As soon as I was composed enough to drive, I found a phone booth and called my boyfriend John. Choking back tears, I blurted out that Bon was gone and that I didn’t understand how something like this could have happened to him. I begged John to turn on the television and radio, to find out if it was true. When I finally made it to my mother’s hospital room, she was ready to come home for the last time. Even though I didn’t want to burden her with the news, I couldn’t hide my devastation. We ended up crying together over Bon. After my divorce, I lived with her for almost a year. She had only seen them performing on television, but had taken many phone calls for me from Barry and the boys. Even though my mom was dying, it was she who comforted me that day. Six weeks later, I would lose her too.
In 1980 we didn’t have 24-hour television news channels, so getting any details about Bon took quite a while. I barely remember talking to Barry, AC/DC’s roadie, over the phone; we were both so completely in shock. Barry had just quit working for the band and was now living in Hollywood.
For several days, the band turned off their phones and sat in stunned grief. For a time, they actually thought about giving it up. Losing Bon was not just the loss of a singer in the band, but the loss of a brother: someone they all loved, admired, and looked up to. When Bon came along, being older and road worn, he just swaggered into AC/DC with his own rock ‘n’ roll style. He captivated their audiences and forever defined the band’s playful personality.
Angus later said in Musician magazine, “It was just like losing a member of our own family, maybe even worse, because we all had a lot of respect for Bon as a person, ’cause, even though he did like to drink and have a bit of a crazy time, he was always there when you needed him to do his job, and I think in his whole career there’s maybe only three shows he ever missed, and that was ’cause his voice wasn’t there and we didn’t really want him to sing. But I think it’s more sad for the guy himself, you know, ’cause he always said he would never go unless he was famous. Malcolm and I were really looking forward to getting Bon in the studio. More than we’d done with any album before, because after the success of the last one, it was going to be a really big challenge, you know. That the best thing he’d ever done on record, I think that’s the real loss for everyone, especially the fans, ’cause they would’ve had a chance to hear him at his peak. That would have been the crowning glory of his life.”
Malcolm was quoted in Classic Rock, August 2005, “We were so depressed. We were just walking around in silence. Because there was nothing. Nothing.”
An autopsy performed on Bon on February 22 revealed half a bottle of whiskey in his stomach. There have been many rumors and innuendo about what really happened to Bon that night…everything from murder to a heroin overdose. The real tragedy was the fateful decision to leave him alone in the car. The autopsy report showed no drugs were found in his system. Bon’s ex-girlfriend Silver was involved in heroin and Bon once overdosed after trying it for the first and only time years before in Australia. After that scare, he stuck with his trusty JD. Bon rarely drank heavily before his performances and only really partied after his responsibilities for the band were met.
As for drinking until he passed out, Ian Jeffery once said that he roomed with Bon for five years on the road and never once saw him sleep in a bed. No matter how hard Bon partied the night before, he was always up and ready to make it to their next gig. The fact that he died all alone in a dark, freezing car in the middle of the night is completely unfathomable.
Kinnear was interviewed the next day by the police, but for the past 25 years, no one has been able to track him down. Finally, in the fall of 2005, Classic Rock gained an exclusive interview with Kinnear himself, who has been living on the Costa del Sol, Spain since 1983. Kinnear denied previous reports that Bon choked on his own vomit and was wrapped around the gearshift of his car. When he found Bon, he was lying in the same position he left him in.
Kinnear went on to state, “The next day Silver came around to see me. She told me for the first time that Bon had been receiving treatment for liver damage, but had missed several doctors’ appointments. I wish that I had known this at the time…I truly regret Bon’s death. Hindsight being 20/20, I would’ve driven him to the hospital when he first passed out, but in those days of excess, unconsciousness was commonplace and seemed no cause for real alarm…what I’d like to pass on from this unfortunate experience is the idea that we should all take better care of our friends and err on the side of caution when we don’t know all the facts.”
Condolences and tributes to Bon Scott came in from all over the world. Cheap Trick and Angel City did a version of “Highway To Hell.” Santers, a Canadian trio, covered “Shot Down In Flames.” Bon’s friends in the French band Trust dedicated their album Repression to him. The British band Girlschool added “Live Wire” to their set, and over here in America, Nantucket—the band that played with AC/DC many times—chose to cover “It’s A Long Way To The Top” as the lead track for their new album of the same name. The London pub Bandwagon held a Bon Scott benefit night and Ozzy Osbourne and the late Randy Rhoads wrote the song “Suicide Solution” for him. The international media ran stories and George and Harry ran a full-page ad in RAM that said, “A great singer, a great lyricist, a great friend, one of a kind. We’ll miss you.”
Bon’s body was shipped back to Perth in Western Australia for cremation and burial. Bon’s family, the band, and a few select friends attended funeral services at a church in Fremantle, Australia. Bon’s ashes were laid to rest with little fanfare in the Memorial Garden, under the gum trees, in the Fremantle Cemetery on March 1, 1980. Perth, Australia was just too far away for most fans to travel. Bon’s mother expressed true appreciation that the fans who were present were very reverent. Angus described it: “The funeral itself was more or less quiet, though there were a lot of kids outside. It was better being quiet, because it could have been very bad if a lot of people had just converged there.”
During the services, Bon’s father, Chick, leaned over to Malcolm and told him they would have to find another singer and keep going. Bon would have wanted it that way. Damn straight he would have!
The band spent some time with Bon’s parents, who were adamant that they keep going. Chick also told Angus, “You must continue with AC/DC. You are young guys, you’re on the brink of major success, and you can’t afford to give up now.” Angus told Classic Rock in August 2005, “But to be honest with you—we weren’t really listening; we were wrapped up in our grief. Bon’s dad kept repeating his assurances. He told us time and time again: ‘You should keep going, you’ve still got a lot to give.’”
In a press release from their record label, Atlantic wrote, “Bon Scott was always the top joker in the AC/DC pack. The stories of his sexual and alcoholic excesses are legion and that part of his enormous fan mail that didn’t involve tempting offers from young female fans invariably berated him for ‘leading poor Angus astray.’ Sadly, Bon is no longer with us after he tragically went just one step too far on one of his notorious boozing binges. But if there is a crumb of comfort to be found in such a needless and premature death, it is that Bon probably went out the way that he would have chosen, never flinching as he went over the top just one more time.”
During all my research on Bon, I was unable to find a bad word said or written about him anywhere. Even his ex-wife and girlfriends still cared for him and there aren’t that many guys you can say that about! He was a born rock star and loved people. And as Angus once said, Bon wasn’t your typical rock ‘n’ roll singer. He started out as a drummer and always acted like one of the band…never the star. In the movie Let There Be Rock, he was asked if he felt like a star. Bon laughed at the interviewer and said, “No, but sometimes I see stars though!”
At the time of his death, Bon was writing lyrics for the new album. While Angus and Malcolm were hammering out the basic tracks, Bon did come into E’Zee Hire, the rehearsal studio that they were working in. He didn’t record any vocals, but a week before he died, he popped in and offered to play drums for them, claiming, “I like to keep my hand in, y’know.” Jamming to one of their trademark riffs, together they created “Have A Drink On Me.” Later, Bon also helped formulate the drum intro for “Let Me Put My Love Into You.” Agreeing to meet the following week, with more lyrics written, Bon said his goodbyes and left. It was the last time Angus and Malcolm would see him.
There has been much speculation about what happened to Bon’s notebook of lyrics along with the rest of his personal effects after his death. Ian Jeffery has been quoted as saying he possessed a notebook of Bon’s that contained lyrics for 15 songs for Back In Black. To this day, no one has ever seen the notebook, nor has it been substantiated that Bon’s family received it. Angus heatedly denied these rumors in the August 2005 issue of Classic Rock, “No, there was nothing from Bon’s notebook. [After his death] all his stuff went direct to his mother and his family. It was personal material—letters and things. It wouldn’t have been right to hang on to it. It wasn’t ours to keep.”
After Bon’s service, everyone around the band started to suggest finding another singer. Angus and Malcolm weren’t as optimistic, but eventually agreed that they should hold auditions. After several weeks of moping around their separate households, Malcolm called Angus and suggested they work on songs…to keep busy and stay together. Without concern for managers, the record company, or anyone else, Angus and Malcolm locked themselves in their studio and poured their grief into their music. Angus told Classic Rock, “I guess we retreated into our music. At the time we weren’t thinking very clearly. But we decided working was better than sitting there, still in shock about Bon. So in some ways it was therapeutic, you know.”
When it came time to talk about finding a replacement, Angus stated, “After a while, when we felt we were close to having all the songs together, we knew we had to confront the question of a new singer. But it wasn’t like we put an advertisement in a music paper that said: ‘AC/DC wants a new frontman.’ No…that would have been too over the top. It was subtler than that. People like Bon are unique. They’re special. And we didn’t want someone to come in and copy him. If anything, we wanted someone who was his own character.”
Perry Cooper was stunned when he heard the news of Bon’s death. “I was so hurt when Bon died. I actually got a Christmas card in February, after he died. It was a dirty double entendre card and he wrote, ‘I never knew who to send this to, then out of the blue I thought of you, Merry Xmas Mate, Bon.’ He had been dead for almost a month when I got it, so that was very upsetting. And I said to myself, how are they going to replace him?”
Apparently Bon didn’t put enough postage on his 1979 Christmas cards and they were somehow delayed and delivered in late February. No matter how busy he was while on the road, he cared very much about his family, friends, and fans, and always made the extra effort to show them. Not surprisingly, even after his death, Bon would get the last word in.
When AC/DC started to line up possible singers to audition, many big names came up among the possibilities. They considered Terry Wilson-Slesser, who fronted ex-Free guitarist Paul Kossoff’s band Back Street Crawler; Gary Holton, from the Seventies band The Heavy Metal Kids; Steve Burton, an English vocalist; and Jimmy Barnes, the singer in their cousin Steve Young’s band, The Starfighters. Auditions were held at a rehearsal studio in Pimlico, England, where they narrowed their sights on a young Australian singer Allan Fryer, from the band Fat Lip. George and Harry went as far as saying Fryer was the new lead singer for AC/DC. That was until AC/DC’s management received a cassette tape of a band from northern England called Geordie.
The AC/DC folklore claims a fan from Chicago sent their management that tape of Brian Johnson’s band. However, I have also read that the fan was from Cleveland. Regardless, it is quite interesting that it took a cassette sent from across the ocean to alert AC/DC to someone right there in England…a singer who had performed in front of Bon, and at one time was even recommended by him. Impressed with Brian’s performance the night Bon’s band Fraternity opened for Geordie, Bon supposedly once told the band that if they ever needed to replace him, Brian Johnson would be a good choice. As Angus recalled in Classic Rock, “Bon was a big Little Richard fan—he believed that anyone singing rock ‘n’ roll would have to match Little Richard. I remember Bon saying that Brian was a great rock ‘n’ roll singer in the Little Richard mold.”
Once AC/DC listened to the tape, they immediately located Geordie’s lead singer Brian Johnson in Newcastle and rang him up to come in for an audition. He was so taken aback by the telephone call, he hung up the first time, thinking it was a practical joke. While he finally agreed to come in, he still laughs to this day over what happened after he got there.
When Brian arrived at the rehearsal studio on March 29, 1980, he immediately started playing pool with a couple of the band’s friends, thinking they were auditioning as well. He assumed when the band was ready for him, they would come downstairs and get him.
Brian is about as genial a guy as you will ever meet and waiting for the band to invite him in epitomizes his personality. An hour and a half later Malcolm came downstairs, frustrated that the singer they were waiting on had apparently stood them up. They all had a good laugh when they realized Brian never got past the pool table! The band brought him up to the studio and he performed only a few songs with AC/DC: “Whole Lotta Rosie,” “Highway To Hell,” and Ike and Tina Turner’s hit “Nutbush City Limits.”
A few weeks later, after the auditions came to a close, the band’s manager rang Brian and informed him that he had the job. Malcolm stated that he made up his mind about Brian on the spot, “Brian sang great. It [Johnson’s audition] put a little smile on our face…for the first time since Bon.” Angus remembers that when Brian walked through the door, they were all happy. “He more or less fitted in straightaway. The thing was, we wanted to find someone who was a character, and that’s exactly what he is.” Johnson wasn’t so sure. He figured if things didn’t work out, he could tell his mates he was in AC/DC for a few weeks and get a holiday in London out of it. His “holiday” has lasted 36 years and counting.
Fifteen months younger than Bon, Brian Johnson was born on October 5, 1947 in Newcastle Upon Tyne in northern England. He was the son of Alan Johnson, an army sergeant major in the British Army, and his Italian wife, Esther. As a child, Brian sang in the church choir and performed Gang Shows with the Scouts. [The Gang Show was a theatrical production performed by the Scouts. The creation of producer Ralph Reader, it has become a worldwide Scouting tradition.] He also once starred in a television play. Quitting school, Brian became an apprentice as an industrial fitter in a local turbine factory while singing at night in local bands.
In 1972, at the age of 25, Brian joined the rock ‘n’ roll band USA. Together with guitarist Vic Malcolm, drummer Brian Gibson, and bassist Tom Hill, they changed their name to Geordie. [Geordie is an English slang term for people who come from Tyneside, an area of North East England.]
Their first single, “Don’t Do That,” was released at the end of the year by EMI, climbing to Number 32 on the British charts. A few months later, their second single, “All Because Of You,” reached Number Six, and their third, “Can You Do It,” also made it into the Top 20. Riding on glam-rock’s coat-tails, Geordie’s fourth single, “Electric Lady,” only reached Number 32 in August of 1973.
Over the next three years, Geordie would release three albums: Hope You Like It, Don’t Be Fooled By The Name, and Save The World. They also released a compilation album in 1974, Master Of Rock. Right after Save The World came out, Geordie decided to call it quits. Brian once told Musician magazine about following the milkman around at 5 am and stealing half-eaten meals from other people’s plates in local restaurants. “I gave it up [the band] in about 1975 because it was all wrong. So I left and I didn’t think I’d join a professional band again. Ever.”
Five years later, right before he got the call from AC/DC, Brian had just convinced his ex-bandmates to reform Geordie and give it another try. After getting back together, Geordie had signed a deal to record a single for Red Bus Records when Brian got the ultimate job offer. Recruiting Terry Slesser to take Brian’s place, Geordie carried on, freeing Brian to accept the most promising position a working-class rock ‘n’ roller could ever hope for. Five and a half weeks after Bon Scott’s death, Brian Johnson became AC/DC’s new lead singer.
At the time, Brian was married with two daughters, living in Newcastle and earning a wage running his own business installing vinyl roofs on cars. For the past five years, he had provided for his family, virtually giving up the hope that he would someday make something of himself in the music business. Becoming a member of AC/DC must have been beyond his wildest dreams! As soon as he was hired, the band advanced him some money to square away his debts. AC/DC even compensated Geordie for any lost income they might suffer and immediately swept Brian off to rehearse for the new album.
Instead of recording in London as they had planned, the band decided to take advantage of the tax benefits of recording in the Bahamas at Compass Point Studios in Nassau. This was the recording studio that had been built by Chris Blackwell, the owner of Island Records. Not only did it take the band out of the glare of the media, it also provided a quiet, relaxing place for the band to work Brian in. Evidently flying off to a tropical island wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. When the band arrived, violent thunderstorms were thrashing the island. Brian remembered, “It wasn’t a tropical paradise. It wasn’t all white beaches. It was pissing down, there was flooding, and all the electricity went out—nae television.”
The accommodations weren’t exactly secure, either. Brian stated, “This big old black lady ruled the place with a rod of iron. We had to lock the doors at night because she’d warned us about these Haitians who’d come down at night and rob the place. So she bought us all these six-foot fishing spears to keep at the fucking door! It was a bit of a stretch from Newcastle, I can tell you.”
Malcolm recalled in Classic Rock, in August 2005, “It was the best place to do that album because there was nothing going on. We’d sit through the night with a couple of bottles of rum with coconut milk and work. That’s where a lot of the lyric ideas come from.”
Along with AC/DC, some of rock’s biggest stars also paid Mr. Blackwell’s studio a visit in 1980. Keith Emerson of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer had recorded there before and enjoyed it so much he made his home in the Bahamas for several years: “What happened with us, with ELP, is we were recording in Switzerland and I didn’t like the place very much, because there wasn’t a lot happening. So ELP moved to the Bahamas in 1978 or 1979 to start work on their Love Beach album. The reason why we chose the Bahamas, because it was kind of a tax-exile place, which is probably why AC/DC chose it. In England at that time, it was being run by the Labor government who charged an exorbitant amount for people who were making large amounts of money. I think we paid 80 to 90 percent of our earnings. We all got out of that one. So a lot of British bands were leaving England.”
Emerson remembered running into Grace Jones, who was also working at Compass, right before AC/DC arrived. “Then we came to realize that a band from Australia was coming down. I didn’t know much of the history of the band, but there was always an excitement when you knew a band from England was coming. When AC/DC arrived, they had all their English gear on, leather jackets…And, of course, you know what we wore on the island was a pair of shorts and a shirt, if that. Brian was the first guy I spoke to and he was trying to get used to the weather. It was very hot and by the time they arrived, I had bought a 21-foot sports fisherman boat. It wasn’t vastly glamorous, but it enabled me to get out and fish and water ski, scuba dive, it had a stereo on board, an ice freezer on it, something manageable for one person to skip around the island with. When I mentioned this to Brian, he said, ‘Oh God, I would love to come out with you!’ And most of the other band members said the same thing. I asked them if they wanted to come out with me and fish. They’d arrived somewhere in the spring and in April the tuna fish were pretty abundant around the islands…as long as you knew where to go. I had a lot of education in fishing from the locals, so I was pretty confident we’d catch something. I think we left mid-afternoon and sure enough, all the birds were flying out from the mainland and were converging on a particular area of the sea, so we just put the rods in and we had a fish on in about 10 minutes! Which, of course, they got very excited about. I was relieved because if we didn’t catch anything, my credibility as a fisherman is, well, it would be like Ernest Hemingway.
“I think it was a great excitement for them and kind of introduced them to my way of the Bahamian life. I think they grew to like it and settled into their recording at Compass Point. I ran into Brian a while later on the beach and he told me he had a little bit of difficulty putting his vocals on, after he had been sunbathing. Right after he had been on the beach, he would go directly into Compass Point Studios, which is right across the street from the beach. Wearing his shorts, he’d just put the headphones on and have to do this rip-roaring vocal, and it just wasn’t happening. He was singing his heart away and it just didn’t have that power. So he had this idea. He told them he was going to go back to the hotel and then he’d be right back. He was gone for about an hour when he came back wearing his stage gear. He walked into the vocal booth and said, ‘Right now, roll the tape.’ And, of course, it came out, like rip-roaring, you know? He just couldn’t sing in his shorts, that’s what it was.”
Back in 1980, the late Keith Emerson (who would die tragically in 2016) wasn’t quite familiar with AC/DC’s music, so I asked him what he thought of them as people, since I’ve always thought they were very down to earth. Laughingly, he replied, “Oh, absolutely! There were no egos, there was no, ‘Hey, listen, I’m a rock star and I can’t get any salt water on me. And I certainly cannot deal with this ballyhoo bait that you got here in this stinking bucket! Basically all the guys just mucked in and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I was just happy to have a bunch of guys on my boat! In other words, there was no, ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ attitude. I would have recognized that straight off and I would not have invited any of them on my boat! They were very keen and very interested and it was certainly great for me to have their company.”
With Mutt Lange once again at the helm, AC/DC embarked on recording their eighth album with their new lead singer. As for working with Lange again, Angus told Classic Rock, “It was very good—for both us and him—I think. After he made Highway To Hell he was in big demand, but I thought it was good for him [to record with AC/DC again]. Especially after what happened to us. It’s to Mutt’s credit that he still wanted to be involved with us after Bon’s death.”
Not only did Brian have to fit in with the band, but he also had the daunting task of coming up with his own lyrics. Brian explained in VH-1’s Ultimate Albums that he was paralyzed with fear. Praying for guidance, Brian revealed that he experienced a supernatural event regarding Bon that he was reluctant to go into detail about. Judging from the future success of this album, I think it’s safe to say Bon must have heard his prayers.
In memoriam to Bon, the band decided on an all-black cover with a most fitting title, Back In Black. The 10 songs included on this historic album were “Hells Bells,” “Shoot To Thrill,” “What Do You Do For Money Honey,” “Givin’ The Dog A Bone,” “Let Me Put My Love Into You,” “Back In Black,” “You Shook Me All Night Long,” “Have A Drink On Me,” “Shake A Leg,” and “Rock And Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution.”
The opening track features the haunting sound of a church bell chiming the death knell, signaling the beginning of “Hells Bells.” To create the proper mood for the song, the band decided to record an actual church bell. They also commissioned a $14,000 replica of the four-ton Denison bell, to take out on tour with them. Luckily for the roadies, they settled on a lighter version at one-and-a-half tons. [The Denison bell is named after Edmund Beckett Denison, who designed and made the bell that hangs in Westminster, known as “Big Ben.”]
Engineer Tony Platt took the Manor Mobile recording unit out and surrounded the carillon [bell tower], which stands in the middle of Loughborough’s War Memorial in Leicestershire, England. Armed with 24 microphones, they were still unsuccessful. The live recording had to be scrapped and the band decided to capture the sound of the bell right in the foundry. Steve Cake was interviewed about the recording of “Back In Black,” and he stated, “[My father] worked at the John Taylor Bell Founders back in 1980 when AC/DC called from the Bahamas.” Cake explained, “The traffic and birds chirping made [Tony Platt’s original] recording unusable. So the work [on the AC/DC bell] was speeded up and what you hear on the album was definitely recorded at our factory.” [The person who forged the bell actually rings it on the album.]
The lyrics to “Hells Bells” were inspired by a comment Lange made to Brian in the studio one night. Brian recalled in Ultimate Albums on VH-1 that when he wrote “Hells Bells” there was a terrible storm booming over the island. Lange suggested “rolling thunder” which prompted Brian to continue, “I’m a rollin’ thunder, pourin’ rain, I’m comin’ on like a hurricane. My lightnin’s flashin’ across the sky, you’re only young but you’re gonna die.”
The title track for the album came from a guitar riff that Malcolm played for Angus somewhere in a hotel room. Angus told Guitar World in April 2003, “I remember during the Highway To Hell tour, Malcolm came in one day and played me a couple of ideas he had knocked down on cassette, and one of them was the main riff for ‘Back In Black.’ And he said, ‘Look, it’s been bugging me, this track. What do you think?’ He was going to wipe it out and reuse the tape, because cassettes were sort of a hard item for us to come by sometimes! I said, ‘Don’t trash it. If you don’t want it, I’ll have it…‘In fact, I was never able to do it exactly the way he had it on that tape. To my ears, I still don’t play the thing right!”
Within six weeks, the band had miraculously created an album that would herald the second phase of AC/DC’s career. Brian was so relieved when the recording was finished, he told Classic Rock in August 2005: “It was about three in the afternoon, it was a beautiful sunny day, and I went outside down to where the huts were. I sat on this wall and I got a ciggie out and sat among the trees. I was so happy that I had done it. But I hadn’t really heard one song. I’d go in and do a couple of verses, pop back and do a chorus. That’s the way Mutt keeps you interested, you know.” The only complaint Brian had were the high notes on “Shake A Leg,” claiming, “Oh, that was fucking way up. Some of those notes will never be heard by man again.”
For some reason, it took Creem magazine until their May issue to acknowledge Bon’s death, “At press time, Bon Scott, 30-year-old [sic] vocalist of AC/DC was reported dead in England. Found in the car of friend Alastair Kinnear, the Australian belter of ‘Highway To Hell’ and similar screechers died of apparent ‘alcohol poisoning.’ What’s especially ironic is the Australian band’s career was just taking off in the States after great success in England. As yet, [Atlantic Records has given] no comment on the incident or the band’s future plans, although their next album was in the final mixing stage and will doubtless be released soon.”
The less than enthusiastic press was the least of Brian’s worries. After he joined the band, he once stated, “I was a bit scared because I didn’t know what to expect. I was more scared of the crew than I was of the lads, because the crew were reeling off names like Yes and Rick Wakeman…these fucking huge bands they’ve worked for. But the lads made me feel dead comfortable. The band’s the fucking best! The biggest bonus about being in the band is the fact that I can get into their gigs without paying for a fucking ticket and I’ve got the best seat in the fucking house! Honestly! I could just sit up there and watch that band because they’re fucking great. A great band and a great bunch of lads. I know what they were going through when Bon went, wondering about going on and all that—it’s only natural. But they never made me feel left out. Luckily, these guys are so much like a fucking family.” Brian received more assurance, when Atlantic Records declared the new album “brilliant.”
The month of June was spent rehearsing in London before launching the Back In Black tour with six warm-up dates in Belgium and Holland. On June 29, 1980, Brian Johnson appeared with AC/DC for the first time in Namur, Belgium at the Palais Des Expositions. Bon’s successor was immediately welcomed with open arms by AC/DC, and especially Bon’s fans. Brian was quoted as saying, “That poor boy was loved by thousands of people worldwide. When we did a warm-up gig in Holland, this kid came up to me with a tattoo of Bon on his arm and said, ‘This bloke was my hero, but now he’s gone. I wish you all the luck in the world.’ I just stood there shaking. I mean, what can you say when people are prepared to put their faith in you like that? Since then, I feel like I’ve been singing for that kid and so many others like him.”
Brian also told Tommy Vance from the BBC, “I think Bon Scott had a bit of genius. It annoys me that nobody recognized that before. He used to sing great words, write great words. He had a little twist in everything he said. Nobody ever recognized the man at the time. Oh great, when the man died they were startin’ to say, ‘Yeah, the man was a genius.’ That was too late; it’s not fair. I think he was so clever, and I think he had such a distinctive voice as well. He was brilliant.”
Not everyone was so sure AC/DC could go on without Bon. Atlantic’s Perry Cooper said, “They called me up and said, ‘We’ve got this new singer and we’re going out on the road. We want you to come out and see him.’ And I flew out to see them somewhere in Canada and went on the bus with them from somewhere to Calgary. And I’m sitting there on the bus and there was Brian. He came up to me and said, ‘I was told I had to make friends with you. You are the key to Atlantic.’ And I said, ‘What the fuck are you saying? I can’t understand you!’ And all he did was tell jokes the whole way, he was so wonderful. He’s the best guy in the world!”
In the beginning of July, AC/DC filmed video clips for Back In Black in Breda, Holland. From July 13 to 28, they played 11 dates in Canada before making it back to the States. The new album was released in the U.S. on July 21, 10 days later in the U.K., and in Australia 11 days after that. Within six months, Back In Black peaked at Number Four, staying in the Billboard Top 10 for five months.
Brian’s first gig here in the States was on July 30 at the County Fieldhouse in Erie, Pennsylvania. Nantucket opened. Guitarist Tommy Redd remembered it very well, saying that Brian was so nervous that night, his knees were literally shaking. “The first night in Erie, we were supposed to be playing with Humble Pie, but they didn’t show up. The second night they showed up at the Spectrum [Philadelphia], and it was sold out. When they showed up, they got into a spat over the sound and lights. Steve Marriott, who was a great singer, was drinking really bad. They didn’t want to accept that they weren’t the headliners and couldn’t call the shots on the lights and sound. But that’s when their part of the tour came to an end. So Nantucket started out playing just 30 minutes and that was expanded to an hour. As the tour went on, other bands joined in, like Wet Willie and REO Speedwagon. Most the time it was just the two bands, and they were very generous with the lights and sounds. Some bands only give you one or two lights. They [AC/DC] didn’t care.”
AC/DC headlined a sold-out show at the Palladium on August 1 with Humble Pie and another English band by the name of Def Leppard trying to follow closely in their footsteps. On the seventeenth, AC/DC would play their last supporting set ever when they opened for ZZ Top at the Toledo Speedway Jam II in Toledo, Ohio.
Over the next four weeks, Nantucket would have the honor of opening many sold-out shows for AC/DC as they traveled through Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee. Redd is proud to say that he turned AC/DC onto North Carolina BBQ.
Onstage cocktails were another band favorite. Redd laughed about the bar that always stood on stage right behind the curtains. It was called “Hell’s Bar.” “It had two arms that swung out, like doors,” said Redd. “Each door had about three gallons of liquor hanging upside down, so you could get a shot. It had an ice drawer in it and all these cups…everything you needed to make a mixed drink. We would always run out of our beer along with the radio people, friends, and people coming backstage. We always ran out and I would end up on stage mixing Brian Johnson drinks. He would come around the corner and say, ‘Tommy, got anything?’”
Redd described other stress relievers while on tour. “We used to play dart tournaments after soundcheck, and everyone put money up. You could win some good money. They were like ace dart players, so you had to be partners with one of those guys to get into the ballpark. One night in Savannah, Georgia, we got into a dart tournament at a happy hour in some bar, and they really killed those guys. The local yuppies had no idea who they were playing against. There were roadies along because AC/DC never separated themselves from the road crew.”
Nantucket also has the honor of being the only supporting band that was given, by George Young no less, an AC/DC song to cover. It ended up being the first song on their third album Long Way To The Top, which was released in 1980. Not only did they cover “It’s A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘N’ Roll),” but they actually performed it while opening for AC/DC. Redd explained: “Their brother George brought this song to Epic as a suggestion for us to record. It came off good and they hadn’t yet released that song in America. We were real hardcore AC/DC fans and it went over. The only time we had a rough time playing that song was at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. That was the roughest. We played it on the rest of the tour. One time, Angus came back to the dressing room and we played it for him. We asked him if it was all right for us to perform and Angus said, “It’s OK with me mate, but you don’t have any bagpipes!”
Once they had traveled all the way out to California, the band flew back to the Midwest to play dates in Nebraska, Minnesota, and, finally, Wisconsin.
On Sunday, September 14, 1980, AC/DC returned to Madison, Wisconsin to play a sold-out show at the Dane County Coliseum, with Blackfoot opening. Tour manager Ian Jeffery generously set me up with tickets and backstage passes. My boyfriend John and I got to the Coliseum early so we could visit with Ian a bit and be there when the band arrived. About an hour before show time, AC/DC was ushered in the back door. As they were taken to their respective dressing rooms, I could see Angus jumping up and down trying to wave at me. He was motioning for me to follow the band, which I did. Once they were settled in, Angus came out and said that he wanted me to meet Ellen, his new wife.
Ellen was taller than Angus, like most of us, and about the same height as me. She was very pretty, with straight, long blond hair and blue eyes. We had a very pleasant visit talking about Angus and how he didn’t fit his stage persona at all. We both laughed when she confessed that she didn’t appreciate his mooning the crowd. She seemed more resigned to it when I explained that I thought by now the audience expected it. After mentioning that Angus had been fighting off a cold, she grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out of a chilly draft of air. I smiled to myself when I realized that Angus had finally found what he was looking for: a blond wife to come out on the road and take care of him.
As they got ready to go on stage, we found a great spot to watch the band on stage right, about 30 feet behind Phil Rudd. Since I hadn’t heard anything off the new album yet, I didn’t know what to expect. As the sold-out crowd got restless, the lights went down and the audience started to scream. Piercing the darkness was the mournful wail of a bell chiming the death knell, as a gigantic church bell slowly descended from above the stage. The band broke into the opening phrase of “Hells Bells” as the lights came up and the audience literally exploded into a deafening cheer. To this day, I don’t think I have ever witnessed anything like it!
Brian Johnson walked out to the center of the stage wearing a black T-shirt, blue jeans, and his trademark flat cap pulled down over his eyes. After swinging at the bell with a mallet, he started singing, “Rollin’ thunder, pourin’ rain, I’m comin’ on like a hurricane…” with a gale-like force that has to be heard to be truly appreciated. By the time they broke into their second song, my eyes filled with tears and I could feel Bon standing right next to me. At that moment, I was certain that AC/DC would go on to become one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll bands in the world.
With their amazing new songs, mixed with the best of Bon’s, the audience wholeheartedly embraced them. Brian sang with every molecule of his being, giving justice to Bon’s memory. There was no doubt that the band sounded stronger than ever, but the loss of Bon had deeply impacted them. The boys had changed. We all had.
Forever the prophet, Bon always said he wouldn’t go until he was famous. Back In Black, the record that nearly didn’t get made, would ultimately become one of the best-selling albums in history and all these years after his death, fans still remember Bon Scott.