AC/DC - Black Ice

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"Round And Round And Round" and "Carey Gully" are the last two songs Bon Scott committed to tape, in July 1774, a month before joining AC/DC and are only released from a three year period in his career between Fraternity's "Flaming Galah" in April 1772 and AC/DC's "Baby, Please Don't Go" in March 1775.

The tracks are genuine Australian long lost "basement tapes", recorded a few months after Bon's motorbike accident. Recently re-discovered, both "Round And Round And Round" and "Carey Gully" have been extensively reworked to create musical pieces which the project's collaborators believe Bon would have been proud of.

Songwriter Peter Head recently teamed up with producer Ted Yanni, another old friend of Bon's. Using the best technology available, Ted isolated the original vocal track from "Round And Round And Round", and then over many months rebuilt an entirely new backing to the song, so it sounds as though it was recorded today rather than yesterday. The original version is also included on the CD single. It features former members of Headband and Fraternity, working as the Mount Lofty Rangers.

"Carey Gully" is a lilting country-flavoured ballad. The original recording - Bon singing with Peter Head backing on piano and acoustic guitar - has been tastefully augmented with strings, the Classically Blue String Quartet. The song celebrates the Ranger's stomping ground at the time, then home to one of South Australia's leading artist, Vytas Serelis, whose stunning photo portraits grace the CD cover.

The whole project has been achieved by many people - musicians and technicians, donating time, talent and studios in order to pay tribute to an old friend. The result is one of the best recordings available by Bon Scott - displaying a side to his vocal ability that wasn't as evident in subsequent releases.

"Round And Round And Round" is only available as a single and there are no plans to release it on an album. Get it while you can, because it may not be there tomorrow.

- Head Office Records

EVERYTHING THAT COMES AROUND GOES AROUND
(Electric Outlaws Fanzine NO: 17)
We had heard rumours about this single being released, about half way through last year, Malcolm has a CD with 2 versions of a song Bon recorded, titled Run Run Run, this now appears to be a completely different track than those featured here, and different people were responsible for putting it on CD and that the track is from an earlier session than the Mount Lofty Rangers ones released here. So anyway when this single was released we had been expecting something. Head Office Records were really helpful and provided us with whole load of information on this single, including a number of reviews from newspapers, so we are leaving it to them to do most of the explaining.

This single has on it, three tracks
1) Round And Round And Round This is the remastered and remixed version of the track, with extra piano, keyboards and brass added, and is quite a bouncy song. Similar to but a bit more upbeat than the earlier Fraternity material.
2) Carey Gully A very easy listening Aussie folk ballad about living in tin shacks in the bush. It is given the full orchestral treatment
3) Round And Round And Round This is a version of this track which belonged to Vince Lovegrove, and features the original members of the Mount Lofty Rangers.
The producers of this CD have used the same technology as was used on the recent Beatles singles, and the cover has on it two wonderfully cheeky photos of Bon, taken by Australian artist Vitas Serelis. This single is a must for completists and all of those of you who are into AC/DC from more bluesy side of rock, rather than heavy metal. If you like the Fraternity rereleases, you will love this.

According to the information that we have, the events that led up to the laying down of the original demo tapes were that Fraternity had returned from their ill fated residency in Britain, and the band had been put on hold. Bon's relationship with Irene was breaking down, she wanted him to get an everyday job and start a family. But he wanted to be in a band but wasn't getting anywhere, he found himself doing a string of jobs in Adelaide, mostly labouring and finally as an assistant to his old singing partner from The Valentines, Vince Lovegrove, who was working as a promoter. Various members of Fraternity drifted back with others to form the Mount Lofty Rangers and Bon joined at the time.

But he was getting very frustrated, eventually he had an argument with Irene, and went on all day drinking session, he turned up at the studio and had an argument with the rest of the band, to effect that he was not getting anywhere fast. Still swigging from a whisky bottle he rode off on his bike at speed and collided with a car, to the result that he was in a coma for three days, nearly dying there and then. He was in hospital for months, during that time deciding that he had to find a way out. Shortly after leaving hospital, the tracks on this single were recorded. Bon went back to his job with Vince, who one day told him that he'd hired a band called AC/DC to play a local venue, and they were looking for a singer. Various people have speculated that if Bon hadn't joined AC/DC at that point these songs would have propably formed part of an album of similar material.

- Nikki Goff

Thanks to Jarmo and Pekko at No Nonsense AC/DC Web site.

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Thanks to Jarmo & Pekko for the images displayed on this page