“He was incredibly gentle. He realized I’d never seen any of this stuff before—not that it was so outrageous, there was a lot of drinking, but there wasn’t any drugs.
“The boys in the band—the singer in a lot of bands is frequently apart, you’re not actually involved in the equipment or anything like that. Bon very much kept to himself. It was almost as if there was an invisible wall. The boys in the band pretty much did their own thing. But he loved them.
“He was a really hilarious person too; he was really very funny. Cheeky. He would do all sorts of things just to amuse himself and me. He had a very stable view. And he was meticulous, the way he dressed and groomed. Very plain—sleeveless shirt, a pair of jeans—but always perfectly laundered. Belt, studs . . . that was it, that was the uniform. And he always washed his hair. Dried it properly. He was very proud of his hair. He wasn’t just the archetypal grub rock’n’roller.”
Bon and Helen hung out. They went dancing, Helen lurching on her clogs, at Ruffles disco, which was on the roof of the Squire. And they went to the Lifesaver, across the road. Sometimes AC/DC played there; other times it was bands like Dragon, Buffalo, Cold Chisel or the Ted Mulry Gang.
HELEN: “The stuff that used to go on in that backstage room at the Lifesaver! The room was minute, and they always had the most unbelievable groupies, the loyalty was unbelievable. Not so much a lot of girls, but regular. One in particular, I just couldn’t believe what she would do. People would have sex with this girl, in the dressing room. This was a normal thing. Not just blow-jobs either, but penetration, actual fucking.
“You’d just be standing there trying to hold a normal conversation, and Bon would turn his back and say, Don’t look. The girl would just lift her dress and they’d start doing it. You’d think it couldn’t have been any fun for anybody.
“I guess for Bon, that was part of the reason why he tried to set an example. Although, God, you couldn’t have got a worse role model for drinking. I saw him drunk a lot, but he never lost control. He was actually a big sooky drunk, like some people get, just subdued, you know. Not at all violent. He would rather have a nice soft relationship. He wasn’t a wild man lovemaker or anything; to a certain degree that wasn’t the only thing on his mind either, despite his songs, which are all just sex or rock’n’roll.
“He loved women, he used to love the attention of women, he loved to have lots of them around. I can say this now and it’s probably crap because I look at that sort of behavior and think, Well . . . but you see, the difference was, he didn’t treat anybody like shit. Even then, when I was 16 and pretty naive myself, if there was any of that we-just-fuck-’em-and-dump ’em attitude, I would have thought, Oh, that’s not very nice. But there was none of that.
“Bon would say, Look, if I seem a bit strange sometimes, don’t get upset, talk to me about it later. It was obvious even then he was aware there was some kind of public persona that he had to uphold as soon as he stepped outside his hotel room. But in private, he used to say things like . . . You know, he always used to wear those sleeveless vests, and he’d stand in front of the mirror in the hotel room flexing his muscles. I’d be just sort of sitting there looking at him. He’d say, Do you think it looks good? You know, he was as vain as any other man I’ve ever known. And I’d say, Sure. He said, You know, I buy them two sizes too small so it makes my muscles look bigger. He was really crucially and sometimes a bit embarrassedly aware of what was expected of him, or what he thought was part of the performance, even though he was very sincere about it.
“What I’m saying is, he was a professional.”
AC/DC started to make an impression in Sydney, attracting much the same sort of disenchanted kids they had done in Melbourne. Hurstville Rock, a no-alcohol dance held every Saturday night in the local Civic Hall, became a stronghold gig. One witness recalls, “When AC/DC played it was always huge. You could stand in the middle of the dance floor, and it would be bouncing up and down.
“There used to be this thing between the Westie rockers, who’d come because they liked AC/DC, and everybody else, because we thought AC/DC belonged to us. The audience was mainly surfies, you know. Thongs, jeans, Hawaiian shirts. All these underage people would sneak in, there was no grog allowed but there was always plenty going round. And joints—that was where I got stoned for the first time. People would just pass joints around! You’d get drunk, stoned and you’d chat up girls. AC/DC were great.”
Tireless roadwork was drilling the band into a lean, mean rock’n’roll machine. Malcolm told RAM (before he virtually stopped talking to the press altogether): “We used to worry about playing what was on the album—we used to play spot on—note for note off the album. But the people weren’t getting off on it. Then George said, Don’t play the songs, play to the people.”
Bon was also taking his role as songwriter more seriously.
HELEN: “The thing about Bon was that he really did think a lot about what he was doing. He took it very seriously. He was a very meticulous person. So as a writer, he wouldn’t just blurt stuff out. It would be very thought out.
“Bon would leave his lyric notebooks lying around, and I was fascinated by the way he would always write in capital letters. He’d have everything really neatly written out.
“And I think he found writing not an easy thing. Angus and Malcolm used to write a lot of music; they’d just sit down and jam and come up with stuff. So there was a constant flow of material being put to Bon, to write, and I think in some ways that was quite a pressure for him.”
The band spent every spare moment during July at Alberts, mostly through the night. To Malcolm and Angus it was just like being back home. George was there, running the show with Harry, his redoubtable partner. Also there, as general trouble-shooter, was Sammy Horsburgh, the former Easybeats tour manager who married Margaret Young.
MARK EVANS: “It had a real family atmosphere. The Youngs are real Scottish working class, really good strong family, you know, staunch. Very hard though. Every time I’d go round there—and we used to play a lot of cards, after gigs, we used to play poker—there’s seven brothers, and every time one or two or three or four of them would be punching the shit out of each other. Every time, without fail, someone would be having a brawl!”
The old Boomerang House on King Street in central Sydney, where Alberts studio was then located, was owned by the Alberts family. It had housed radio station 2UW, which the family also owned. Alberts Music was also there, though the studio wasn’t built until 1975. That was Studio One; other studios were added over the next few years.
With a bare brick wall adjoining it, Studio One looked more like a squat than anything at the cutting edge of technology. And it wasn’t that, either.
EVANS: “It was very small—we used to record in the side room, had two Marshall stacks and bass-rig, pointing towards the wall and miked up, and in what used to be the kitchen, drums in there—everything put down at once, generally the fire was in the first couple of takes.”
What Alberts had that money can’t buy was a vibe, an ambience. In recording studios, the vibe is something that goes down on tape—that’s why it’s so important. Alberts had a vibe merely because of the presence of George and Harry, astute manipulators of studio psychopolitics who consistently drew the best out of performers. Their other great strength, as Chris Gilbey put it, was that “they were tremendously good song men.” In other words, they had ears for a hit.
TED MULRY: “You didn’t go into Alberts saying, Let’s record this song. You were going in there to come up with another hit. And that was everybody’s attitude, the buzz going round. You went in to come out with a hit.”
“George produces our material not just because he’s our brother,” Angus said. “He thinks we’re good. If we were shithouse he wouldn’t do it. But it’s nice and easy-going in Alberts’ own studio. When you get in there you feel relaxed and at ease.”
Bon told Juke, “He’s like a brother, no, a father to the group. He helps
us with our writing. He doesn’t tell us what to do, he just shows us how to get more out of the things we start.”
AC/DC were much better prepared for recording their second album—tighter and more confident; they even had a few rough ideas to go in with.
Five more new songs were cut during July (“High Voltage” and “The Jack” were already in the can). Alongside a re-recorded “Can I Sit Next to You, Girl,” and a version of Chuck Berry’s “School Days,” they turned out “Long Way to the Top,” “Rock’n’roll Singer,” “Live Wire,” “TNT” and “Rocker,” which complete the album’s track listing. None of it seems ill-considered.
EVANS: “Malcolm and Angus would come up with riffs and all that, and then we’d go into the studio. Malcolm and George would sit down at the piano and work it out. Malcolm and Angus would have the barest bones of a song, the riff and different bits, and George would hammer it into a tune.
“Bon would be in and out when the band was recording backing tracks. Once the backing track was done, he would literally be locked in the kitchen there at Alberts, and come out with a finished song.”
Angus once said, “[George would] take our meanest song and try it out on keyboards with arrangements like 10cc or even Mantovani. If it was passed, the structure was proven, then we took it away and dirtied it up.”
AC/DC would record backing tracks live in the studio—sound spilling everywhere because the band played so loud—and then vocals and guitar solos were overdubbed. George and Harry were careful to give the group its head, but at the same time, they knew when to stop.
MICHAEL BROWNING: “Yeah, and then just embellish it a bit. George and Harry’s most important criterion was rhythm, the whole thing had to just feel right. If you listen to those records today, they feel good.”
CHRIS GILBEY: “The great thing George and Harry taught me, as a producer, was that if you’ve got a good rhythm track, you’ve got the beginnings of a record. If you don’t, you’ve got nothing.”
TED MULRY: “When AC/DC were recording, you’d walk into a session, and Angus would be on top of the quad boxes, in the studio. He couldn’t just sit there, he’d be running around jumping up and down like it was a live performance.”
BROWNING: “Malcolm used to come up with a lot of titles. He’d sort of come up with a title like “TNT,” and then he’d play some chords to fit that title, and a lot of the songs were just developed that way. Bon would go away and write a song about TNT, or this or that.”
In his notebooks, Bon had lyric ideas to put to music. Locked in the kitchen, he ran lines through his head one last time, mouthing them out, getting it right. As a singer, Bon was a screecher (there are those who believe his voice was never the same after the accident that did so much damage to his neck and jaw), but like Sinatra or Dylan, his greatness was in his phrasing. And it was the interplay between his phrasing and his words, in their economy, that proved just how seriously he took songwriting.
Angus, Malcolm, and George Young in the studio, Alberts, Sydney, March 25, 1976, during the sessions for Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. Angus: “George would take our meanest song and try it out on keyboards with arrangements like Mantovani. If it was passed, the structure was proven, we took it away and dirtied it up.” (Philip Morris)
HELEN: “Looking through his lyric books, you would see different versions of things. The sort of lyrics they were, you think, Oh, any old dickhead could write that. But it’s not true. Even the simplest of lyrics, his timing and meter, he spent a lot of time on.”
Bon told Countdown: “Things fall into place. Sometimes. You gotta keep your eyes and ears open for lines and words and stuff . . . ideas, just pictures, you know.”
TNT was the album that really introduced AC/DC as a band. It still contained a few naff tracks, but its forcefulness was undeniable. If it was as impatient as it was bold, even that was impressive. 1975 needed rock’n’roll like this. And certainly, the album’s one-two opening punch is as powerful as any ever recorded, with Bon virtually encapsulating his entire life in “Long Way to the Top” and “Rock’n’roll Singer.”
“‘Long Way to the Top’ started as a guitar jam in A,” Angus later explained. “It was just that little jam and George thought it cooked. And then Bon had the scribble which turned into the lyrics.”
Completing side one, “The Jack” overplayed its card-table metaphor, while “Live Wire” was as good a piece of braggadocio as AC/DC produced. “TNT,” the album’s title track which opens side two, was on a par with “High Voltage”—fair but disposable. Next to “Can I Sit Next to You, Girl” and “School Days,” “Rocker” was hilariously frenetic.
With the new album in the can, sales of High Voltage were still strong, boosted by the release of the new single with the same title. The band appeared on Countdown, with Bon doing his Tarzan routine wearing nothing but a lap-lap.
GILBEY: “At that time, we’d done what we thought were phenomenal units, about 70,000 on it, and that was unheard of, and then the single “High Voltage” took the album up to 120-125,000, and we thought, My God!
“We didn’t think AC/DC would become a world-wide phenomenon the way they have. We were all just occupied, tight-focus, on making the act survive. It was just, get a record away. Keep having hits. Try and keep moving. And then it was, Hey, let’s get outside the country and see if we can sell it overseas. That was the next step.”
Chris Gilbey was possibly thinking this way when everyone else was thinking about England because he himself had already taken a knock-back on AC/DC overseas. When he went to MIDEM in January 1975, representing Alberts generally, he found more people interested in bubblegum pop star William Shakespeare! George, in turn, didn’t mind that Gilbey was concentrating on Australia, because Michael Browning was chipping away in England. Browning had sent Coral a copy of the video AC/DC had shot at their Melbourne Festival Hall Queen’s Birthday concert, and she was hawking it around London.
To promote a free show at Sydney’s Victoria Park in early September, which on the back of the “High Voltage” single would serve as a Sydney launch for AC/DC, Chris Gilbey devised the “Your mother won’t like them” advertising campaign for radio station 2SM. It worked a treat. The single peaked at number six nationally.
GILBEY: “It was like, instant attitude. Nowadays, everything is premeditated. Back then, we didn’t have to philosophize, and come up with a psychological profile of the consumer, to figure out why it was we wanted to sell a bad-boy image in order to have those kids that were alienated from their parents love this group. We just thought, Hey, this is exciting, this is cool. Either you had it or you didn’t have it. Rose Tattoo, either you have it or you don’t.”
It was another cold Sunday afternoon when AC/DC played at Victoria Park with Stevie Wright and Ross (“I am Pegasus”) Ryan. The show was unremarkable—as usual, the band blew everyone away—save for the fact that it saw Angus climb astride Bon’s shoulders for the first time.
Bon had obviously climbed back in the saddle because, as Angus said, “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.”
The band was right on target.
In September, AC/DC went back down to Melbourne to renew their expired agreement with Michael Browning—a five-year management contract was signed—and to get it together for an extensive national tour to promote the pre-Christmas release of the new album. As it turned out, the album wouldn’t eventually be released till February, but this is rock’n’roll, after all.
Bites were being registered overseas. Bon wrote to Mary, “A&M is wrapped in the band as is John Peel the DJ. Reckons we’re the band England needs and we agree.” He also wrote to Irene, “I’m not doing too bad on the booze thing these days and am getting drunk quite regularly. But I’m a peaceful drunk now. Have I still got any friends in Adelaide?”
Starting in Perth,
the tour would take the band all over Australia before winding up in Sydney on Christmas Eve. Before heading to Perth, the band played a few shows in Melbourne.
Booked to play a week of free lunchtime gigs in the Miss Myer department of the big Myers store in the city, the band had barely started their first set on the first day when they were overrun by hysterical girls (reports vary from 600 to 5,000). The shop and its fixtures were turned upside down; strangely, a shoplifting frenzy was not reported. The rest of the week was promptly cancelled.
MARK EVANS: “It was just bedlam. It was probably the only time I thought one of us was going to get hurt. It was really scary.”
The band had to run for their lives. Bon, however, even as he fled, still managed to sneak a peek over the saloon doors of the changing rooms.
A Premier Artists worksheet for the band for the second week of September saw them playing six gigs, plus recording an episode of Countdown, between the Wednesday and Saturday, for total earnings of $3,610, which included a $160 performance fee from Countdown. Certainly, it made their old $60 per week pay packet seem inadequate.
At an average of $600 per gig, AC/DC played the South Side Six on Wednesday and the Matthew Flinders Hotel on Thursday, both suburban beer-barns, where the band played one set between 10 p.m. and 11:30. At the Matthew Flinders, a scuffle in front of the stage involving Angus cost drummer Phil Rudd a broken thumb, necessitating an immediate stand-in. On the Friday, with old drummer Colin Burgess on Rudd’s stool, the band played a free show at the Eastlands Shopping Center in Ringwood, between 6:00 and 7:00, and then later they appeared at the International Hotel. At 6:00 on Saturday night, the band recorded an appearance on Countdown, then played the Tarmac Hotel between 10:00 and 11:30 and then the Hard Rock Cafe between 1:30 and 3:00. On Sunday, the band flew to Perth.
Highway to Hell Page 18