Pam invited Bon over to a lunch she was having the next day, not expecting him to come. But come he did. The scene was quite outside Bon’s experience—polite society almost, the intellectual types that tend to work at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (2JJ’s parent company)—but Bon was the life of the party. Pam was smitten.
All this was enough to keep Bon’s mind off his deeper woes. The theft of his bike a couple of days later, however, threw him back into a spin. At least it wouldn’t be long before the band left for Japan. A farewell party was held at the Strata Inn, a pub in Cremorne. Bon, Malcolm and Angus got up with George on bass and Ray Arnott on drums and played a few numbers. It would be Bon’s last ever performance on Australian soil.
On his last night in town, Pam arranged to meet Bon at the Lifesaver after she’d finished work. When she got there, he was nowhere to be seen. She raced back to the radio station, thinking he might have got the arrangements mixed up. He wasn’t there either. She went back to the Lifesaver, but still he hadn’t shown up. She was dismayed more than anything else. Bon was about to go away indefinitely, and they weren’t going to see each other again. She drove home across the bridge cursing him. Bon, meantime, had managed to climb through a window into her bedroom, and was in repose when she got there. All that was missing was a rose between his teeth.
Needless to say, Pam’s flatmate was horrified when this ravaged, tattooed figure emerged the next morning and went straight to the fridge for a beer for breakfast.
But the band wouldn’t be going to Japan, after all. At the last minute, visas were denied. Bon killed a couple more days at Pam’s place while new flights were booked—the band would now be going straight to Miami. RAM’s Stuart Coupe met up with the band in the departure lounge. Bon, he said, who had Pam on his arm, was “batfaced.” “True to form and reputation he informs my female companion she ‘should look after that great body.’ He looks me up and down and continues, ‘and if he doesn’t, let me know and you can have my phone number.’”
AC/DC were not enamoured of either Eddie Kramer or Miami. “This time of year, it’s an Elephant’s Graveyard for geriatric Jews and totally boring,” Bon wrote to Maria. Maria and her husband Jim had just had their first child, and Bon extended his hearty congratulations on the “wean.”
Bon wrote further to Uncle:Atlantic reckoned we should use a top Yank producer and appointed one Eddie Kramer to the post. It turns out the guy was full of bullshit and couldn’t produce a healthy fart. He was a good engineer with a big mouth (“I can hear this note . . .”) and a lot of front. We gave him the arse and got hold of one John Lange who we start work with on Wednesday in London.
MICHAEL BROWNING: “I got a phone call from Malcolm in Florida, to say, This guy’s hopeless, do something, he’s trying to talk us into recording that Spencer Davis song, “Gimme Some Loving”, “I’m a Man”, whatever it was...
“Three weeks in Miami and we hadn’t written a thing with Kramer,” Bon told RAM. “So one day we told him we were going to have the day off and not to bother coming in. This was Saturday, and we snuck into the studio and on that one day we put down six songs, sent the tape to Lange and said, Will you work with us?”
These demos were cut by Malcolm, Angus and Bon, with Bon playing drums, as had become their practice.
BROWNING: “I was at that stage based temporarily in New York, I’d met some people who’d invited me to stay with them, one of whom was Mutt Lange’s manager, Clive Calder. I got the phone call from Malcolm, and I got off the phone, and Mutt was there, in the apartment, and I said, You’ve got to do this record. At the time, Mutt had really only done City Boy, the Boomtown Rats, but I happened to think he was incredibly talented. So within a couple of days they agreed to do the record.”
But not before Michael Klenfner lost his job over the matter. It was Klenfner who had foisted Eddie Kramer on the band, and he disagreed violently with the idea of now getting in Lange. But if Michael Browning ever had a reputation for being soft, he stood firm this time. Klenfner was left out in the cold. The band flew to London to start work with Lange.
Bon’s letter to Uncle continued:A couple of days later: Landed in London yesterday on one of those beautiful rain-drenched two-degree mornings. Today’s not much better. Gee, it’s great to be back . . . We meet our new producer tonight and hit him with fifteen songs that need shaping. My fingers are crossed.
Robert John “Mutt” Lange was a South African who, after getting his start in music as a singer and songwriter, crossed to the other side of the mixing desk. He was reported to have felt on trial with AC/DC initially. But the band—unused to outsiders in the studio—felt vulnerable, too. Over time, they developed a guarded respect for one another.
BROWNING: “It turned out, he was the best person on earth to do it.”
The band virtually moved into the Roadhouse Studios in Chalk Farm, spending the best part of three months there. That, to start with, was a shock to AC/DC, who had never previously spent more than three weeks on any one album.
Highway to Hell—as the completed album was called, after the name Angus had given the band’s last American tour—was as much of a progression upon Powerage as Let There Be Rock was on Dirty Deeds. But more than that, it was ground-breaking in any terms.
“Mutt was brought up on the rough side of town, which helped him in the studio,” Malcolm told RAM. “He’s like Harry, a bit more commercial. We learnt a lot. You really need an outsider because we can all go too far and disappear up our own anuses.”
Sessions for the album—15 hours a day, day-in day-out, for over two months—were grueling. Songs were worked and reworked. Staying at the Swiss Cottage Inn, Bon bore up under the prolonged pressure, maintaining a brave face, but none felt it more deeply than he did.
SILVER: “He was a bit lost. I mean, I still ran his bank account for him. He was never in one place long enough to keep it together. He got used to me organizing everything, keeping the bills paid, all that sort of stuff. Plus the emotional stuff—like, he was no longer in a relationship that he was dependent on—stuff like that.”
Silver was herself by then a fully-fledged junkie.
The album was finished at the end of June, having been mixed relatively quickly at Basing Street Studios, near Ladbroke Grove, in eight days. Lange managed to inject a greater sweep into the band’s sound on Highway to Hell, and it was this, plus the smoother touch of melodic backing vocals, but without losing any of the band’s characteristic dynamic crunch, that gave the album its poise and potency.
The title track, which opens the album, assumes anthemic proportions even before Bon’s vocal comes in. Few albums in rock open quite so ominously, and few, as this one proceeds, are ultimately quite as monolithic. Bon’s lyrics were more universal—few characters appeared in the songs and the narratives were more compact—but they were no less evocative. His turn of phrase, and better-balanced vocalizing, counterpointed perfectly the band’s controlled explosive grind. Every track except “Love Hungry Man,” which the band quickly disowned, became an AC/DC staple. Mutt Lange had achieved precisely what George and Harry couldn’t—a blend of accessible polish and raw power which satisfied both the band and Atlantic.
MICHAEL BROWNING: “When they were in England recording, I spent a fair bit of time in Australia, so I wasn’t really part of that process. I was also having a few immigration problems with America, so I was waiting for that to be resolved too. I next saw the group in New York, after they finished making the record. By that time, I think a few American management companies had started to sniff around.
“At that point we were strapped financially, the whole thing had put such a strain on the whole financial system, and so this guy Peter Mensch, from Leber & Krebs [one of the most powerful US artist management companies at the time], had damaged my position, and so I think they were quite impressed by the prospects in that.”
Alberts was already deep in the hole (touring America as a support band is a money-losing p
roposition), and simply couldn’t afford to increase the amount they were putting into AC/DC. Michael Browning had been talking to an upstate New York promoter by the name of Cedric Kushner with regards to him buying in on the operation. Malcolm and Angus were understandably reluctant to see another outsider staking a claim on them. It didn’t help, either, that Kushner was questioning the band’s deal with Alberts, among other things. It was clear that it was now time to give Browning the chop, too.
PERRY COOPER: “He [Browning] was getting pressured by a lot of people; people were going over his head at times. The band had its own mind—and when they make up their mind, they don’t talk to anybody about it. So whatever happened—Michael gave his all for that band. But they’re as tough as nails, these guys. There’s an old saying, Off the charts, outta your hearts, and when you’re off their charts, forget it. But the guys, I’ve gotta say, they always were very cooperative with us.”
Leber & Krebs co-founder David Krebs first encountered AC/DC in England in 1977. After the band’s American agent Doug Thaler took him to see them, Krebs proposed a co-management deal to Michael Browning. Browning rejected the idea, but nevertheless Thaler worked with Krebs to get AC/DC some choice support slots with top acts Leber & Krebs represented, such as Aerosmith and Ted Nugent.
Leber & Krebs had been formed in 1972, when Krebs and Steve Leber left the William Morris Agency to set up their own operation. They made a mint out of musicals like Jesus Christ Superstar and Beatlemania; then, in 1974, whilst also acting as US agents for Focus, Argent and Hawkwind, they took on management of Aerosmith and Nugent. In 1977, those two clients alone grossed them nearly ten million dollars.
Leber & Krebs capitalized on the fact that, as Steve Leber once explained to financial magazine Forbes, “an unknown group couldn’t walk into Citibank and get a loan if they tried to use their talent as collateral. But we’re willing to be the banker for the artist.”
The marriage of Leber & Krebs and AC/DC was made in heaven. Not only could Leber & Krebs inject cash into AC/DC, but the band was impressed by their aggressive, evasive style. In return, AC/DC was just the hot prospect that might give Leber & Krebs a further boost. Malcolm himself wanted Peter Mensch to handle the band personally. Though Mensch was a relatively lowly Leber & Krebs accountant, he’d befriended AC/DC when they were on the road supporting Aerosmith.
Michael Browning still had a year to serve on his contract, but he accepted a payoff. His removal provided some comfort, at least, to the smarting George back in Sydney, though he thought the settlement was too generous. Browning, of course, thought it was too little.
Bon had no strong feelings either way about Browning, but he was saddened to see the end of Coral, whom he’d always liked. He stayed in contact with her when she moved to LA, calling her regularly.
Browning himself returned to Australia and continues to this day to work at a high level in the music business. On the immediate rebound from AC/DC in 1980, he formed Deluxe Records, the label that first signed, among several other fledgling pub bands, INXS.
MICHAEL BROWNING: “It was hurtful, no doubt about it. I personally think I did a pretty amazing job. Sure, we made a couple of mistakes here and there, but it was a pioneering situation. And what made it more hurtful was that over the years, everyone, me included, with the Youngs and AC/DC, tends to get written out of history. It’s like you never existed. Even Mutt Lange, who did an amazing job of delivering to Atlantic Records exactly what they wanted, it’s like, Mutt Who?’
AC/DC hit the road again in America in 1979 at the end of June, with Highway to Hell due out in a matter of weeks. If You Want Blood was still selling, had by then, in fact, surpassed the quarter-million mark, neatly maintaining the rising curve of the band’s sales. The band would play its own first stadium headline tour, through partisan territory like Texas and the South.
Atlantic had high hopes for Highway to Hell. Perry Cooper said at the time: “I don’t believe you can break an act in the United States 100 per cent by touring. It takes you to a certain level and then drops dead. The only thing I can equate AC/DC with over here are Cheap Trick and Van Halen. They’ve both toured extensively over the years and neither one of them has broken from touring. They’ve created albums that are a little bit more acceptable and bang! they’ve become platinum artists. AC/DC can do that too.”
Bon called Pam Swain to invite her to join him on the road. He also asked her a favor—could she get him some money from Alberts? A thousand dollars would do. The request struck Pam as strange, but she told Bon she’d do what she could.
Highway to Hell was released simultaneously in Britain and America on July 27. It immediately registered the desired response—good reviews in Britain, and airplay in America.
Even the arch NME now had to come to the party, though it wasn’t without snide qualification. “THE GREATEST ALBUM EVER MADE (IN AUSTRALIA),” read the headline, the review going on to describe AC/DC as “a band who practice the science of overstatement to a ludicrous degree and succeed.”
Highway to Hell quickly became AC/DC’s first British top-ten album, going to number eight, and their first to crack the American top 20, peaking there at number 17. European returns were also very encouraging. Stalwart support continued in Germany and Scandinavia, while the single went to number 15 in Holland in its first week of release, and France too looked better than ever.
AC/DC promo shot from 1979 featuring bassist Cliff Williams (second from left), who joined after Mark Evans was fired. (courtesy Matt Dickson)
This was the big time. Strangely, Bon was still harping on to Pam about the money. Maybe it was because the band was caught in the transition between Browning and Leber & Krebs that there was no cash around; whatever, Bon seemed desperate.
In Australia, the single was released first, in August, and it climbed to number 24, marking the return of AC/DC to the charts after an absence of nearly three years. When the album followed in October, it completed the strategy of reestablishing the band in Australia. After the last two albums had failed to chart altogether, Highway to Hell went up to number 13.
The road snaked its way to the Midwest. Billed as an “Australian-Scottish new wave punk band,” AC/DC were special guests on good friends Cheap Trick’s gala fourth of July show in their hometown of Rockford, Illinois.
Pam Swain joined the band in Chicago, and traveled with them to Omaha, Nebraska. She felt like she really shouldn’t have been there. Bon seemed distracted, a different person altogether to the one he had been in Sydney. It wouldn’t have helped his mood that Pam couldn’t bring any money either. Alberts had refused to write a check. But Bon still tried to accommodate Pam.
With a full entourage numbering 25, the band was by now travelling in greater style, which meant a fitted-out bus. It was a home away from home that could never be. But Bon didn’t have a home to go to anyway. He was just another weary traveler on that lost highway.
“Some days you wake up and you never want to see the blokes again,” tour manager Ian Jeffery told Pam. “But those days never come near the others when you can see what you’re working for—five, ten, 15 thousand people shouting their heads off for the group.”
That was what kept Bon going too. “I’m in love with rock’n’roll, that grows, you know,” he told KSJO San Jose radio show Livewire. “I’m more in love with a couple of things, but . . . I was in love with one, but, ahh, she left me . . . I just hope rock’n’roll never leaves me.”
Bon fed off the crowd, finding fresh inspiration for songs he’d sung literally hundreds of times. Fifteen thousand faceless heads, all bobbing in unison, hair swinging, arms outstretched, fists punching the air, just a-spittin’ at the moon.
The band was still playing a lot of the same songs they were when they first arrived in Britain over three years ago, still opening the set with “Live Wire,” and running through “Problem Child,” “The Jack,” “High Voltage” and “Rocker.” “Riff Raff” and “Sin City” were more recent, off Power
age, but even “Let There Be Rock,” “Bad Boy Boogie,” “Hell Ain’t a Bad Place To Be” and “Whole Lotta Rosie”—the band’s standard encore—were over two years old. But as a support act, you can’t afford to muck around.
They say that performing is like making love to an audience, and yet then at the end of the night you find yourself alone in a hotel room. But if the experience is less like making love than having sex, Bon was always prepared to personalize his audience. A lot of artists won’t do that, preferring to remain inside their cocoon. But Bon was too much a true man of the people. He happily spent time with fans—and not just groupies—having a drink and a smoke, entertaining them; perhaps it allayed his loneliness.
“Often he would trail off with fans who came back after a show,” Angus later told Sounds. “He took people as they were and if they invited him somewhere and he was in the mood to go, he went.”
For a story she wrote for RAM, Pam asked Bon on the record whether life on the road was glamorous.
“Bloody oath,” he replied almost indignantly. “What do you think I do it for? The money, or the music? I do it for the glamour. The women and the whisky . . . What else is there in life? Let me think . . .”
“You get used to being on the road,” Malcolm said. “You can get boozed up like Bon. He can get right out of it. Then you get sick and have to stop drinking. Now I’ve learnt to pace myself it works better, because you’ve got so many hassles all the time.”
Privately, Bon was talking a lot about settling down. He was telling Pam he wanted to buy a house somewhere.
On July 30, 1979 a headline ran in the Melbourne Herald: “TWO SHOT AS FANS RIOT AT AC/DC SHOW.” Sharing a bill with Ted Nugent, Aerosmith, Journey and Thin Lizzy, the band had appeared at a huge open-air gig in Cleveland, Ohio, which turned very ugly. One youth was killed and another seriously wounded when a gunman let loose among the crowd of over 60,000. Three hundred police were called in. Over the course of the day, nine people were treated for stab wounds and 75 were arrested, mainly on drug charges.
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