Bands, booze and bon: The final 24 hours of Bon Scott
In an unremarkable spot of south London’s suburbia, the quiet street of Overhill Road in East Dulwich was where AC/DC frontman Bon Scott was discovered unresponsive on February 19th, 1980, having passed away at some point in the early hours while sleeping in a friend’s Renault 5 outside the flats at number 67.
There’s no official blue plaque, save the makeshift imitation stuck on a wall about six minutes walk away, but the site has become a minor tourist draw for dedicated AC/DC fans alongside Scott’s official memorial in the Scottish birth burgh of Kirriemuir, as well as his final resting place in Australia’s Perth. It’s a humdrum exit to the world for a titanic force of classic rock at the peak of his powers.
AC/DC had never been bigger on the night Scott died. From former roadie to fully-fledged frontman, Scott proved to be the fitting conduit for the Young brothers’ primordial, meat-and-potatoes riff attack, perfectly realising the band’s cartoon lyrical canvas of chasing girls, being ‘ard, partying 24/7, and saluting those who rock. Imbued with a little British grit at the centre of their Aussie humour, Scott and the band would duckwalk across the 1970s as Down Under’s biggest musical export, ending the decade with their immortal Highway to Hell.
A songbook about hellraisin’ braggadocio was no fantasy; Scott and the lads lived and breathed the raucous anthems they unleashed across the hard rock world in their classic heyday. But it was their buccaneer singer who nudged it for sheer hedonistic stamina and an insatiable appetite for booze, a vice that would ultimately claim his life at 33 years old.
Once they’d signed an international record deal with Atlantic, AC/DC decamped to London in April 1976, developing an intense fanbase left cold by punk, and dropping the High Voltage compilation as well as holding a massively popular Marquee Club residency. During this career rise, Scott was living in a flat in Ashley Court with his Japanese girlfriend Anna Baba, as well as ambiguously still in touch with his ex and well-known drug dealer Margaret ‘Silver’ Smith.
The final 24 hours of Scott’s life have long been a source of sleuthing intrigue among fans and rock historians. The most authoritative account comes from Clinton Walker’s Highway To Hell: The Life & Times Of AC/DC Legend Bon Scott, detailing that on the Monday evening of February 18th, Scott had invited Smith to see a gig at Camden’s Dingwalls, declining the offer and recommending her friend and fellow dealer Alistair Kinnear instead.
There’s no clear-cut outline of events henceforth. “I met up with Bon to go to the Music Machine, but he was pretty drunk when I picked him up,” Kinnear told the Evening Standard two days later.
“When we got there, he was drinking four whiskies straight in a glass at a time.”
Alistair Kinnear on Bon Scott
It gets even foggier. As best as understood, Kinnear initially drove a stupendously drunk Scott to his Ashley Court flat, but found the singer impossible to wake up. Instead, Kinnear headed to his flat in Overhill Road and left the comatose Scott in the parked Renault outside. “I just could not move him,” Kinnear furthered, “So I covered him with a blanket and left him a note to tell him how to get up to my flat in case he woke up.”
Going to bed in the early hours of Tuesday morning, a wake-up at approximately 7.45 in the evening, with no sign of Scott, perturbed Kinnear as he made his way to the car to check on his drinking buddy. The scene that met him was a grim one. Having failed to find a comfortable position in the cramped car, Scott’s body had contorted around the gearstick with his neck dangerously twisted and his dental plate loose, bile having risen in the throat and blocking his asthmatic windpipe. Taken to King’s College Hospital and pronounced dead on arrival, the official verdict was “acute alcohol poisoning” from “death by misadventure.”
Scott was gone, and Kinnear was nowhere to be seen, virtually disappearing from the rock community shortly after, while his flat got emptied of possessions by unknown thieves. After the initial shock and thoughts of disbanding, the Youngs recruited Geordie frontman Brian Johnson to step behind the mic, fronting 1980’s Back to Black and scoring the second-biggest selling album of all time. Recorded as a tribute to their fallen comrade, AC/DC’s hard-rocking totem proved the perfect farewell to Scott’s enduring legacy, a presence in the world of classic rock still honoured by the many pilgrimages to Overhill Road over 45 years later.
