After Bon joined the band, things started looking up for everybody. AC/DC gave Bon the freedom to finally be himself. “When I sang, I always felt that there was a certain amount of urgency to what I was doing. There was no vocal training in my background, just a lot of good whiskey…I went through a period where I copied a lot of guys and found when I was singing that I was starting to sound just like them. But when I met up with [AC/DC], they told me to sound like myself, and I really had a free hand doing what I always wanted to do.”
When Michael Browning took over as their manager, he formed a company called TransPacific Artists that he ran with Bill Joseph. The company would pay off the band’s debts, set them up in their house in Melbourne, provide them with transportation and a crew, cover their expenses, and pay them a wage. George, in particular, was very agreeable to this arrangement. The next order of business was to keep them playing as much as possible. This constant performing is what made AC/DC into the band it is today.
They played wherever they could, to whomever they could, including pub-crawlers, teenyboppers, and the gay crowd. Melbourne had a healthy gay circuit—and Bon, dressed in his leather pants, was always welcome. Although he was still recovering from his injuries, you couldn’t tell that when he was performing on stage. The majority of their audience was male, working class, and looking to raise hell. AC/DC’s music became known as pub rock: songs to drink by.
The new rock magazine, Juke, which took the place of GoSet, wrote, “[AC/DC were] new faces refusing to be restricted by an established music scene…brash and tough, unashamed to be working at a music style that many describe as the lowest common denominator of rock music, gut-level rock, punk rock.”
The band was now traveling around in an old Clipper bus, which continually broke down. Julius Grafton, who heads his own companies, CX magazine, and Juliusmedia College in Melbourne, recalls his brief brush with the band. “I did lights for AC/DC at some shows in my home state of New South Wales. Bon Scott was the new singer and the band was uncompromising. They had an old Flexible Clipper tour bus that broke down regularly. The band was forced to sit in the front, smoking and drinking Scotch, while the crew loaded the gear in the back. At the time, AC/DC had an edge that no other band could match. Nothing has changed!”
Bon had written home to Irene complaining of the bus breaking down and being without booze, dope, or a woman to play with…even though they were the hottest band in the country, which wasn’t bad, as he said, for a “29-year-old third time around has-been.”
Playing consistently, Malcolm and Angus had agreed that the rhythm section wasn’t what they wanted it to be. Peter Clack didn’t cut it and bassist Rob Bailey insisted on bringing his wife along with him everywhere. The kiss of death for any band member, famous or not! Their search for someone to keep the beat with the unrelenting passion that they played their instruments with brought them to the only Australian-born member of the band. His name was Phil Rudd.
Phillip Hugh Norman Witschke Rudd, nee Rudzevecuis, was born in Melbourne, Australia on May 19, 1954. He told Steven Scott Fyfe for Cyber Drum in August of 2000, “My first inspiration to play drums and to be excited about music was probably a song called ‘Tin Soldier’ by Small Faces, where you have a breakdown in the middle section, then the guitar comes blaring in.”
Phil first made his living washing cars and started out playing drums in the band Charlemagne, before joining Coloured Balls, a skinhead outfit formed by guitarist Lobby Loyde. Their singer was Gary “Angry” Anderson, who went on to form the popular Australian group Rose Tattoo. Coloured Balls conquered the local club circuit during the early Seventies. They recorded two singles: “Liberate Rock” and “Mess Of Blues.” In 1974, they changed the name of the band to Buster Brown and recorded one album, Something To Say, for Mushroom Records. By the beginning of 1975, Phil was ready for something new and jumped at the chance to audition for AC/DC. Once they heard him play, they looked no further. Former member Larry Van Kriedt was asked to come back until they could find a more suitable replacement on bass.
At the end of January, AC/DC was scheduled to perform at the Sunbury Festival in Melbourne featuring Deep Purple. The event had been booked by Michael Browning. When Deep Purple found out that they had to go on before AC/DC, a fight broke out between the band and the roadies… in front of 20,000 people. AC/DC left the venue without playing a note. Perhaps this is what prompted Deep Purple’s hot-headed guitarist, Ritchie Blackmore, to later accuse the band of “circus tricks.” The fact that the roadies sided with Deep Purple and not the local boys convinced Browning more than anything that it was time for AC/DC to get out of the country.
High Voltage was released in Australia in February 1975, with the first single being “Love Song (Oh Jene)” and “Baby, Please Don’t Go.” The B-side started getting airplay, which pushed the song to Number 10. It stayed on the national charts for an unprecedented 25 weeks.
Local musician Mark Evans had heard they were looking for a new bass player and passed the audition just in time to celebrate the album’s release. They played a special performance at the Hard Rock Cafe, where admission was only one dollar. Evans moved into the house on Lansdowne Road and happily noted that there were women everywhere! Malcolm soon nicknamed him the “Sand Man,” because whenever they climbed into a car to go anywhere, Mark would fall asleep within five minutes. I’m not sure if it was all the performing or, um, all the performing that was tiring him out so much.
Before they hired Mark, they had also tried a bass player by the name of Paul Matters. I couldn’t really determine how long he played with them, but he did last long enough to be included in a band picture that appears on the back of Clinton Walker’s book, Highway To Hell. Anyone can easily see that he was clearly too tall for the job.
In March, the band made their first appearance on the ABC television show Countdown, which was hosted by Ian “Molly” Meldrum. Meldrum, known as Australia’s “oldest teenager,” was a disc jockey and had created Countdown. They played “Baby, Please Don’t Go” with Bon singing live and Angus wearing his Super A(ngus) outfit. Countdown became an important tool for the band, which was watched by most Australian households every Sunday evening.
The band ended the month with a concert at the Myer Music Bowl where over 2,500 people showed up. A local newspaper noted that AC/DC got the best response and, when they were finished, half the audience decided to leave as well. As a reward that night, the band was gifted with super-groupie Ruby Lips, who Bon immortalized in the song “Go Down.” (The song is on their fourth album, Let There Be Rock.)
They made their second appearance on Countdown in April, this time with Angus in his schoolboy uniform and Bon in blond braids and a schoolgirl’s dress…complete with make-up, earrings, and fake breasts. At the time, men in drag were not all that popular on television and his cross-dressing caused a flurry of complaints. I’m not sure what was most upsetting: his outfit or his rolling around on his back, smoking a cigarette, and exposing his knickers to the television audience. Thank God he was wearing some!
Mark Evans told Classic Rock in February 2005 that they never knew what Bon was going to do, until it happened. “Another time was when we performed ‘Baby, Please Don’t Go’ live on Countdown, and Bon got dressed as this schoolgirl. Again he didn’t tell us. So here we were, being filmed live on television, and the music starts up and Bon’s nowhere to be found and we’re all going, ‘Where the fuck is Bon?’ As soon as his vocals are about to begin he comes out from behind the drums dressed as this schoolgirl. And it was like a bomb went off in the joint; it was pandemonium, everybody broke out in laughter. Bon had a wonderful sense of humor. He was the archetypal naughty boy.”
AC/DC was a phenomenon compared to what everyone was used to seeing on Countdown. Their rough-and-ready rocker following was rivaled by all the screaming teenyboppers. RAM wrote, “They were everything the Bay City Rollers didn’t stand for. Maybe it was the way Angus Young jumped and rolled around the stage like a demented epileptic while not missing a note of his guitar duties. Maybe it was the way Bon Scott leered and licked his lips while his eyes roamed hungrily up and down little girls’ dresses.” OK, that’s one way you could put it. Although Angus was the focal point of the band, Bon’s stage presence definitely had a force all its own.
The band stayed busy by playing Heavy Metal Nites at the Hard Rock Cafe and, during the day, a special series of concerts at the Hard Rock called, “Schoolkids Week.” While not working, AC/DC was known for not hanging out with other bands or musicians. As a matter of policy, they hated other bands…except, of course, for their idols like Chuck Berry or Little Richard. Their attitude was, “If you’re not with us, you’re against us.”
Bassist Mark Evans remembers Bon not always being able to conform to this theory. He was known as “Bon the Likeable,” after a character on the television show Get Smart who was called Simon the Likeable. His secret weapon was that he was impossible not to like. That was evident, even to Mark’s mother, who used to have the band over for dinner. Bon would always ask to help her with the dishes. Needless to say, she adored Bon just like every other woman who would cross his path.
Their single “High Voltage,” which missed being included on their album, was released in June. That same month, they played their first headlining concert at the Melbourne Festival Hall with Stevie Wright and John Paul Young supporting. This performance was shot with four cameras, which was unheard of in those days. The intent was to get them some interest overseas. A promotional video of “High Voltage” was taken from that footage, and for good measure, they spliced in applause from George Harrison’s Concert For Bangladesh album.
Melbourne music fan and roadie, Raymond Windlow, saw AC/DC for the first time when they played the Festival Hall. He was working for the band Fox at the time. He went on to work with The Dingoes, Skyhooks, and briefly with The Little River Band. “There were quite a few bands there that day, but being offered a day’s work initially with AC/DC was putting money in my pocket. Whilst my musical taste didn’t extend to their raunchy, loud, thump, thump, thump music, the appeal of the screaming girls did.
“It was an amazing concert with the stage being surrounded in a crush of bodies, mostly barely legal females. I almost got my marching orders prior to the guys playing a note. Being worldwise, I offered to score for them if they wanted something in the dressing room before they went on. The silence was absolutely deafening. The look from their manager had more than daggers in it and when no one spoke up, I assumed I had ‘dropped a clanger,’ and left the room mumbling something about checking the sound equipment. One of the management put his arm around my shoulder, and in a gentle fashion said, ‘No, mate, don’t ever mention drugs around the band.’ And he left the whole conversation at that. I believe that the attention the guys were getting at the time may have opened them up to the possibility of being set up for a narcotics bust.
“During their performance, the audience was in a frenzy with a mass of bodies pressed hard into the front of the stage. Girls looked pleadingly at the guys on the side of the stage holding their hands up. Not to grab at Bon or Angus, but for someone to pull them out of the crush. Myself and a couple of others did just that much to the annoyance of the management who admonished us for venturing out onto the stage during their performance. Nonetheless, we survived the night and when the younger members of the band wandered home with their ‘minders,’ Bon, myself, and a few guys from other bands wandered off to the local post-gig hot spot, the Hard Rock Cafe.
“Bon and I spent quite a few nights playing eight ball at the Hard Rock during their extended Melbourne visits. Bon was a regular at the Hard Rock after a gig. He loved his drink and whilst we were not bosom buddies, we were pool buddies. I was the roadie who did a few gigs for them and he was the lad who made the girls scream at his stage performance. On occasion some members of the public who paid to get in at the Hard Rock would try to smart arse their way into Bon’s bad books. Maybe to get the reputation of having been in a fight with him or what, I don’t know. What I do know is that if ever a fight was in the making, I would have Bon on one side and 20 or 30 roadies on the other. The music community was tight when it comes to that, and Bon had the look of a classic street scrapper. But the whole time I knew him, not once that I know of did he actually throw a punch. He was a happy, smiling guy with a wit and ‘rude charm’ that endeared people to him and yet, distinct from many band singers, he did not have the air of being above smaller bands or guys from road crews. Anyone was welcome to chat, share a smoke or a drink with him and try to beat his ass at eight ball! Not many did. I still reckon we had the longest run on that pool table as unbeaten pair champs.”
By the end of June, a mere four months after its release, the album High Voltage was certified Gold in their homeland. The band immediately left for Sydney to record their second record. Angus and Malcolm moved back into their parents’ home in Burwood, while the rest of the band and crew stayed at the Squire Inn at Bondi Junction. Right across the street from their hotel was the hottest nightclub in Sydney, the Lifesaver. In 1975, Bondi Lifesaver was the place to be. It was a club and restaurant that most fans frequented more than a couple of nights a week. Bon set up shop there.
Located in the old Boomerang House on King Street was Albert Studios. Radio station 2UW was also housed there. The band recorded in Studio One, which was a small room with bare brick walls. They also used the side room, which had two Marshall stacks and a bass rig. The drums were set up in a room that was once a kitchen. Most of the songs were recorded live, within the first few takes. The guitar leads and vocals were the only tracks that were overdubbed. While recording, Angus would perform just like he was on stage. No sitting still for him!
The studio had become the closest thing to a hit factory in Australia. George and Harry had a 16-track mixing desk shipped over from England and spent every minute in the studio, writing and recording hits. Their main acts were John Paul Young, Ted Mulry Gang, and William Shakespeare (who was a goofy Gary Glitter-type character). It all came together for them when they brought AC/DC in to record. Harry explained, “We tried to capture that energy they had on stage. You had to get them at the right time, when they were really fired up.”
This new album would reveal a more polished approach, opening with “It’s A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘N’ Roll).” It was the only rock song to feature bagpipes, that is until Korn did it almost 30 years later. They re-recorded “Can I Sit Next To You Girl” and added “Rock ‘N’ Roll Singer,” “High Voltage,” “Rocker,” a cover of Chuck Berry’s “School Days,” “Live Wire,” “T.N.T.,” and Bon’s ode to venereal disease, “The Jack.” I would like to point out that Bon should be credited with originating the phrase, “You’re the man,” since he sings in the song “T.N.T.”: “…the man is back in town, so don’t you mess around!” I’ll bet you never noticed that one before!
George Young had a huge influence on his younger brother’s writing style. Angus described, “[George] would take our meanest song and try it out on keyboards with arrangements like 10cc or Mantovani. If it was passed, the structure was proven, then we took it away and dirtied it up.” This is a formula that has stood the test of time. The band enjoyed the involvement of the Young family, which was working class and very close. Sometimes after gigs, they would all come around to play cards. They were nurtured by the support of George and Harry, and the expertise of former Easybeats tour manager Sammy Horsburgh (who had married their sister, Margaret).
AC/DC also had the benefit of George and Harry’s knack for picking hits. Angus once said that George didn’t choose to work with them because they were family; it was because George thought they were good. Bon stated that George was more a father figure to the group, rather than a brother. He didn’t tell them what to do, but he helped them get more out of what they were doing. Bassist Mark Evans was quoted in Under Cover Media, saying, “…George Young fine-tuned things. George is an absolute genius. I have never met a more astute person in the studio than George.”
Angus and Malcolm were both gifted riff masters, coming up with songs every time they sat down to jam. Malcolm often came up with titles and then they would try to write a song around it. Malcolm and George would work it out on the keyboards, leaving Bon to add the lyrics once the backing tracks were done. Bon always had notebooks of lyrics, all neatly printed in capital letters. Although some of his lyrics were quite simple, phrasing was his strong suit. He once told Countdown, “Things fall into place. Sometimes. You gotta keep your eyes open for lines and words and stuff…ideas, just pictures, you know.”
They spent the rest of the summer playing Melbourne and Sydney, becoming regulars at Sydney’s Bondi Lifesaver. Their plan to play a series of free concerts at Melbourne’s Myer department store had to be canceled when some say as many as 5,000 fans stormed the store on the first day, ripping the place apart, ending AC/DC’s set after only two songs.
When a fight erupted later at the Matthew Flinders Hotel in Melbourne, drummer Phil broke his thumb, requiring former drummer Colin Burgess to fill in for him. This could be where Phil got the name Phil “Left Hook” Rudd. Reportedly, Phil flew off the drums and hit a guy so hard he knocked him out. To which he explained, “This guy was kicking Angus in the head, so I had to now, didn’t I?” He did have a point.
Vince Lovegrove concurred by telling No Nonsense in May 1999, “In Australia in those days it was pretty wild, a bit like cowboy days, the business was still young and lawless and the band had a reputation for being wild, mainly due to Bon, really. The rest were wild boys, but Bon was unique. He was from another planet.”
Australian fan Rob Tognoni remembers seeing AC/DC right after T.N.T. was released. He told No Nonsense in the August 2001 issue, “Well, the shock that you could have seen on my face and the faces of everyone in the place when the first glimpse of Angus, silhouetted by an intense strobe behind him, launched into ‘High Voltage’ would have been a sight. We had never heard such incredible volume before. I made my way to the front row and stood in stunned disbelief of what I was witnessing. All I could think was, ‘Fark!!!!’ Bon leered from stage left clutching the microphone in one hand and stretching the cable looped in the other.”
Personally, this would become my favorite part of the first few times I saw AC/DC live, watching the faces of people in the crowd who had never seen them before. True amazement, followed by disbelief, bordering on mild shock…but in a good way.
In early September, the band played a free show at Sydney’s Victoria Park that was promoted by radio station 2SM. This time, Angus would climb up on Bon’s shoulders for their first ever “walkabout.” Chris Gilby used an advertising campaign for AC/DC which stated, “Your mother won’t like them.” It worked like a charm. To further piss off mothers everywhere after the Victoria Park concert, Angus was quoted as saying, “That notorious leader of thieves and vagabonds, Bon Scott, to celebrate the success of the show in Sydney, went out and got a new tattoo and pierced his nipples for earrings. The other boys celebrated in other ways.”
Bon had been living in the Freeway Gardens Motel in Melbourne where he reunited with his friend Pat Pickett. Pat heard the band was in Melbourne and traveled there to work for the band as one of the road crew. One night during a party at an apartment building, someone offered Bon five dollars to jump off the balcony into the pool. Bon got him to raise it to 10 dollars, and in front of everyone—including a terrified Angus—leapt off the second-floor balcony and made a perfect dive into the hotel’s swimming pool. As he told Guitar World, Angus grabbed the guy and said, “‘Don’t ever fucking dare Bon to do something again!’ Accepting dares was Bon’s favorite party trick. He had no fear when it came to things like that.” He also had no fear of any woman who might catch his eye.
Freeway Gardens was where Bon met the infamous Rosie. The band, and especially Bon, loved to push each other to do the most disgusting things. When Rosie—a large Tasmanian mountain woman—starting showing up at their shows, an ultimatum was presented to Bon. One morning when Pat Pickett woke up, he looked over and saw a rather hefty lady lying in Bon’s bed, with a small tattooed arm sticking out from underneath her. Bon’s homage to her, in the song “Whole Lotta Rosie,” is proof that he had more fun with her than he expected.
The band was completely amazed at his ability to attract women. One time he managed what Mark Evans recalled a “trifecta,” which was bedding three women a day for four days in a row. Now we know who Gene Simmons looked up to! Bon definitely loved the ladies, and although he was known to be a street fighter, he usually kept his head about him and would stand back and watch before he got directly involved in a fight. He was also known to travel light, carrying a shaving kit with a toothbrush, toothpaste, a change of underwear, and socks. Each night he would wash out his underwear and hang them up in the bathroom to dry.
The only time Bon really snapped was when they played on the TV Week King of Pops awards show. They played live, and Bon had all kinds of problems on stage. When they were done, they went downstairs and broke a lock off a door to get into a bar. Inside was a stack of TV Week magazines with Sherbet’s singer, Daryl Braithwaite, on the cover. This enraged Bon and he promptly tore up all the magazines. He spent the rest of the night drinking champagne from a frozen turkey. You heard me. And if you knew Bon, you don’t have to ask which end he was drinking it from. This is the only time anyone can remember Bon ever being rude to anybody, frozen poultry included.
The “High Voltage” single shot up the charts to Number Six. The album of the same name had sold more than 70,000 copies and was catapulted to 125,000 copies once the single went on sale. Now that they were getting sales in Australia, it was only a matter of time before they conquered the rest of the world.
Browning signed them to a five-year management deal and started planning a national tour to promote the release of their next album, which was called T.N.T. The tour started in Melbourne on their way to Perth and would wind up in Sydney by Christmas. Bon was able to visit his parents and Chick and Isa were finally able to meet the boys. They immediately approved of Bon’s new mates.
While on the road, the local band The Keystone Angels opened for them. Vocalist Rick Brewster recalls the first time he ever saw AC/DC: “We supported AC/DC as The Keystone Angels on their South Australia tour in 1975. The Port Pirie Hotel was the first gig and it was the first time I met them and saw them perform live. They were the tightest band I’d ever seen, despite the fact that Phil Rudd had broken his wrist [sic] and was not on the tour. We later saw Phil play with the band many times and he was a machine hammering out one of the hardest of all feels to play well. Malcolm drove the band, called all the shots with minimum effort; Mark Evans played the bass and although he only remained with the band for another few years, I always liked his playing. Bon was right up there with [Bad Company’s] Paul Rodgers as one of the best and most charismatic rock singers I’d ever heard. His tongue-in-cheek delivery was infectious and his ad lib version of ‘She’s Got The Jack’ [sic]…well, you had to be there. And then there was Angus. I’d never seen anything remotely like Angus. Superb musicianship complemented his over-the-top stage antics… such an incredible combination. He’s still one of the finest guitar players I’ve ever heard and he reels it off in the same manner as a gifted circus clown who makes a difficult acrobatic feat look easy.
“And his act was essentially the same as it is today! The Chuck Berry ‘Duck Walk,’ the ‘Death of a Fly,’ the schoolboy uniform…it was all there in Port Pirie, South Australia in 1975 and he’s spent the next 30 years hammering it home to the rest of the world. I remember Angus telling me in the tour bus on that first tour, ‘Yeah…you know if I was a piano player, I’d play with my feet!’”
When both bands played at the Sundowner Hotel in Whyalla, Brewster recalled the funniest thing he ever saw Angus do. “Angus lost his temper with someone in the crowd who must have been yelling the wrong thing. This guy happened to be a six-foot-four biker. When Angus lost it, he threw his SG down and leapt on him with a full-flying tackle from the stage. They went down in a screaming heap and the only reason that Angus is alive today is that Bon followed him into the skirmish and somehow managed to defuse the situation and coax a screaming and kicking Angus back to the stage to finish the show.” Hecklers, beware.
After they got home, Angus, Bon, and Malcolm all told George about The Keystone Angels and Albert Music signed them. The band’s name was changed to The Angels and Albert Music guided them to become one of Australia’s most successful bands during the Seventies. Eternally grateful, Brewster said, “They saw something in us which I didn’t see myself. We weren’t very good musically at the time. Maybe they saw ‘hungry and determined with potential.’ Whatever it was, we were grateful, having already been turned down by EMI (who ironically, distributed Albert’s records). After the boys from AC/DC put in the good word for us, George and his partner Harry Vanda came to see us in Sydney, at Chequers nightclub where we used to play from 8 till 3 or 4 in the morning for $100. We were offered a deal on the spot. One of the best spin-offs from signing with Albert’s was working next door to a number of other great acts. These included Rose Tattoo, Ted Mulry, John Paul Young, Flash And The Pan and, of course, AC/DC. It gave us tremendous insight and inspiration.”
AC/DC played another headlining date at the Festival Hall in November and were back in Sydney to play the State Theatre on the thirtieth. On December 8, 1975, their next single “It’s A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘N’ Roll)” with “Can I Sit Next To You Girl” was released, followed by their new album, T.N.T. The cover of this album would feature a picture of two railroad ties with the letters “T.N.T.” stenciled on them.
Michael Browning’s sister, Coral, lived in London and worked for a management company that handled Peter Tosh, Bob Marley, and Gil Scott-Heron. She had traveled to Melbourne to see the band and was very excited to be working with them. In December, Michael flew to London armed with the footage that was taken at the Festival Hall, intent on landing the band a record deal. After showing Phil Carson of Atlantic Records a kinescope (video) of the band playing live, Carson offered them a worldwide recording contract. The first deal was a one-album trial, with an option for Atlantic to extend a longer contract in the future.
Atlantic Records was formed in 1947 in New York City. In the early Seventies, after they had signed Yes and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer—two of rock’s biggest acts—Atlantic opened an office in London. The label was crazy for AC/DC and they, in turn, were thrilled to be on the same label as Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones. Amazingly, Atlantic outsmarted everyone else who had passed on the band. AC/DC were now on their way to taking over the rest of the planet…one concert at a time.
The band played the Royal Showground in Sydney on Christmas Eve, then celebrated New Year’s Eve playing a show in Adelaide. The band had the electricity cut off while they were performing and Bon incited their fans to storm the stage in protest. Then he triumphantly appeared in the middle of the crowd on someone’s shoulders, playing bagpipes. Power or no power, you can’t turn off AC/DC!
By the end of the year, High Voltage was certified triple Gold. AC/DC was now the top band in Australia, 24-carat proof that they had conquered their homeland. Considering the nation’s birth in 1821 as a dumping ground for the United Kingdom’s criminal population, it would be safe to say that they cut their rock ‘n’ roll teeth on the toughest audiences you could find. The New Year would bring another member change and, finally, a long-awaited trip overseas. The rest of the world had no idea what they were in for!