From Bee Gees to Alcatrazz

He was a well-dressed pop and RnB singer before he got a call from hard-rock act Rainbow that sent his life in a completely different direction.

Graham Bonnet. Picture: Natalie Slade

Graham Bonnet remembers sitting in a London flat with his cousin Trevor Gordon in the late 1960s, singing for the Bee Gees.

It must have been quite a surreal evening – the British-Australian Gibb brothers were already a very big deal in the pop world – but the effort paid off. Big time.

“Robert Stigwood (South Australian-born impresario and rock manager) was in the room, and he said, ‘Do you have a song for these boys Barry?’ So Barry Gibb came up with a song called Only One Woman and it did really well for us. It was a great time.”

It was, however, more than a great time.

That song, sung with his cousin in the duo they called The Marbles, would actually change the entire trajectory of Bonnet’s life.

British singer Graham Bonnet.

“I came from a small town (Skegness), and I was playing in pubs,” Bonnet says over the phone from his home in LA.

“You know, I was playing the workingman’s club in Skegness, twice on Sundays – and then suddenly I’d moved to London and we were playing in The Revolution club.”

Two big Australian hits followed for the suave Englishman, a cover of Bob Dylan’s It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue which went top five and the catchy Bee Gee’s-penned disco groover Warm Ride, which went to number one.

It earned Bonnet a gold record, and he was on hand to collect it.

“I remember I was on Countdown with Marcia Hines, and I was kind of hosting the show which was very strange,” he laughs. “I’d had quite a few beers and it was all very ad lib.

“Anyway, as I was introducing a Rod Stewart song Marcia reached behind her chair and pulled out a gold album. It was for me! I was freaking out – it was a big surprise.”

Until this point Bonnet had forged a career singing pop, RnB and disco songs – a style that went with his signature white suits and sunglasses – but that was all about to change in 1979 when he received a call from hard rock band Rainbow.

They wanted him to replace none other than the legendary frontman Ronnie James Dio.

It was an unusual, and somewhat controversial choice, and one that would once again send Bonnet’s life on a new and exciting trajectory.

“Apparently the guys from Rainbow were all sitting around thinking about where they could get a singer from – they’d auditioned something like 80 singers – and they were playing a bunch of songs on a cassette machine,” he says.

“Suddenly Only One Woman comes on and they were like, ‘Who’s this? The Marbles? What’s that guy doing now?’ That’s how it happened. They called my manager and I was suddenly in Rainbow.”

Graham Bonnet. Picture: Natalie Slade

But you don’t just replace Ronnie James Dio, one of the best loved singers in hard rock who spent time in front of Elf, Black Sabbath and Dio before he died in 2010.

And you especially don’t replace him while dressed like a cast member of Miami Vice.

“I was completely different to everyone else,” Bonnet says.

“I’m in, like, a white sports coat and a tie – I didn’t look like anyone who sang heavy metal. I looked like a country singer or somebody who sang doo wop. That first gig, I remember a guy giving me the finger – you know, ‘We want Dio!’ or whatever. When it came around to singing Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? I sat down in front of the guys and I sang it right to them. I could see them going, ‘You’re alright’. I didn’t have the hair or the uniform, I was a little bit different.”

One thing he did have in common with his metal brethren was a love for a good time, preferably involving copious amounts of booze and girls.

“The women, I mean they were unbelievable!” he says.

“It was like, ‘Which one do you want?’ There was a lot of sex, a lot of drinking, a lot of messing around. But not all the time. We were grown-ups and we had to do a job. But when we had a few days off, things would get a little … silly.”

Bonnet says he helped Rainbow find a new, and commercially successful, sound and that he never received any credit for writing many of the melodies on hit record Down to Earth, which he still thinks is “a bit of a drag”.

Post-Rainbow, Bonnet had a short and rather ill-fated stint as the singer of the Michael Schenker Group, better known as MSG.

Graham Bonnet solo artist.

This was in the days before teleprompters, so the new singer had diligently written out his lyrics and carefully taped them to the floor on the front of the stage.

Before the show, though, there was time to grab a quick beer at the pub with the boys from Whitesnake, who were sharing the bill.

“So we went and had a drink or 12, and when we got back the alcohol was backstage so by the time I went on stage I was completely fried,” Bonnet laughs.

“I had all these songs written on paper and the audience had pushed forward and the monitors had destroyed all my lyrics. I was like, ‘You f..king blah blah’ just cursing at the audience really badly. I sang one song and I said, ‘Ah, f..k it!’ and walked off.

“They played the whole show without me and the next day I was on the plane back to LA. Not long after I found out later that I was fired.”

But one door opens when another closes, and the MSG incident led to Bonnet forming Alcatrazz, the band he really sees as his band.

After nutting out songs in his garage, Bonnet recruited Alice Cooper’s drummer Jan Uvena before going in search of a lead guitarist.

He found one in the form of a young Swedish wunderkind called Yngwie Malmsteen, an axeman who would go on to be considered one of the best electric guitarists on earth.

“This kid comes in and does an audition and just blows us all away,” Bonnet recalls.

“He was amazing. He still is. He took us to great heights.”

Now, at the age of 71, Bonnet has barely slowed down.

He’s continuously gigging, playing with different projects in different countries and, of course, performing with Alcatrazz.

There’s a good reason for it though.

“If I stop singing I’ll die,” he says.

“I can’t stop. I have to keep singing, I have to keep writing songs or my life is nothing.”

Adelaide fans will get to experience the glory of both Rainbow and Alcatrazz when Bonnet brings his show to Adelaide next month.

“Down to Earth has never been played live as a whole album, so I’m bringing Alcatrazz out and we’ll do that record in full,” he says.

“Of course we’ll also play the old stuff like Baby Blue and Warm Ride. It’ll be a lot of fun.”

SEE: Graham Bonnet with Alcatrazz, June 6, Enigma Bar

TICKETS: hardlinemedia.net