“There’s more”: Malcolm Young on the artist that made Bon Scott a frontman
When you are considering the success of AC/DC, you begin to notice things that stand out and which were huge contributing factors to their success. The hard riffs, exciting guitar solos and an excellent frontman who is able to hold everything down were pivotal for the band becoming what they did. A lot of people know this frontman as Brian Johnson, who dominated the latter period of AC/DC with tracks like ‘Thunderstruck’ and ‘Back In Black’, but before him, you had the legend that was Bon Scott.
The first few AC/DC albums were incredibly important to the band. It wasn’t just that they needed to put themselves on the map as a good rock band, but they needed to work out the kind of music they wanted to make. They are now known as the best hard rock band on the planet, but they had to choose to go down that route and not deviate into other genres.
When AC/DC started making music, they were a rock band through and through, a band championing the guitar, the riff and the solo. They also liked hard-hitting and catchy vocals. They weren’t the only band that was this inclined, though, as there were a number of musical outfits that liked to make a similar style of music.
Then, as is always the case, genres started to move and contort, and what was popular went along with them. AC/DC reached a point where they had to decide whether they wanted to continue championing that hard rock sound or try something new. They opted for the former, and with that, AC/DC stopped being a hard rock band and instead became the hard rock band.
Bon Scott had a big job fronting such a musical outfit. When so much emphasis is placed on having loud, distorted guitars and blaring drums, having a singer who doesn’t blend into the background is incredibly difficult. Scott was up to the task, though, as his voice was note-perfect every time. He had the ability to dance around cadences and tone, switch from fast to slow, a murmur to a scream, as easy as he spoke.
This was no natural talent, though. Malcolm Young, the band’s rhythm guitarist who was responsible for many of the riffs that Scott was battling against, believes there is one specific singer who inspired him and helped him become such a legendary frontman.
“Bon was an original. There was another guy out of England, Alex Harvey [best known for his early Seventies work with the Sensational Alex Harvey Band], who was quite clever with his phrasing and his words,” said Young, “And I think Bon picked up a few things from him.”
It wasn’t just phrasing that Scott learnt from Harvey, though. Harvey was also instrumental in showing Scott how different vocal tones can be used to add effect to songs and that not everything needs to be sung in a conventional manner. “Alex never really had a singing voice – he did more of a talking type of thing – but he would tear it up onstage,” said Young, “That certainly woke Bon up to the fact that there’s more to songwriting than just pop tunes.”
