Down Under Pressure
“He was up for anything, Bon. His nickname was ‘Ronnie Roadtest’, a hard-drinking, hard-smoking, rootin’, tootin’ rock’n’roll soldier. That was his public image. It was true of him too. But at the same time he’d be the guy going round in the morning asking if you wanted a cup of tea. He was a genuinely nice fella. He just happened to be a rock star. He had no pretensions. A decent bloke who loved to party.”
Sam See, guitarist and pianist with Australian prog/country rockers Fraternity, is reminiscing about the Adelaide band’s most famous member, Bon Scott, who sang and also played recorder (yes, recorder) with them between 1970 and ’73. For years now, the memory of Scott has tended to overshadow the achievements of Fraternity. A slew of unofficial reissues that appeared following his tragic death in February 1980 have often been credited incorrectly to ‘Bon Scott’s Fraternity’, the band themselves a mere footnote in the larger story of AC/DC, with whom Scott would find fame and fortune after he joined them in 1974.
That history is now being corrected thanks to a new three-CD box set, , on Cherry Red. It’s an intriguing tale that takes in the likes of Black Sabbath,
