Highway to Hell

by Clinton Walker

  “We went into EMI Sydney for a month and Wally supplied all the booze. We had Harry, myself and my kid brothers Malcolm and Angus. We all got rotten [drunk], except for Angus, who was too young.

  “That was the first thing Malcolm and Angus did before AC/DC. We didn’t take it very seriously, so we thought we’d include them to give them an idea of what recording was all about.”

  And indeed, Malcolm’s eyes were opened by the experience. Tales of Old Granddaddy not only distanced George and Harry from the Easybeats, drawing them closer to forming Flash and the Pan—the mysterious duo persona with which they would later have Australian and European hits like “Walking in the Rain” and “Hey, St Peter”—it also betrayed seeds of the AC/DC style that was to come. One cut, “Quick Reaction,” was pure riff-driven AC/DC.

  Malcolm wasn’t impressed by the fact that the recording process was so piecemeal, so separated, with everything overdubbed and multitracked. That wasn’t the way real rock’n’roll operated. In his view, real rock’n’roll was played by a band, together, as a band. All this technology was obscuring the point of the exercise.

  Disillusioned, Malcolm went home and threw his Deep Purple albums in the bin. They were phonies. Not like Chuck Berry, or the Rolling Stones, who were the real thing, who could do it for real, without hiding behind studio trickery. The band Malcolm was getting together would be a rock’n’roll band. It was going to be glam, to be sure, because sequins and makeup were de rigueur at the time, but it would still be rock’n’roll. The idea would prove visionary.

  1973, after all, was not a great time for rock’n’roll. It was a mark of the immaturity of the business in Australia that the spirit of glory year 1971 was allowed to dissipate. Even Billy Thorpe, the movement’s spearhead, couldn’t maintain his momentum after that ill-fated trip to England in 1972.

  By 1973, the scene was split down the middle. “Commercial” music had taken over the charts. Any new “progressive” bands had to rely on the live circuit to survive. With the arrival of American-style programming, radio had adopted rigidly conservative formats.

  The two biggest Australian albums in 1973 both belonged to Brian Cadd, whose Americanisms segued smoothly onto radio playlists. Sherbet, who had won the last ever Battle of the Sounds, the year after Fraternity, were rapidly establishing themselves as teen heart-throbs.

  A second wave of bands stormed Melbourne’s “underground” ballrooms, discos and pubs, and the scene was admittedly expanding. But beyond gigs in Adelaide and (to a lesser extent) Sydney, there was nowhere else to go.

  Technology was improving, but the talent lagged behind. When Michael Gudinski formed Mushroom Records in 1973, it struggled initially because it lacked genuinely first-rate bands.

  The best band of the day was Lobby Loyde’s Coloured Balls, but—typically—they were marginalized and ultimately defeated. Loyde had built on the foundation he’d laid with the Aztecs, and taken it to a logical conclusion. The most profound legacy Billy Thorpe left to Australian rock’n’roll was probably his blithely confrontational attitude, and though the Coloured Balls inherited that tradition, volume for its own sake wasn’t their weapon—they favored blazing dynamism, aggression and finesse. Echoes of this sound can be heard in Australian rock’n’roll to this day, but in 1973, complete with their tough, sharpie image, the Coloured Balls were resisted by the hippies who ran Melbourne music as much as by audiences.

  In Sydney in 1973, the new rising band was teenybopper rocker outfit Hush. Sherbet dominated the national scene. It was enough to make Malcolm Young puke.

  AC/DC, named by Margaret Young after a warning sign she noticed on her sewing machine, coalesced around the end of 1973, with a line-up comprising Malcolm, Angus, singer Dave Evans, bassist Larry Van Kriedt (a Dutchman, like Harry Vanda) and veteran drummer Colin Burgess (formerly of the Masters Apprentices).

  15-year-old Angus had only just left school, which he’d hated. He had started work as a compositor (for porn magazine Ribald, or so he claims), and he wasn’t automatically included in the band. Throughout his last year at school, Angus never had a guitar out of his hands. He would run home and run straight out again to go and jam with his mates. He wouldn’t even change out of his school uniform; it was this image of him, wielding his axe, that inspired Margaret to suggest he take it on stage. Angus was putting together a band of his own called Tantrum when Malcolm asked him to fill the gap in AC/DC where keyboards wouldn’t fit.

  Dave Evans, whom Malcolm had met through the Velvet Underground, had obtained his position in the new band more because of the way he looked than the way he sang. He was not a good singer at all, in fact, but Malcolm wanted glitter—he himself dressed like a sort of space cowboy—and Evans had that in spades. As a performer, he was a shameless exhibitionist.

  Still unnamed, the band played its debut show in the middle of the bill at a venue on Sydney’s southern beaches, a converted cinema called The Last Picture Show. They played their first show as AC/DC at Chequers, in the city, on New Year’s Eve 1973. No record exists of this show other than Angus’s colorized recollection: “We had been together about two weeks. We had to get up and blast away. From the word go it went great. Everyone thought we were a pack of loonies—you know, who’s been feeding them kids bananas?”

  The band’s repertoire at that time consisted of Rolling Stones, Beatles and Chuck Berry songs, maybe some Free, plus a few old blues numbers and a couple of tentative originals.

  “I could never sit down with a record and copy it,” said Angus later. “Malcolm had a better ear for analyzing and dissecting. I thought, he could pick it up and I can whip it off him . . . It’s still the same way, I think!”

  By April, the rhythm section consisted of Rob Bailey (bass) and Peter Clack (drums). Bailey and Clack had grown as a unit out of Flake, a band that first hit during the radio ban with a version of Trinity’s version of the Band’s version of Dylan’s “Wheels on Fire.” They passed an audition held at George’s new place in well-heeled suburban Epping, and it was this settled line-up that would soon go into the studio to cut a debut single. Angus was wearing a Zorro suit, and the band was holding down a residency at the Hampton Court Hotel in Kings Cross as well as gigging around on the suburban dance circuit.

  Harry and George, meantime, were ensconced at EMI with their old Easybeats cohort Stevie Wright, who had been dredged out of the dual indignity of heroin addiction and the cast of Jesus Christ Superstar. Malcolm contributed guitar at these sessions too.

  In June, what was probably the first ever press notice of AC/DC appeared in Go-Set. The news article stressed the band’s youth, which it was putting to its advantage. “Most of the groups in Australia are getting on rather than getting it on,” Malcolm sneered, “out of touch with the kids that go to suburban dances.”

  The piece also reveals as a lie that AC/DC were innocent of the sexual connotations of their name. Malcolm points out that it refers to electricity, “but if people want to think we’re five camp guys, then that’s okay by us.”

  Even Molly Meldrum, Australian music’s foremost apologist, once described early 1974 as its “lowest ebb.” But this was only the lull before the storm, a storm precipitated by the comeback of George, Harry and Stevie with the monumental “Evie,” the first single off Hard Road, the album they’d finished recording.

  CHRIS GILBEY: “Everybody had a sense of—it was post-hippie—we’ve decided we don’t want to drop out, we’re going to drop in and make it really work. Of course, the wonderful thing was that the Albert family had this tremendous cash base, so they could afford to play at being the record business in a way no other indy could.”

  In its full three-part form, “Evie” was over 14 minutes long, but even so it crashed through the radio barrier on its release in June, and went on to become one of the biggest Australian hits of the year.

  If the Easybeats ever had a homecoming, it was the now legendary free show at the Sydney Opera House in June, which had Stevie fronting a b
and that included not only Harry and George, but also Malcolm. A crowd of 10,000 had to content itself with the sound from a PA system set up on the Opera House steps, since there was no room left in the theater itself. It was typical of the obstinately forward-thinking George that not a single Easybeats oldie was played that night.

  AC/DC played that night too. Go-Set commented, “AC/DC opened the show and showed they’re a force to be reckoned with. They play rock’n’roll intelligently, adding their own ideas to sure crowd-pleasers like ‘Heartbreak Hotel,’ ‘No Particular Place to Go’ and ‘Shake, Rattle & Roll.’”

  Praising Angus and Malcolm’s dual guitar attack, whilst comparing Dave Evans to David Cassidy, the review concluded that the band “looked great and sounded great. Their material is part original and will undoubtedly prove popular as the band gets about a little more.”

  If family ties had given AC/DC a kick-start, George had to let them find their own way from there. Even if he was always looking over their shoulder. When the band was approached by Dennis Laughlin with a management offer, George gave the nod. Laughlin, of course, was the former Sherbet front man and Nova agent who, by 1974, was operating as a lone wolf on Sydney’s southern beaches, running a gig in an old cinema in Cronulla called The Last Picture Show. He always had an eye for the main chance, and he certainly saw a chance in AC/DC. Laughlin grew up around Burwood too, though it was perhaps more important to George that he was a fellow Scot. Laughlin vowed that he would get the band out on the road—beyond Sydney—where a lucrative circuit awaited.

  It was apparent by this time that Dave Evans had to be replaced. His onstage antics had become an embarrassment. “We used to kick him [Evans] off stage,” Angus recalled, “and me and Malcolm would just jam on boogies and old Chuck Berry songs, and the band would go down better without him.” Malcolm and Angus had contemplated getting rid of him for some time, but both John Paul Young and future Alberts two-hit-wonder William Shakespeare had declined their offer of the job.

  The band was desperately looking out for a new front man when Dennis Laughlin scored them the support spot on the August tour by Lou Reed. Reed was then at the height of his junkie-faggot phase, and AC/DC, with their ambiguous moniker and coy debut single, “Can I Sit Next to You, Girl?,” must have seemed perfectly suited to the bill. And hey, weren’t they George Young’s little brothers? It was in the blood, wasn’t it?

  As unremarkable as “Can I Sit Next to You, Girl?” was, it became a minor hit in Perth and Adelaide. As a result, Laughlin was able to arrange gigs there, as well as in Melbourne (then still very much the Australian pop capital), in addition to the Lou Reed shows.

  After playing the last show of the tour with Reed in Adelaide, AC/DC played a couple of pub gigs of their own, and then went on to Perth for a six-week season at the city’s top disco, Beethovens, as support act for famous transvestite Carlotta.

  Bon saw the band in Adelaide. He was unaware of the strings that had been pulled behind his back. He had recovered sufficiently from his bike accident to be getting around, and was doing odd jobs for Vince, painting his office, putting up posters, driving visiting bands (among other things, Vince was helping a new young band called Orange become Cold Chisel). In touch with George Young, Vince booked AC/DC into Adelaide.

  VINCE: “George told me, We need a new singer, and I said, Well, what about Bon? George said, But I heard he had an accident. I said, He’s alright now, and he wants to leave Fraternity, they’re too serious for him. He said, ‘Well, why don’t you suggest it to Malcolm and Angus?’ So I did, and they said, ‘Your old mate? He’s too old!’ I said, ‘He could rock your arse off.’

  “I said to Bon, You want to go and check out this AC/DC. He said, Arrgh, they’re just a gimmick band. Anyway, we went out to the Pooraka, went backstage, and I remember Angus said, So you reckon you can rock the arse off us? Bon said, You young kids? You bet! And they said, Well, let’s see, and they arranged a rehearsal at Bruce’s place.”

  ROB BAILEY: “Bon and Uncle turned up, and they were like regulars after that. Bon must have seen the opportunity, thought, This is for me, and set about to woo Angus and Malcolm. After gigs, Angus and Malcolm would disappear with Bon. Bon wasn’t silly, he knew where to hit.”

  The popular myth that Bon had first been employed by AC/DC as their driver—a myth propagated by the band itself as much as anyone—must have had its origins here, as Bon played host to Malcolm and Angus, all of them getting around in the old Holden Bon had recently bought for $90.

  “I knew their manager,” Bon himself said later in the film Let There Be Rock. “I’d never seen the band before, I’d never even heard of AC/DC, and their manager said, Just stand here, and the band comes on in two minutes, and there’s this little guy, in a school uniform, going crazy, and I laughed.”

  “I took the opportunity to explain to them how much better I was than the drongo they had singing for them,” Bon said on another occasion. “So they gave me a chance to prove it, and there I was.”

  Angus, Malcolm and Laughlin went down to the cellar where an aggregation consisting of Bon, Bruce Howe, guitarist Mauri Berg, John Freeman and Uncle were half-arsedly rehearsing. These other guys, though, were unaware that what was going on was virtually an audition for Bon.

  BRUCE HOWE: “Angus and Malcolm picked up guitars and started playing and I started playing bass, and I thought, Fuck me dead, these guys are just so together, with their rhythms, each other; they were almost telepathic. It was one of the best impromptu musical buzzes I’d had in ages.”

  Bon pulled out all the stops. Laughlin offered him the job on the spot. Bon said he’d think about it while the band was in Perth.

  Bon was torn. He went down to the docks and, gazing out over the sea, mulled over everything—Irene, Fraternity, AC/DC. The easiest decision to make was that he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life as a working stiff. Next, he wanted out of Fraternity, despite the ties. And he wanted in with AC/DC. He knew it could work. It had worked for Alex Harvey, one of his heroes. The great Scottish rocker was already past thirty when he finally broke through, thanks to a new young backing band.

  The hard part was Irene. Bon had never given up hope that his marriage might yet be resurrected, and he didn’t want to abandon that possibility. But in the end, he knew he had to. As Irene put it: “I was ready to settle down. Bon still wanted to be famous.”

  BRUCE: “He wanted to do it, but he wanted to do it unencumbered by emotional baggage. Bon knew, because he’d done it before, you’ve got to be in a position where there’s no wives, no children, you’ve just got to be able to get up and take the opportunities as they come.”

  After a few weeks in Perth, Dave Evans took to calling in sick. He was drinking a lot. Dennis Laughlin, who himself would occasionally fill in for Evans, rang Bon to reiterate the offer. Bon rang back later to say he’d do it. The band would be passing through Adelaide on their way back to Sydney anyway, so they could get together then. Evans was sent packing. He went on only to enjoy fifteen seconds of fame in 1976, fronting Rabbit on their immortal “Too Much Rock’n’roll.” Bon got up with AC/DC for the first time at the Pooraka.

  “The only rehearsal we had was just sitting around an hour before the gig, pulling out every rock’n’roll song we knew,” Angus said. “When we finally got there Bon downed about two bottles of bourbon with dope, coke, speed, and says, Right, I’m ready, and he was too. He was fighting fit. There was this immediate transformation and he was running around with his wife’s knickers on, yelling at the audience. It was a magic moment. He said it made him feel young again.”

  VINCE: “The next day, Bon came around to my office, and said, Whaddya reckon? I said, Well, you know, I like them. I think they’re great and I think they’re going to be big. I asked him, Why? He said, Because I’m going to join them. I said, When are you leaving? He said, Today.”

  DENNIS LAUGHLIN: “I went round and picked Bon up at his place with Irene. And that was it, that was the end o
f the marriage too.”

  VINCE: “He just packed his bags. He came around with them in the car, he came around to say goodbye, and he wound down the window and said, Seeya later. And that was that.”

  AC/DC begins to coalesce: Melbourne, January/February, 1975. Left to right: Malcolm Young, Phil Rudd, a temporary bassist identified only as “Paul,” Angus Young, and Bon.

  Bon: “Fraternity worked on a different level to me. They were all on the same level and it was way above my head.They didn’t have a chance in England. This group has just got it.” (courtesy Mary Renshaw)

  9. LANSDOWNE ROAD

  Dennis Laughlin was paying AC/DC their wages in drugs and spare change. He wasn’t going to last.

  But then, the extraordinary thing about these early days of AC/DC is how so much happened so quickly. Bon joined the band at the end of September 1974. Within six weeks, they were without a manager, but in the studio recording an album. Within six months, with powerful new management and a new lineup, and now based in Melbourne, they would have both a debut single and a debut album in the top ten.

  Dennis Laughlin and AC/DC parted company within a few weeks of Bon joining the band. Bon had expected to be based in Sydney, where the Youngs lived, but a management offer from powerful Melbourne player Michael Browning meant that the band would soon move south, although not before they cut the album with George and Harry in Sydney in November. By December, though, the band had set up base in Melbourne.