“My feet went off the floor”: the artist that got Bon Scott the gig in AC/DC
Playing in a band like AC/DC isn’t for the faint of heart. From their early days slogging it out in clubs to playing in stadiums now, no one in the band was ever satisfied with playing a song that didn’t have as much energy as possible put into it. To the point where Angus Young looked like he was bursting at the seams whenever he strutted around the stage in his schoolboy uniform. Although Bon Scott was the kind of partner in crime that any guitar player could have asked for in a frontman, he had to go through his paces before the band knew he was the right guy for the job.
If anything, Scott was bound to be a major improvement from what they had been doing with Dave Evans. While the latter was far from a terrible singer by any stretch, listening to him sing on tracks like ‘Can I Sit Next to You, Girl’ feels all wrong, almost like watching the equivalent of Gary Glitter trying to go onstage with ZZ Top. He never looked the part, but, by comparison, Scott was practically a rock and roll pirate.
He had spent years trying to make a name for himself as a singer, but no one was exactly looking at him like a choirboy. It wasn’t like he was going for the Freddie Mercury approach to singing, but personality is half the battle in rock and roll. So, when listening to a song like ‘Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap’, no one had any doubts that Scott could be the kind of sleazy mercenary looking to kill someone if he had the chance.
It was one thing to look the part, but any member of AC/DC needed to have a healthy respect for early rock and roll. As far as the Young brothers were concerned, the old guard of the genre still had the best music ever created, and for anyone trying to show off their vocal chops, it always came back to either Elvis Presley or Little Richard.
And after one listen to Scott’s voice, it was clear which singer he idolised more. Presley may have been the kind of dynamic frontman that everyone loved to see gyrate whenever he played live, but the wildness of Richard’s voice on ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’ feels like the blueprint for how Scott was going to sound when he worked on songs like ‘TNT’. Hence, when Angus saw Scott sing along to a Little Richard tune, he had no doubt he had found his frontman.
“We were doing a Little Richard song. I’m sure Little Richard wouldn’t have recognised it by the time we were finished with it. This hurricane yell came out [and] my feet went off the floor.”
Angus Young
When talking about playing the first gig with Scott, Angus remembered being shellshocked by what he heard, saying, “The first thing I heard come out was a scream that was louder than Tarzan. We were doing a Little Richard song. I’m sure Little Richard wouldn’t have recognised it by the time we were finished with it. This hurricane yell came out [and] my feet went off the floor. From that moment, he set the pace for what AC/DC was all about.”
But looking at the band’s records, that scream was only one facet of what he could do. There was the bagpipes on ‘It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll)’ that helped introduce them to the world, along with the strange bluesman voice that he uses on the track ‘Ride On’, and the menacing voice that scares people half to death when they get to the end of Highway to Hell on the ‘Night Prowler’ cut.
And while Brian Johnson has done his absolute best to pay respect to Scott and carry on his legacy, there are certain pieces of their catalogue that even he doesn’t bother to touch. Because when listening to songs like ‘The Jack’, there’s no other way for the band to do justice to it without having that sleazy voice throwing itself at you.
