“On the floor”: The AC/DC song Bon Scott passed out trying to make
Not every studio session is meant to be a walk in the park. It’s one thing for someone to make the best performance they can and train themselves until they are in good enough condition to do their tunes justice, but when things aren’t going well or someone is left with a mediocre song, it can feel like a neverending crawl trying to get out from behind the glass. But for a band that lived their life like a 24-hour party like AC/DC, even some of the down moments could be considered high points for their career.
Because from day one, the Young brothers weren’t looking to make anything other than pure rock and roll. There would be hints of everything from blues to classic rock homages in their songs, but as long as a riff sounded good when the amps were cranked up, it was well worth putting on one of their albums. Though Angus and Malcolm could make the band groove all on their own, Bon Scott was the feral animal of the bunch in their early days.
Compared to the rest of the members, Scott seemed like the kind of guy who lived and breathed everything he sang. A lot of his songs may have been about travelling around as part of a rock and roll band, but listening to him squeal out with pleasure when talking about ‘Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap’, it’s totally believable to think that he had done some hard time behind the scenes.
For as classic as his vocals were, though, Scott was also always on the firing line with the band. Despite being the epitome of everything that was rock and roll, the frontman was also being seen as a casualty waiting to happen in some respects, and it’s not like they didn’t have good reason, considering what he had done during the recording of the song ‘Jailbreak’.
Angus had already had concerns about whether he could even stand up when playing his first gig with him, but for a song about someone freeing themselves from prison, there had to be more than a simple, gritty voice for Scott. He wanted to get into character if he wanted to talk about people who had served their time behind bars, and that meant swigging booze until he couldn’t see straight.
When Angus discussed the song, he remembered Scott getting so drunk in the studio that he passed out in the middle of his performance, saying, “The guys doing the recording kept asking Bon to do the line one more time, and every time he kept givin’ his all, but in between takes you could hear him drinkin’ down whiskey, it was like: ‘With a bullet in his back’… Guzzle, guzzle, guzzle. And finally, on the last one, he just gave it everything he had and passed out, we all kinda went around and just seen him there on the floor.”
While it was second nature at that point, no one realised how far Scott had gone until it was too late. After having to soldier on from his death by alcohol poisoning, Malcolm even found himself succumbing to his demons, even taking a break from the band when he started to become too damaged by years of drinking on the road.
But at the time, this was far from the kind of concerning episode that would get Scott fired. The studio was their playground where they could have some fun, so if Angus could have his amplifier bellowing smoke as he made his way through a take, why couldn’t Scott have a few drinks before going behind the microphone?
