The story of Bon Scott’s final night alive
The essence of great rock and roll has come from the riffs of AC/DC. While certainly not the first band to play blistering blues rock at full volume, the Young brothers were known for making the most with the bare essentials, turning songs like ‘Highway to Hell’ and ‘TNT’ into some of the most furious rock and roll songs ever committed to tape. While Bon Scott stood as the main leader of the band, he was heading for a massive downward spiral right as the band were about to leave its mark on music history.
After years of making noise in the underground rock scene, albums like Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap and Powerage would become staples of the hard rock scene. While many latched onto the headbanging riffs, Scott may have been the member most indebted to rock and roll, singing about the wonders of being in a band and living like a pirate whenever he was off the stage.
Towards the end of the 1970s, Scott would be behind the mic to create the band’s landmark epic Highway to Hell, boasting some of their most successful songs. As the group made their way across the globe to promote the record, the pressure began mounting for a new album that was equally well-received. Though Scott was up to the challenge, his battle with the bottle was beginning to catch up with him.
Always a longtime drinker, Scott had listened to various demos that Angus and Malcolm Young had played for him in February 1980. On the evening of February 19th, Scott would go out to clear his head by venturing to the pub. Although he may have been going just to drink, joining him on his escapade that night was a drinking buddy who also doubled as a heroin dealer.
While many sources have remained tight-lipped as to what Scott had taken that night, a lethal combination of narcotics and alcohol led to him passing away in the back of a car in the middle of the night. Even though Scott lay motionless in the back of a car for hours, it wasn’t out of the question for him to fall asleep after a night of heavy drinking and not know where he was.
When talking about his antics, Joe Fury initially would have thought nothing of Scott’s condition, saying, “He’d pass out on a couch, wake up in the night and think he was in the toilet and piss in the middle of your lounge-room floor and go back to the couch. He was high maintenance”. As his friends went back to the car to wake him up, though, Scott was dead, having choked on his own vomit throughout the night.
While there have been some questions raised about what was in his system the night that he died, manager Zena Kakoulli admitted that Scott was in the company of Alistair Kinnear on the night that he passed away, who was known as a prominent heroin dealer in the region. Even though no one saw Scott ingest anything, it’s possible that a lethal dose combined with the alcohol in his system may have caused him to vomit everything up due to how he was positioned in the car.
Out of all the explanations, Angus didn’t elaborate much on what he had heard, telling Behind the Music, “From what I can tell, he had fallen asleep in a car and just asphyxiated”. Either way, Scott’s death would cast a dark shroud over the rest of the band’s career, only for Brian Johnson to be brought in to give them a new lease on life.
Throughout the recording of their next album, Back in Black, the band would create various tributes to their fallen friend, including the funeral bell tolling at the very beginning to kick off the song ‘Hells Bells’. While Scott may not have seen the band reach the massive success they would ultimately attain, his spirit lives on every time the band tears into one of their classics.
