October 2013 Head Office Records releases some material from the labels archives with one of Australia’s greatest singers Bon Scott. We are very pleased to announce the digital release of songs Carey Gully, Round and Round (1974) and Round and Round and Round (1996).

The songs were recording by Peter Head and Bon Scott just before Bon went on to join AC/DC and make musical history.

The best person to tell the story is Peter Head and here it is:

“It was in Adelaide, January 1970. I had been invited to join a stable of top musicians in Adelaide that were being handpicked to be the next big thing in entertainment. A local enterprising young businessman, Hamish Henry, had decided to finance the first well-managed, artistically satisfying pop group ever out of Adelaide.

It was a good plan. He gathered the remnants of Barrie McAskill’s 1969 Sydney band “the Levi-Smith Clefs”, (Mick Jurd(guitar), John Bissett (keyboards), and Bruce Howe(bass),and brought them all to Adelaide. To them was added the charismatic “Uncle” John Ayres on harmonica, and Adelaide’s John Freeman on drums.

And he combined them with a young singer from the Perth band “The Valentines” a very interesting ball of energy that went by the name of Bon Scott. I’d never met anyone called Bon before, but I understood it to be Scottish for “good”, so I thought that maybe this kid could be something special. He was wide -eyed , always grinning happily, scrawny but muscular, and always with an impish sense of fun, lost in the wonder of finally being put in the position  of being the singer in a potentially great band    with backing and  A PLAN OF ACTION!.

As I was an ex art-student, and had spent a couple of years running my own art galleries, Hamish  also asked me to work for him during the day ,by running the office to manage both bands combined with  the duties of running his very spiffy North Adelaide Galleries, which was situated at the back of his huge house ,in what used to be the old stables ,and servant’s quarters. It was my dream job.

Two other people were involved from  early on and one was the incredibly underrated genius of painting in Adelaide, Vytas Serelis, and the other was  Bon’s ex singer -partner Vince Lovegrove ,who came over to set up a rock’n’roll office that produced bands, live events, posters, magazines and publicity.

So, these were heady times, in every sense of the word.

My band “Headband”, usually played support to the other band “Fraternity”, as we recognised that they were  slightly superior in terms of experience ,and also their singer Bon, was just so  damn good, that they were the natural peak of the show.

But we shared a spirit of camaraderie that continues today with the surviving members of that particular freak show.

Hamish was generous, but he wasn’t stupid. he made all the members of the two bands earn their own living apart from him. But he’d occasionally offer the members odd jobs to do around the house, and that is  how I’d sometimes find myself sitting round the gallery some afternoons after Bon had been there mowing the lawn ,or cleaning up the backyard, and we’d have jam sessions with an old acoustic nylon-string guitar each.

Bon was very basic on guitar , only knew what we called the “cowboy” chords, but he had a good ear for what came when , and we were both just getting serious about song writing as being very important to our  future careers, and NOW was the time. During this period in time we have the great good fortune to record two songs. One was “ Carey Gully” and the other was called “ Round and Round”. So, I used to teach him chord progressions, scales, and music theory, which he lapped up like a dog, and he would in turn sing a few of the songs I had written, and, in doing so, turn them into something I could only ever dream about, and in this way, we helped each other to achieve higher artistic success.

We were very lucky as well to have been able to film some great black and white footage at the time and I believe this to be possibly the only black and white footage that exists of Bon during the 1972 to 1974 period before he joined ACDC. The video clip for Round and Round has been restored and will be available for the world to enjoy later on this year. In 1996 we decided to give the song Round and Round a remake and give this a more contemporary feel. This became the version known as Round and Round and Round (1996). The releases are now available on iTunes for the world and the Video Clip will be something truly special for all the fans to enjoy.

This album is released digitally on iTunes. Get your copy today here!

To visit the Air Play Direct site please go to the following website.

Bon Scott Air Play Direct site:

www.airplaydirect.com/music/bonscott

Peter Head

HeadBand Founder

Aussie ProgRock Master

Head Office Records