Highway to Hell

by Clinton Walker

  Bon later claimed that AC/DC knew nothing, at the time, of this unrest, but it can’t not have touched the band. At least, that’s what Pam Swain thinks. She had got off the bus in Omaha to go to New York for a stay, and when the band got there, a few weeks later on August 11—to open for Ted Nugent at Madison Square Garden—she found Bon to be more remote, dark even. Maybe it was just her, she thought, but maybe it was other things too. Maybe it was the kid shot dead in Cleveland. Maybe it was just all the pressure. Maybe it was the booze and drugs—Bon was gobbling down pills by the handful. Maybe he was just having a bad few days. Pam would never see Bon again after that.

  Molly Meldrum was in New York for the Madison Square Garden show. He saw a different Bon. “He was as fine as ever. He was being warned by the doctors, Stop drinking, and I said to him, Are you going to stop drinking? He said, Of course not. I’ve never been sick for a day in my life, and I think that’s one of the reasons why! Any germs that get into my body, Johnnie Walker goes, Pow!”

  PERRY COOPER: “As far as the drugs and stuff? I mean, he did a little blow—and everybody was doing it—and he had his marijuana, but he never got to the point where he had to have it, or he was paranoid.”

  The band had been invited by the Who to appear with them on a one-off London show at Wembley Stadium on August 18. It was an offer even AC/DC couldn’t refuse. The Who were one of the few bands Malcolm and Angus had any time for, and so it was an honor to be asked to share the stage as they made their return to live performance after a three-year hiatus, and debuted new drummer, former Small Face Kenny Jones, who had filled the chair left vacant by the death of wild man Keith Moon. As such, the Who wanted to make a grand entrance, and so a bill was assembled that was meant to stand as a sort of state-of-the-rock roll call. It featured the latest American guitar-slinger Nils Lofgren, and new wave old farts, the Stranglers, as well as AC/DC. The gig stamped AC/DC with a seal of approval and broadened their scope further.

  Checking into the Swiss Cottage Holiday Inn, Bon was pleased just to get back to London, where at least he had a few friends. And old friends were becoming dearer to him as it became increasingly difficult to tell who your real friends were.

  JOE FUREY: “Touring all the time, you can become cut off from people, you’re unable to sustain friendships. You just end up living the whole rock’n’roll stereotype on the road. Bon knew how important it was, keeping that family of friends he had together. People like percys, they keep that side of an artist’s life intact. You’ve got to have that infrastructure, and I think when Coral Browning went, you lose that, when you suddenly go with another management company that doesn’t know.”

  SILVER: “Once they signed with Leber & Krebs, it was getting to be big business by then, the personal touch was gone. That social thing, where you saw everybody around, was over. The band had their respective lives they were leading. Angus was close to getting married. Malcolm was with Linda. Cliff had a girlfriend, and an ex-wife he saw as well. So it was fragmented socially.”

  JOE: “A lot of the time, when Bon lobbed into London, he was just completely hanging loose. So in a lot of ways, that was the relationship Bon and I had, because he could always get in contact with me when he got to town, and I’d know where so-and-so was, you know.”

  Joe was then working as a Percy for UFO guitarist Paul Chapman.

  JOE: “The feeling in London when Peter Mensch came in and started trying to run AC/DC was that he was just like somebody’s nephew or something, you know, an accountant who was related to the boss at Leber & Krebs in New York, where it was like, let’s give Peter a job, you know—and he came in, like, This is the way it should be done. He was treating it like you would have run a factory, you know, and it doesn’t work like that. Bon would only get a phone call from them when they had something for him to do.

  “But he worked within it. Those last couple of months, there was definitely the feeling, I mean, they were the hottest band in the world. They knew they could blow anybody off the stage. And Bon was aware of that too. But he was never one to bitch about things, and that comes back to his professionalism. He was smart enough not to do that. He was going to reap the bounty of what he’d just spent 20 years pushing to do.”

  The Who’s Wembley show was indeed a “gathering of the tribes,” as hippies, punks, old and revival mods, and headbangers alike all made their way in the summer sun down to the famous Twin Towers. But between the tepid Nils Lofgren and the turgid Stranglers, it was only AC/DC who aroused the crowd’s unanimous enthusiasm. Read Juke’s review of the show: “AC/DC are not “good” or “bad”. They are perfect AC/DC, a heavy metal archetype overblown to the point where stereotype meets parody. Is Bon Scott serious or what? Is he just playing out a real-life comic strip of an HM lead singer? Do they smirk when they write those giant three-chord riffs? Or do they just know that the world will love something this crass?”

  After repeating the performance supporting the Who again at a couple of similar European summer festivals, the band flew back to America more confident than ever. The rest of the year was mapped out for them: after doing another lap of America, they would return to Britain in late October to tour, then tour Europe, and then they’d be free to head downunder, as usual, for Christmas.

  Bon wrote to Irene late in August:Hi kid, how’s tricks. At the moment I’m in California to start our Fall tour. We’ve been running round like blue-arsed flies this past couple of months between America, Europe and the UK doing all kinds of concerts, TV shows and promotion shit for the new album. Have you heard it yet? I don’t even know if it’s been released in Australia yet. It’s on the charts all over the world and selling like hot crumpet. I think we’ve done it with this one. Should be able to pay the rent for a couple of years. I wanna buy a house in California, a place like Fraternity had. I have some friends here who are in the real estate business and I’ve had some good offers but it’ll take another year and I’m in no hurry. It’s just a nice feeling to know you can do it at last . . .

  I might get a chance to see you round Christmas-New Year. I plan to get to Sydney round the 23rd of Dec, buy a bike and ride to Perth. I’ve got a couple of weeks off and I just want to take it easy and unwind (this touring takes it out of you) . . . I’m still a very single man and having a ball right now. America’s certainly the place for a good time. I’ve become a bit of an alco (what’s new) but I’ll cut down when I go on holiday and leave off for a couple of hours . . . I’m not doing a lot of letter writing at the moment you might have noticed but I’m always thinking of you. Say hi to Graeme if he’s still alive.

  The band toured America through September, into October, headlining exclusively in big venues over bands like Molly Hatchett, Sammy Hagar and Pat Travers. Bon somehow still managed to find enough energy to get into trouble.

  A famous incident was recalled by Angus: “We were going from California to Austin, Texas, and we stopped off at Phoenix for fuel. We were just taking off again when someone says, Where’s Bon? He’d followed this bird off the plane and we reckoned he’d drunk so much he wouldn’t even know which country he was headed for . . .”

  “We’d been drinking in the airport bar for about ten minutes,” Bon picked up the story, “when I says, Don’t you think it’s time we caught our plane? She says, What do you mean our plane? I’m staying here. I run back and the fuckin’ flight’s gone.” Bon went on to describe, true or otherwise, the night he spent in a Mexican bar whipping all the regulars on the pool table, before he was chased off by a fierce-looking black lady of Rosie-esque proportions. He managed to get on another flight to Austin just in time to make the gig.

  With “Girl’s Got Rhythm” out as a single in Britain, the tour the band was due to start there on October 26 was practically sold out before they left America. They didn’t even stop over in London on their way to Newcastle, where the first gig was at the Mayfair.

  DAVE JARRETT: “I flew up to Newcastle, and when we got there, there’d been a small fire in t
he hall, so they had to cancel that night’s show. So I thought, Alright! Back to the hotel, party time! The band all went to bed. It was just me and the road crew. I think they were all just so tired.”

  Prior to concluding in Leicester on November 9, the tour played an unprecedented four-night stand at the Hammersmith Odeon, which unequivocally confirmed AC/DC’s status in Britain as, simply, one of the biggest bands on the circuit.

  The band then headed to Europe. They were accompanied by freelance photographer Robert Ellis, who had somehow convinced a “loud American” (Peter Mensch) that he could serve the band well. He wrote later of Bon: “Like Keith Moon, he was a real danger to himself and needed constant minding . . . but he was nearly always the first down in the lobby of a morning, spruced up and ready to go. I warned him and anyone within earshot of the impending danger, but no one took much notice, least of all him.”

  Due to public demand, another, albeit shorter, tour of Britain had been hastily arranged for the first week of December. Two more shows at the Hammersmith Odeon were locked in. The tour’s first gig, at Southampton, had to be cancelled when a leg muscle Bon had pulled in Europe became inflamed.

  JOE FUREY: “That was the sort of period when Bon . . . well, when he’d come to town before, he was very much the rock’n’roller on the make. But at that point when he came back to London, he almost had a statesman’s air about him, a sort of serenity. I said, So you reckon you’ve made it? and he said, Yeah; not boasting, but satisfied. He knew that he was financially set for the rest of his life regardless.”

  Getting back on his feet, Bon climbed aboard a bus bound for the Midlands. He had an unexpected passenger in tow, Mick Cocks of Rose Tattoo, or rather, formerly of Rose Tattoo. Mick had arrived in London in November, after leaving the Tatts under something of a cloud.

  MICK COCKS: “Bon said, Look, I’m going on tour with the band, why don’t you come? I said, yeah, alright. He wanted some company, he was pretty lonely. I figured, he was playing in a band, but that doesn’t mean he’s got friends, right?

  “What Bon would do, was go and have a drink with people he didn’t really know, and because he was sort of famous, you’d get a lot of hangers-on. He knew who was leeching off him and who wasn’t, but he’d reached the stage where he didn’t really care. He just wanted the company.

  “The first four days on the bus, I just sat there before anyone actually spoke to me from the rest of the band. It was a coach, a 40-seater coach, and so Malcolm would sit up the front with his entourage, and Angus had his posse, the rhythm section theirs, and so I just sat up the back there with Bon. The band gave me the impression they were very set in their ways. Every band has its own way of doing things, but it was like, This is what we have to do. If I had any respect for them it was for that. Then I remember one day, one of the roadies came down and said, Malcolm wants to have a word with you. Just this message. So I went down to Malcolm and said, Yeah, g’day. And he said, Well, what are your intentions? I said, What do you mean? He said, What’s the story? I said, Well, Bon asked me to come along with him for the ride. Malcolm knew me well enough, but he was playing the grandfather. So I said, Look, mate, if you think I’m taking advantage of him you’ve got it all wrong. I was sharing a room with Bon; it wasn’t as if they had to spend money on me or anything. And he was just very lonely at the time.

  “It gets like that. I’m not putting anybody down, but if you’ve been in a band for a number of years, it’s a bit like having five wives. So what you try and do is, if you can, set up your own little situation that doesn’t create friction, then you go with it. It’s not unfriendly, it’s just the way it is.

  “Bon was drinking a bit at the time. But he’d give it a nudge for a while, and then he’d go off it. I think he was looking for some sort of romantic love he knew didn’t exist. You know, because he’d stopped chasing girls. He was thinking about other things. In those days he was talking a lot about his ex-wife, saying he had some things there he wanted to sort out. He was doing a lot of thinking, in terms of how he saw things working out.”

  The two additional Odeon shows were merely a postscript to AC/DC’s ascent.

  MICK COCKS: “You got the sense, Shit, they’re going to go up another level again. That they were really comfortable with what they were doing, and they just needed a bit of luck to kick on even further.”

  JOE: “I think it was at that point in time that everyone knew it was going to happen. I remember we went to Tramps one night, and we were joking about the bill, which Bon picked up, so things were obviously going well.”

  MICK COCKS: “He said, Look, I’m going to take you to this restaurant tonight, and he was all giggly. I said, What’s the matter? He said, We’re going to have steak tartare. I said, I love steak. And so these two piles of pink, raw mince [ground beef] show up, and I say, I’m not eating that! And Bon’s sitting there, he says, Okay. He says, Taste it. I say, No. Of course, I’m getting hungrier and hungrier, and so in the end I ate it. It was good.

  “The food he’d eat, he was quite fussy about it. After a gig, he’d say, Let’s find a restaurant that’s open; and we’d go and eat. I was shocked. I mean, I used to tell people, I’d say, Oh, I ate this last night, and they’d say, Ah, get away. They’d say, Who took you? I’d say, Bon. They’d say, Piss off. And liqueurs. He had a cultured side that he liked to . . . I used to call him a toff. He used to laugh at that.

  “He never gave me the impression money meant anything to him. The guys in the band, Phil, he’d go out and buy a couple of Ferraris; the bass-player, he was just happy with the security; Malcolm and Angus, I’m not sure, but they always gave me the impression they were pretty level-headed about it. But Bon was like, well, Fuck the money.

  (Frank Peters/Juke)

  “He was very aware of not owing anyone anything. I remember actually giving him some money one night, not because he didn’t have any but because he didn’t have any cash, and I remember at the time thinking, well, you know, he’d spent hundreds of pounds on me, wining and dining, and he was like, You’ve done me a big favor. I thought, it just didn’t match the ten quid I’d given him. It was a bit silly, really.”

  Mick lost sight of Bon then, because Bon went to Australia. AC/DC dropped in on Paris to play a single show with Judas Priest—which was filmed and subsequently released on video as Let There Be Rock—and then Bon flew on to Melbourne. He went straight to Mary Walton’s place in Prahran, where he was always welcome. Mary’s future second husband Peter Renshaw provided him with a serious drinking partner.

  Since Highway to Hell had put them back on the charts, the band was all the more determined to get an Australian tour together; but now it depended more on Japan falling into place, which would justify the expense of hauling the huge AC/DC roadshow to the eastern hemisphere.

  Bon was doing the rounds of all his old haunts, looking up all his old mates. Irene and her boyfriend Nick arrived home one day to find a bottle of Scotch and a few bottles of beer awaiting them on the doorstep. “That’ll be Bon,” said Irene, who was six months pregnant. “He’ll be back.”

  He did come back, and he got stuck into the grog as Nick fired up a barbie. He talked to Nick about music—Nick was an aspiring musician himself, a blues buff. Bon told him about the solo album he wanted to make (Silver also confirms he wanted to make a solo album).

  MARY WALTON: Bon was just fine. He was Bon, as he always was. He was drinking a real lot. Too much probably. And really wasn’t eating that well. But that was just because he was partying. He was, by that stage . . . you know, I can imagine Bon getting lonely, getting bored with it all, and really just wanting to settle down, because that was the sort of guy that he was too.”

  Bon picked up after Christmas and headed west; first stop, Adelaide, where he stayed with Bruce Howe. Band commitments required him to be back in Britain by the middle of January. They were set to record a new album, and Bon was already toying with a few ideas.

  BRUCE HOWE: “Bon wasn’t partic
ularly happy when I last saw him. He was talking about permanent relationships, having children, stuff like that. He looked dreadful. He seemed to sense, the closer you get to the top, you’ve still got the same personal life, and that’s when he started, for the first time, to have this philosophical conversation with me. You could see, he’d been overseas, it was all starting to get really big, and he was still . . . where do you go? You either have a family, or you chase endless relationships with women that make you feel good, but don’t really make you feel good, and the more popular you get, the more money you make, the more you question if it’s you people really love or whatever. It was almost like he was admiring the fact that I’d stayed behind. I said, Well, I think I’m as happy as you are, I’d love to be doing what you’re doing, but I can’t trade off what I’ve got here.

  “We were talking about love. Bon always had this trouble with the word love. That day he drank a full 40-ounce bottle of Johnnie Walker. He got really out of it. He was talking about how I’d stayed in Adelaide, and had a wife and son, and he was saying how he could never do that, and then we started talking about love, and I said, It’s only a word, and he said he felt like he could never commit himself totally to one person. He wanted to know why?”

  From Adelaide, Bon went to Perth, to see his folks.

  ISA: “That time he was home, that’s when he told me, This one I’m working on now is going to be it. They were going to hit the top this time. So that must have been that music that was written; they called it Back in Black. They had to give it a name, you see, but Ron, I think, did all the words.