Australian music pioneer Vince Lovegrove has lost his life in a car accident near Byron Bay in New South Wales on Saturday.
In younger times Bon Scott (left) and Vince Lovegrove (right)
Vince was born in 1948 in Fremantle, Western Australian. In the 1960’s he formed The Valentines and shared vocals with Bon Scott. Vince stayed one of Bon’s closest friends until Bon’s death in 1980.
The Valentines first hit was the Vanda & Young penned ‘Every Day I Have To Cry’, a Perth Top 10 hit. It was followed by ‘Juliette’, a national Top 30 hit. When The Valentines split, Bon went on to join Fraternity and then AC/DC.
Lovegrove became a music journalist in the 70s writing for Go-Set and by the late 70s was a reporter for A Current Affair and The Don Lane Show.
In the 1980’s, Vince took on the job as manager of Divinyls. He also had a small roll in the movie ‘Monkey Grip’ featuring the music of Divinyls.
He married Suzi Sidewinder and the couple had a boy, Troy. Suzi and Troy contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion when Troy was a baby. She died in 1987. Vince quit Divinyls and made the documentary ‘Suzi’s Story’ to raise awareness that AIDS was not just a “gay disease”. Troy died in 1993, three weeks before his 8th birthday.
Vince then signed up as tour manager for Jimmy Barnes and together they toured Europe. He worked for Phil Tripp’s Immedia, serving as the mags London correspondent.
The next thing Vince did was writing the unauthorised biography of Michael Hutchence. Paula Yates challenged the content of the controversial book in court. She denied the book’s claims that she used her pregnancy to trap Hutchence.
Vince continued to write about music informing us daily with his This Day In Music column ‘MusicBackTrack’. His last entry on the blog was on Friday, March 23.
The accident occurred in Binna Burra Rd, Byron Bay. It is expected to be a couple of weeks before a positive identification can be made.
The family is planning a musical celebration in Sydney and a private service as soon as the formal identification is confirmed.
UPDATE: Statement from the family of Vince Lovegrove
