beagley (piano), Robyn Archer (backup vocals), Bon Scott (vocals), Raphael Lee "Fred" Cass (drums), Randy Bulpin (guitar), Chris Bailey (bass).
While in Adelaide, Scott married Irene Thornton (with constant attention from other women) and, despite working at the fertiliser plant in Wallaroo and dejected, at 27, by missed opportunities with The Spektors, The Valentines and Fraternity, he still hoped to be a rock star. About 11 pm on May 3, 1974, at Old Lion Hotel in North Adelaide, during a Mount Lofty Rangers rehearsal, a very drunk and distressed Scott had a raging argument with Rangers (ex Fraternity) bassist Bruce Howe. Scott stormed out and screamed off on his Suzuki 550 motorbike. Hours later, at Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Scott was in a coma for three days, near death, after colliding with a car.
Both Scott and Head left the Mount Lofty Rangers after the accident and worked for the band management agency of ex-Valentines member Vince Lovegrove. Lovegrove encouraged Scott to get on stage with AC/DC at Adelaide’s Pooraka Hotel in September 1974, not realising the band had just sacked Dave Evans and wanted Scott to replace him. Like Scott, the Young brothers were Scottish and bonded instantly.
In 1996 in Sydney, Peter Head told Ted Yanni, from the Adelaide 1960s/70s music scene (Plastic Tears, the Clefs) about Scott’s recordings of “Round And Round” and “Carey Gully”. As a producer and sound engineer, Yanni resurrected “Around and Around and Around” with a new backing track. Head created a film clip for what was renamed “Round And Round And Round” from leftover Scott footage from a 1970s TV special on Fraternity, combined with video and photos by Vytas Serelis, of the music community at Carey Gully and around the Adelaide Hills. The images included his wedding and him riding his motorcycle.
Scott’s unrecorded original compositions, “Been up in the Hills Too Long” and “Clarissa”, also were released digitally in 2011.
