The best live band Bon Scott ever saw: “It sounded like Little Richard was on the stage”
Bon Scott was a musician who truly embodied what it meant to be a rock star.
First things first, he had a voice which pricked up all ears within range. AC/DC were famous for championing a hard rock sound which had great guitar riffs at its centre. You had Angus and Malcolm Young putting together guitar lines that were simple – in that they only consisted of a few chords – but incredibly complex when you considered how individualistic they were.
The ethos of the blues was embedded in AC/DC, in that they were happy for songs to take place in the pocket of three or four chords. However, unlike the blues, they took those chords and manipulated them with effects and strange time signatures in order to have them come across in ways that sounded unique to listeners.
When you have any kind of music that remotely embodies the blues, you are faced with the dilemma which is balancing emotion over technicality. A lot of the greatest blues musicians, while being fantastic instrumentalists, were hailed as greats not just because of what they could play but how they could play it. You needed to be good at what you did, but you also needed to deliver emotion and passion within those notes.
This is why Bon Scott was the perfect vocalist for AC/DC, because not only was he technically a great singer, but he performed with the beating heart of a rockstar emanating in every syllable. There was never any mistake that Scott meant what he was saying, as the emotion he packed into each and every line was pretty difficult to ignore.
That rockstar life became a bit too much for Scott, though, and it sadly led to him passing away before his time. His death was a huge blow to the world of rock, as his promising career had only just been getting started. It also put AC/DC in the unenviable position of trying to replace him, something which was going to be incredibly difficult given how well Scott fit the role of their singer.
As we now know, the band were successful in finding a replacement in the form of Brian Johnson. Perhaps their greatest move was not trying to get someone who was the spitting image of Scott, as nobody could ever embody rock in the same way he did. Scott was truly one of a kind, and so attempting to find another singer like him would have just resulted in a watered-down version of Scott. Instead, they found someone who was able to balance skill and emotion in the same way that Scott could, but presented it in a much different way.
Johnson sang with a lot more gravel. If we’re comparing who was technically the best vocalist, it would be hard not to give the mantle to Scott; however, as previously mentioned, with such a heavy blues influence weighing on AC/DC, that technical proficiency was only half the battle. Vocalists needed to be dynamic; they had to sing the lyrics with a roaring fire in their belly, which meant audiences believed what they were hearing while also being impressed by it. Realistically, they couldn’t have picked anyone better than Johnson, and it turns out the singer had Scott’s approval before he passed away, as he called the vocalist one of the best live performers he’d ever seen.
“Bon had been in a band that had toured in Britain, and they were opening for the band Brian was in, which was a band called Geordie,” recalled Angus Young, telling to story of Bon Scott seeing Brian Johnson live. “Anyhow, they were gigging away, and as Bon told the story, he was saying he was listening to Geordie performing and listening to Brian, and then he heard this screaming. He said it sounded great — he said it sounded like Little Richard was on the stage.”
The ideal new frontman for AC/DC once Scott passed away, Johnson knew that, regardless of the circumstances, the show must go on. “He said this guy [was] howling and yelling. And then he said then he saw the guy on the floor. Bon thought it was great — it was the best act he had seen, and a singer, in a long time,” said Angus, “But what he didn’t know, afterwards he found out, Brian had an attack of appendicitis. But Bon thought it was part of the act. He thought, ‘This guy is incredible.’ ‘And he was still hittin’ these high notes’.”
