Being an ... ahem! ... more mature rock fan (I'm fifty-five) i remember Bon's sad death very well, and the opinion of all that the band would not survive without him. Of course, we all know better now - but at the time, the band were a bunch of Aussie chancers who played straight-ahead rockabogie, and didn;t give a flying one about trends ... in fact they were then as they are now, except with less money!
I did think that the band were all over, but they left a good body of work behind them - their first album alone set a blueprint in how simple riffs expertly played can stand the test of time - as Status Quo have also proved.
Because i do remember Bon so well, part of me still thinks of BJ as a bit of a 'new boy', but of course, for a whole generation, he is the voice of the band, the only one they have ever known.
History does that to you - I loathe Stereophonics because I love The Faces, and I loathe Jamiroquai because I am a huge Stevie Wonder fan - but each generation finds its own heroes, and amen to that.