Highway to Hell

by Clinton Walker

  Even at the height of school holidays, the hall held only a smattering of suntanned teenagers. Michael Browning was manifestly unimpressed by the Saints, although Chris Gilbey would go on to manage the band briefly. AC/DC themselves were equally unimpressed, the Oxley boys narrowly avoiding a confrontation with their crew since all they were doing was getting in the way.

  At eight the next morning, the band climbed in the bus to do the thirteen hour drive back to Sydney. “THEN,” as the worksheets put it, “EVERYBODY FUCKS OFF! BUT MAKE SURE THAT YOU MAKE ARRANGEMENTS TO BE BACK IN MELBOURNE BY THURSDAY 6TH JANUARY.”

  It was almost as if Michael Browning had only just sat down to Christmas dinner with his family in Melbourne when the phone rang. Phil Carson was calling from London. A problem. Atlantic in New York had decided not to release Dirty Deeds, and were quite possibly not going to pick up their option on AC/DC.

  MICHAEL BROWNING: “There’s no doubt that Atlantic Records in America were really lukewarm on the group at first, in point of fact, would have preferred to have dropped the group. They had a guy called Jim Delahant, who was head of A&R at the time, who quite clearly wished to have them dropped. Jerry Greenberg, the president of the company, was kind of half into it. It was only because Phil Carson in London talked them into dropping the advance commitment that they held onto the group. Which was the difference between having to pay twenty thousand dollars instead of thirty; nothing by today’s standards, but then, it was the only way we could keep the deal.”

  Carson was confident that AC/DC could do good business in Britain to start with, and then in America. He shared with Browning and the band members the belief that the forthcoming album would take AC/DC up to the next level.

  The band, as usual, was unaware of these goings on. Bon checked into the Hyatt Kingsgate in Sydney’s seamy Kings Cross, and spent Christmas with the Youngs at Burwood. But with the news coming through that the city fathers of the Victorian coal-mining town of Warrnambool had barred the band from appearing there on January 12, something was going to have to give.

  “ROCK BAND THREATENS TO LEAVE COUNTRY” read the headline on New Year’s Eve. “AC/DC—Australia’s raunchiest rock group—have threatened to quit the country and settle in England because of alleged ‘hounding’ from local authorities,” the story opened.

  “It’s no good if we drive half way across the country to stage a concert to find that someone has cancelled it because they consider us obscene,” Angus was quoted as saying. “It will only take a couple more hassles from the authorities and we will leave Australia.”

  The point was academic. Leaving Australia, so to speak, was what the band was doing anyway; they were never in one place long enough to call anywhere home. But from this point on, AC/DC almost disowned Australia, even if they all continued to return there every year for Christmas. They would go so far as to play down being an Australian band, proclaiming instead their Scottish roots.

  On New Year’s Eve, Bon went out to see the debut performance by Rose Tattoo. They were guys he knew: singer Angry Anderson had fronted Buster Brown, Phil Rudd’s old band; slide guitarist Peter Wells was previously in Buffalo, and bassist Ian Rilen in Band Of Light; the line-up was completed by rhythm guitarist Mick Cocks and drummer “Digger” Royal. Overnight, the Tatts became notorious, a self-styled gang of rock’n’roll outlaws intent on mayhem and destruction. Bon loved them; it was his tip, in fact, that led to their signing with Alberts.

  MICK COCKS: “In the early days, when we first started, we could only work two places, the Lifesaver and Chequers, everybody hated us. But Bon was a big fan. And that’s basically how we met. If Bon was in town, he’d pop up somewhere, and we’d go and have a drink.

  “In those days, Angus and Bon used to get up for a blow. ’Cos Bon would be out drinking with his girlfriend, just having a good time, and we got on really well. I suppose we were one of the few bands he could get up and have a sing with and feel comfortable. We’d just do standards—Little Richard, “Johnny B Goode,” “Goin’ Down,” old blues songs. We were a rock’n’roll band, in a period when everything was a bit glam, or whatever.”

  AC/DC got out on the road again on January 5. They played out the rest of their tour, six gigs, without undue incident. Bonds were paid in Portland and Bendigo, $500 and $2,000 respectively, and they were not forfeited. After the last gig on January 14 in Ballarat, the band was simply relieved it was all over. Now they could get in the studio. They hightailed it immediately to Sydney, where they all checked into the Hyatt Kingsgate. Silver joined Bon there.

  The band was back in the familiar—indeed, familial—confines of Alberts’ Studio One. Bon added Silver’s name, in silver spray-paint, to the graffiti wall at one end of the studio, such was his devotion to her. Such was everyone else’s suspicion of her, it was promptly erased.

  MARK EVANS: “The band sounded different in the studio. We were all playing well, we were all happy to be back in Sydney, we were enjoying that, and so recording that album the confidence was right up. We were recharged because we knew we had to go back over to England again and really do it. And I think that album was one of the better ones of the whole lot, it was a real turning point for the band.”

  RAM asked Bon whether there would be any change in AC/DC after three straight rock’n’roll albums. “But that’s all there is,” he replied, “there’s no more than that. You play what you were brought up on, what you believe in. I can listen to other bands that play really intricate stuff and I can appreciate it, and I even like some of it, but I’d never attempt to play it. Like Alex Harvey took the rock’n’roll thing and told stories but that’s going too far for me. I wouldn’t try to tell anything more intricate than “Jailbreak” ’cos that’s still basically rock’n’roll.”

  George and Harry were just as fired up as the band. If George accepted that Dirty Deeds had been rejected by Atlantic in America because his production of it was poor (rather than blaming Michael Browning), then he was going to make amends with Let There Be Rock, as the next album would be called.

  Alberts had continued on its winning streak in Australia during 1976. The Ted Mulry Gang trailed only Sherbet and Skyhooks as the biggest band in the land. John Paul Young was the leading male solo artist. George and Harry themselves won a TV Week King of Pop Special Award for Best Australian Songwriters. Late in the year, when they released their own first single under the Flash and the Pan aegis, “Hey, St Peter!” it went to number three.

  By now ensconced at Kangaroo House, George and Harry were raring to go with AC/DC. Sessions progressed smoothly, in typical AC/ DC fashion—George, Malcolm and Angus honing riffs and ideas, with the addition of Bon’s lyrics, into structured songs, and then putting it all down in rapid-fire sequence. One of the most repeated stories concerning AC/DC’s studio method emanates from these sessions. At one time, as Angus was overdubbing a guitar solo (and guitars and vocals were about all that was overdubbed), his amplifier started smoking, fusing out. George gestured wildly from behind the desk, Keep going! Keep going! “There was no way,” he later explained, “we were going to stop a shit-hot performance for a technical reason like amps blowing up!”

  Let There Be Rock was the first fully rounded AC/DC album. The band had finally found itself. George and Harry gave the band plenty of room, and the band rose to the occasion and brought it all home. George and Harry got AC/DC sounding better than they ever had on vinyl before, capturing with clearer definition and crisper dynamics all the savage attack of the band’s live sound. Bon’s writing too was more assured, more coherent. The band stretched themselves to wring the most out of every bar of every song—and still they never overdid it.

  Let There Be Rock saw AC/DC abandon the last vestiges of the pop band they had once been. “That album sort of put us on the road,” Angus agreed, “and I think it also set the style of the band.”

  Its feature track, “Whole Lotta Rosie,” was, of course, a play by Bon on Led Zeppelin, and his tribute to the self-same Rosie
, an ode to making fat ladies sing as fine as Jimmy Castor’s like-minded funk classic “Troglodyte.” If Bon had returned to Melbourne in 1975 for that song’s inspiration, others betrayed the same source: “Go Down” was inspired by supergroupie Ruby Lips, and “Overdose,” which appropriately borders on the turgid, harks back to Judy King.

  On previous albums, simple stomps like “Dog Eat Dog,” “Bad Boy Boogie” and “Hell Ain’t a Bad Place To Be’ might have been filler tracks, but on Let There Be Rock, they more than justify their presence. Only the requisite slow blues, “Crabsody in Blue” (a creaky play on the title of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”), falls short lyrically, like “The Jack.” The title track, however, is a masterpiece; its extended instrumental passage enters a realm of pure white noise equaled at the time (ironically enough) only by the Saints’s anarchic opus “Nights in Venice,” from their first album.

  AC/DC had almost finished the album—and a new, previously recorded single, “Love at First Feel” had been released—when they went out to play a special show for the Festival of Sydney on January 30. Five thousand people turned up at the old Haymarket warehouse to see them headline over Taste and Chariot, and blow away any echoes of the “rock” stars of the festival—the Little River Band—who had earlier played the same venue.

  MARK EVANS: “When we finished the album, we had to go back to England. We did a couple of gigs in Sydney, then we went back to Melbourne to do some gigs; we did a gig in Melbourne on Thursday night, then we did Friday and Saturday in Adelaide, then we did Sunday night in Perth, then we did the following Wednesday night in Edinburgh.”

  “Can’t wait to get back [overseas],” Mark said at the time in RAM. “They treat you properly, food and booze provided, none of this hassling with hall managers shit.”

  The band had had enough of Australia. Australia had failed to show the required amount of respect, so Australia could go fuck itself. AC/DC just wanted to be where the action was—in America. “Love at First Feel” performed even less well than “Dirty Deeds”; it would be the last AC/DC single to chart in Australia until “Highway to Hell” over two years later.

  After playing to a mixed reception in Melbourne and Adelaide, AC/DC played its last Australian date in Perth, which at least enabled Bon to see his folks. His mother didn’t quite know what to make of this mysterious, dark lady by the strange name of Silver. But Bon seemed to cherish her—that was the right word—so like always, she just had to go along with him. Silver was extended every hospitality, and she could see just how devoted to Bon his parents were.

  Like the other four members of AC/DC, Bon had received a missive from Ted Albert just prior to leaving Sydney which he was still clutching proudly. It contained a royalty check for the second half of 1976, and a letter, which read:As you will see from the enclosed statement, the total record earnings for the whole group for the period total $24,733.06. After deducting the manager’s one-fifth, the total of $19,786.45 remains and your one-fifth of this is $3,957.29. A check for this amount is enclosed.

  My personal thanks to you for all the many hours of hard work that you have spent in the studio during the last few weeks. Also on behalf of the whole company our thanks for your efforts overseas and our best wishes for the coming year.

  Four thousand dollars in six months was a paltry sum when expressed as barely three cents for every $7 album sold—but to Bon, it was a fine old going-away present.

  Isa saw Bon and Silver off at the airport. Chick couldn’t be there as he had to work. The band was glad just to get on the plane, putting Australia and all its petty aggravations behind them. They would not return to play again until after Bon was dead.

  Now, not only Britain and Europe but also America beckoned. And they had a new album in their pocket that was so hot it was burning a hole.

  Bon’s feet had barely touched the ground in London before he was back in the bus on the way to Edinburgh, where the band commenced a 26-date British tour on February 18. “Dirty Deeds” had been released as a single in January.

  AC/DC was playing like a band possessed. The evident quality of Let There Be Rock had given them another injection of confidence, although none of its material had yet been introduced to the set. The ecstatic response back in Britain was encouraged by kids who had bought the Dirty Deeds album over Christmas and were now getting a chance to catch up with the band.

  The majority of critics still failed to appreciate AC/DC, but Bon hit the nail on the head when he told the NME, “The music press is totally out of touch with what the kids actually want to listen to.

  “These kids might be working in a shitty factory all week, or they might be on the dole—come the weekend, they just want to go out and have a good time, get drunk and go wild. We give them the opportunity to do that.”

  Critic Lester Bangs once celebrated a “no-jive, take-care-of-business band . . . churning out rock’n’roll that thundered right back to the very first grungy chords and straight ahead to the fuzztone subways of the future.” Because their music was “so true to its evolutionary antecedents,” he went on to say, “it was usually about sex, and not just Sally-go-to-movieshow-and-hold-my-hand stuff . . ., but the most challengingly blatant flat-out proposition and prurient fantasy.” Bangs also praised the band’s “consistent sense of structure and economy,” noting: “I don’t think any of their songs ran over four minutes, the solos were short but always slashingly pertinent, and the vocals were . . . raspy and cocky and loose and lewd.”1

  Bangs was extolling the drooling, banal raw glory of sixties punk prototypes the Troggs (creators of “Wild Thing” and “I Can’t Control Myself”)—but he could just as well have been describing AC/DC. Devoid of artifice and stripped down to the essentials, the rhythm and the blues, AC/DC got to the point with an elemental force, allowing Bon, with a glint in his eye and tongue in his cheek, to tell his tall tales.

  “You get on that stage,” said Bon, “and the more crass, gross and rowdy you sound, the more they love it. So I just go up there and scream away, sometimes to a point where I can’t talk the next day.

  “We’re on the crowd’s side,” he said, “because we give ’em what they want, and everybody gets into our show—because it’s a band/audience show. We’re not like performing seals, we’re all in it together.”

  Back in London by the end of March, the band had a moment’s peace prior to taking off for Europe to tour with Black Sabbath at the end of April. Malcolm and Angus moved into a flat together in Ladbroke Grove; Mark and Phil moved into one just around the corner. Bon was snugly shacked up with Silver, who was still living by somewhat dubious means and dabbling with increasing enthusiasm in heroin.

  Heroin was in plentiful supply in London in the late seventies, and of a consistently high quality and low price. It was enough to tempt anyone. Bon resisted it, maybe because he knew how dangerous it was, maybe because it just wasn’t his style of drug—he preferred anything more social—or maybe because he knew that as far as the Youngs were concerned, it was just not on. Silver, however, had no such reservations. And Bon was happy if she was happy.

  SILVER: “As far as my life goes, I don’t think anyone has loved me as unconditionally as Bon. He had no complaints—they were all on my side. It gave me the guilts for quite a long time. Because Bon was really good to me. He accepted me exactly as I was. He was really attentive too, you know, two or three letters a day bombarding you when he was on the road, and he was always bringing flowers and little presents. I mean, it was full on, right up until we split up.

  “No one gave Bon drugs. He could have used any time he wanted, but the thing was, we just wouldn’t let him. Partly because he wouldn’t metabolize them well, and also, if he was in that devil may care frame of mind, he wouldn’t stop to think that the person he was using with may have had a tolerance, and he had none at all, and so he would have ended up blue on the floor.

  “Bon wanted to get married and have kids and all that sort of stuff. At the time, I just
couldn’t get my head around that, it seemed like the world we were living in was so mad, it didn’t make any sense.

  “Bon was very pipe and slippers. He liked peace and quiet. He had this public image, but he was probably the most domesticated male I’ve ever known. He liked everything to be clean and tidy. When he was home he liked to just see people, you know, sit around, entertain—at home, not going out. He liked having roast dinners on Sunday and all that. But he could go very quiet and somber if he was hurt. He was a typical Cancer.”

  Silver’s recollection of the kind of records they used to listen to together throws a different light on Bon as well. He had a special fondness for female soul singers—Millie Jackson, Gladys Knight, Lorraine Ellison, even Joan Armatrading—and he also liked Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry, Steely Dan, the J Geils Band.

  SILVER: “He knew the lyrics to an enormous number of songs. Everything from Oklahoma through to . . . all that Broadway musical sort of stuff. He had a great memory for lyrics . . . well, his short-term memory was stuffed, he couldn’t remember which plane he was supposed to catch! But yeah, his taste in music was very different.”

  He still felt an obligation to live up to his image though, as a profile he filled out at the time suggests:Favorite Drink: Whisky

  Favorite Bike (Don’t Like Cars): Harley Sportster

  Favorite Color: Silver (Preferably Metal), Black

  Guitarist: Don’t mind the Young brothers

  Singer: Don’t mind Jess Roden

  Record: Don’t mind Tres Hombres