BEYOND BON
It’s 40 years since Bon Scott passed away, leaving the young band left behind to rapidly record and release what Angus Young calls AC/DC’s dedication to Bon, ‘Back in Black’. It went on to become the second biggest-selling album of all time.
It’s 40 years since Bon the Likeable left the building and the band. Here’s the tale of how AC/DC so rapidly regrouped to deliver the second biggest album of all-time.
Bon Scott — rock’n’roll singer par excellence, charismatic frontman, the free-spirited larrikin hellraiser whose easy charm earned him the epithet ‘Bon The Likeable’. AC/DC’s 1979 album ‘Highway To Hell’ was the band’s first million-seller, and in the early days of January 1980, when work began on new songs in London, Bon was buzzing; he knew they were on to something big. These new songs were demoed by Angus and Malcolm with Bon playing drums, as he had done in his first groups back in Australia, and he was convinced that they had the makings of an album that would be even bigger than ‘Highway To Hell’. In a phone call to his mother Isa in Australia, he had told her, “This one is going to be it!”
It was only a few days after that call — on February 19, 1980 — that Bon was found dead in East Dulwich, London. He had been out drinking with friends the previous night. Rumours suggested that he might also have taken heroin. In the official inquest, the coroner’s report cited
‘death by misadventure’.
Bon was just 33.
It was at Bon’s funeral, in his home town of Fremantle in
Western Australia, that his father
Chick urged Malcolm and Angus to carry on with the band. And astonishingly it was only six weeks later, on April
1st, that Brian Johnson, then aged 32, formerly of glam rock band Geordie, was announced as AC/DC’s new singer. The band decamped immediately with Bon’s replacement, away from the cold and grey of London to Nassau on the tropical island paradise of New Providence in the Bahamas.
What drew the band to Nassau was the calibre of Compass Point Studios, a world-class facility that had been established by the founder of Island Records, Chris
“In the audience Brian Johnson saw a banner raised aloft, on which it was written: ‘R.I.P. Bon Scott. Good Luck Brian.’ ‘That’, he recalled, ‘just lifted me’.”
Blackwell. According to Tony Platt, the engineer working on the album alongside producer Robert ‘Mutt’ Lange, it was also beneficial for the band to be in such a remote location, away from all the distractions of London or Sydney, and the bad vibes around Bon’s death.
“That helped to bring everyone together,” Platt said.
In the tracks laid down in Nassau, there was something different to previous AC/DC albums, and not only because they had a new singer. While the music was anything but subtle, the change in it was. While the essence of AC/DC — the hard riffing, the heavy grooves — remained intact, the tone had shifted a little. It was rock’n’roll, but with more of a heavy-metal edge. And what Mutt Lange had begun with the band on ‘Highway To Hell’ — adding a touch of sheen, while retaining maximum power — was brought into full effect on the new material.
Some of those tracks were as simple as they come: shoot-from-the-hip numbers such as Have A Drink On Me, What Do You Do For Money Honey, Given The Dog A Bone and the frantic Shake A Leg. Elsewhere, a little more sophistication came into play: the title track, with its ticking-time-bomb intro and twisting riffs, the slow-burning Let Me Put My Love Into You, and Shoot To Thrill with its funky breakdown. You Shook Me All Night Long was a rock’n’roll song made for radio, with its ringing intro, hooky riff, walloping groove and shout-it-out-loud chorus. And in Hells Bells there was an epic feel, a sense of gravitas that AC/DC had never had before, with its tolling bell leading into a slow, mighty riff that was described as “ominous” by Malcolm and “mystical” by Angus.
As Angus confirmed in a 1991 interview, some lyrics written by Bon were used in the new songs. In other songs there were echoes of his spirit and sense of humour. The bluesy boogie Rock And Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution — the last track recorded for the album, written on the spot in around 15 minutes — had an intro in which Brian did what he called “this Southern preacher thing”, just talking off the top of his head and hailing with missionary fervour the life-affirming power of rock’n’roll.
The sound was huge, and at the highest end of it was Johnson’s voice, pushed to its limit. Although as Johnson would tell Record Mirror: “Actually it’s quite difficult recording in the Bahamas. All you want to do is lounge on the beach. And you can’t get a decent pint of beer.” He added, with tongue in cheek: “Somehow we managed.”
Indeed the album was completed in six weeks, and they knew what they had was dynamite. Atlantic Records knew it too. The only problem, as the label saw it, was the band’s idea for the album cover — all black, with the AC/DC logo and album title the only detail. It was suggested by Atlantic that this would not be good for business. The band didn’t yield.
But even before the album’s release, AC/DC faced perhaps its greatest challenge — returning to the stage before their fans, who were mourning the loss of their beloved Bon.
‘R.I.P. Bon. Good luck Brian’
For Angus Young, the pre-show ritual was the same as it had always been. In the dressing room backstage at the Palais des Expositions in the Belgian city of Namur, AC/DC’s lead guitarist changed out of jeans and t-shirt and put on his schoolboy uniform, went for a piss, and had one last cigarette to take the edge off his nerves. But this was no ordinary gig. On this evening, June 29 1980, AC/DC were about to perform in public for the first time with Brian Johnson. And in the last few minutes before going on stage, as Angus looked around the room, he could see the tension in Johnson’s face.
“He was shitting himself,” Angus said.
And no wonder: Johnson had big shoes to fill. With the release of the album still a few weeks away, he was a worried man as he waited for show time, wondering how AC/DC fans would react to him, especially singing the old songs, Bon’s words. It was only when he got on stage and looked out into the audience that he realised how much those fans were rooting for him. In the audience he saw a banner raised aloft, on which it was written: ‘R.I.P. Bon Scott. Good Luck Brian.’ “That,” he recalled, “just lifted me.”
There were moments during the show when all of that anxiety and adrenalin got the better of him.
“It was a very traumatic night,” he admitted. “I was so nervous.” Halfway into the set, he had a brain-freeze and sang the same lyrics to two songs. “I thought: ‘Oh God, what have I done?’”
For that he received a bollocking from rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young, Angus’s elder brother.
“Malcolm looked at me and went: ‘What the fuck was that?’” It was a baptism of fire, but Johnson got through. He won the respect of that audience by singing his balls off, and by being his own man. The flat cap he wore was a sign of his workingclass roots in the North East of England, and his on-stage demeanour was different to Bon’s; Johnson was a cajoling, fist-shaking rabble-rouser, but without the macho swagger than Scott had, or the glint of craziness that was always in his eyes. Johnson also knew from the start how the band worked on stage, ceding the centre ground for Angus to run amok.
That night, AC/DC performed seven songs from ‘Back In Black’, beginning with album opener Hells Bells. The set ended with Let There Be Rock — significantly the last song Bon had ever sung on stage, just five months earlier, at Southampton Gaumont on January 27 1980.
Johnson later said of the Namur show: “We had enough spirit to cover up any mistakes.” On a deeper level, there was also a feeling within the band that they had a spirit watching over them. As Angus said in the first days after their new singer had joined them: “We still think Bon’s around.”
‘Power is restored’
The band were in Canada, on the first week of a North American tour, when ‘Back In Black’ was released there on July 25th 1980. The album was an immediate hit. Within two weeks of its release it was at No.1 in the UK. The first single from it, You Shook Me All Night Long, made the Top 40 in the UK and US, and the Top 10 in Australia. By early October, when the band finished touring in North America — 64 shows in three months — the album was certified platinum in the US as it began an incredible 13-month residency in the Billboard Top 10.
For one British writer who reviewed the album, there were mixed emotions. Phil Sutcliffe had been a supporter of AC/DC since 1976, and had a great affection for the guys in the band, Bon in particular. In his review for Sounds magazine, Sutcliffe awarded ‘Back In Black’ four out of five stars, but stated in memory of Bon: “The ecstasy with which I expect to greet a new AC/DC album just wasn’t possible this time.” Moreover, he dismissed Brian Johnson as a “copy” of Bon. For all that, Sutcliffe concluded: “Back In Black remains a genuine, excellent AC/DC album.”
Two other leading critics had no such reservations. Rolling Stone’s David Fricke declared the album a masterpiece and a milestone in rock.
“‘Back In Black’ is not only the best of AC/ DC’s six American albums,” he wrote. “It’s the apex of heavy metal art: the first LP since ‘Led Zeppelin II’ that captures all the blood, sweat and arrogance of the genre. In other words, ‘Back In Black’ kicks like a mutha.”
In Record Mirror’s review — headlined ‘POWER IS RESTORED’ — Robin Smith wrote: “The resurrection shuffle starts here. Brian was the perfect choice, possessing an almost uncanny feel for the band’s songs.”
Just eight days after the final US date, the band’s UK tour kicked off at the Colston Hall in Bristol. Such was the demand for AC/DC that this tour included six sold-out shows in London: three at Hammersmith Odeon and three at the Apollo Victoria Theatre. At this time, the single Rock And Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution gave AC/DC their biggest UK hit to date, reaching No.15. And in America it was reported that the album was selling ten thousand copies a day.
Coming home
AC/DC had overcome the death of Bon Scott to become bigger than ever. And after the last European dates, and four more in Japan in early February, came the last and most significant shows of the ‘Back In Black’ tour, as AC/DC returned home, to the place where it all began.
The band arrived in Australia to lurid headlines in the newspapers. What Johnson had said earlier in the year — how he had felt that Bon was watching over him — was translated into classic tabloid sensationalism. As Malcolm Young said in 2003: “When we went back to Australia with Brian the first time, the headline in the paper was: ‘Brian Speaks To Bon!’ They were just looking for a big sell on the front page. He had a hell of a time living it down.” Even so, for the band this was a familiar story. As Angus said: “When Brian first joined us, there were lots of guys turning up saying they’d contacted Bon on ouija boards.”
In what was an emotional and triumphant homecoming, AC/DC performed seven shows in Australia, and at the third date in Sydney on February 23 there was a moment that Brian Johnson would remember for the rest of his life. Bon’s mother Isa was a guest at the show, and afterwards she said to Brian: “Our Bon would have been proud of you, son.” For Brian, there could be no greater validation.
The tour ended with two shows at the Sidney Meyer Music Bowl in Melbourne on
February 27 and 28. The last of those shows came a year and a day since the last gig with Bon. By this time, ‘Back In Black’ had sold more than three million copies in the US alone, and the resurrection of AC/DC with ‘Back In Black’ was arguably the greatest comeback in the entire history of rock’n’roll. Out of their darkest hour had come a heroic victory. ‘Back In Black’ is the biggest-selling rock album there has ever been — bigger than anything by Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones or even The Beatles — with more than 50 million copies sold. It is the second-biggest-selling album of all time, after Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’.
In the making of ‘Back In Black’, AC/ DC dug deep. As Angus put it: “The whole album was our dedication to Bon. That’s why the album cover was pure black, and why the album starts with a bell ringing, something sombre and different to anything else we’d done. When I first heard it in all its glory, I thought: ‘Fuck, it’s magic!’”
Because it was, paradoxically, the loss of Bon that made the album what it was, the light shining behind that black album cover. As Malcolm Young notes, “The emotion in that album, it will be around forever.”