ROSE TATTOO Frontman Comments About New BON SCOTT Statue
February 22, 2007, 17 years ago
The following report is courtesy of thewest.com.au:
Straight-shooting ROSE TATTOO singer Angry Anderson is “quietly amused” that WA fans want to erect a statue of his old mate and AC/DC legend Bon Scott in Fremantle.
“Are they serious about the statue?” he barks down the line from his Sydney home. “It’s a bit like knighting Mick Jagger.“I would hope my friends and family would fight tooth and nail anybody who suggested they put up a statue of me anywhere.”
So why are the Tatts joining THE ANGELS, CHOIRBOYS, THE SCREAMING JETS, THE FLAIRZ and others at the Bon Scott Celebration Concert, which is primarily to raise funds for that statue of the Accadacca singer?
“Well, it’s a gig, you know,” Anderson chuckles. “The statue’s another issue.”It’s that kicking-againstthe-pricks, non-conformist attitude that has made the diminutive, bald Anderson such a fearsome frontman for the uncompromising blues-laced hard rockers ever since their first gig on New Year’s Eve 1976.
Rose Tattoo were part of the “tightknit family” at Albert Records that included the Angels, the Choirboys, John Paul Young, Stevie Wright, Ted Mulry Gang and, of course, AC/DC.
Anderson laughs as he recalls George Young — the former Easybeat, one half of the legendary Vanda/Young production team and older brother of AC/DC’s Angus and Malcolm — assuming that the Tatts would sign with Albert. “Word had got around that no one was going to touch us,” he says. “We couldn’t get a deal if our lives depended on it, but he said, ‘You’re perfect for us.’”
Once in the fold, Anderson became good mates with Scott, spending plenty of quality time leaning on bars and discussing rock’n’roll. Bon turned Angry on to Scottish rock singer ALEX HARVEY and encouraged the Tatts’ singer to consider himself as a “rock poet”.
“Even though people didn’t see us that way, we considered that we were folk writers,” Anderson says. “We were writing about a passing age, as folk singers do, chronicling a period of time like BOB DYLAN or WOODY GUTHRIE. We just looked at the world around us and wrote songs that were inspired by very ordinary people and very ordinary things.”Read more here.