Watch Bon Scott perform in drag for his TV debut with AC/DC
As the charismatic frontman of AC/DC before his tragic death in 1980, Bon Scott was the perfect poster boy for rock and roll, simply because it seemed like there was nobody else who could match what he was capable of. With a voice that is instantly recognisable and all the grit and wanton excess befitting a rockstar, Scott cemented himself as truly one-of-a-kind during his tenure with AC/DC.
Scott pushed that notion to another extreme in 1975, and if there’s any way to set yourself apart from the endless conveyor belt of long-haired, effortlessly cool rock frontmen, it’s dressing up in drag. Some nine years before Queen shot the iconic ‘I Want To Break Free’ video, Scott took to Australian airwaves as part of AC/DC’s first television appearance in 1975, decked out in huge earrings, a wig and a dress.
By all accounts, it was set to be a pretty standard performance, with the group running through the blues track ‘Baby, Please Don’t Go’. However, as the band were busy preparing to get on the Countdown stage, their lead singer was nowhere to be seen.
Scott clearly felt their performance could use an injection of gender play to liven it up and emerged eyeshadowed and lip-glossed without ever mentioning he was going to burst out dressed as a schoolgirl. The performance is electric, with Scott taking brief smoke breaks and girlishly gesticulating, but the look on drummer Phil Rudd’s face makes it a total delight.
But underneath the fun, something darker lurked. The compulsive nature that drove Scott to muck around on stage also drove him to an early death. As detailed by Scott’s former Fraternity bandmate, Bruce Howe, his impulsive nature eventually spiralled.
“He would start taking risks, doing wild things,” Howe said. “On days when he was bored, there was no future, there was only now. He didn’t give a bugger about whether he lived or died the next day. He’d try anything, magic mushrooms, marijuana, alcohol, and he would take risks on his motorbike.”
With every band he was a part of, from the Valentines to Fraternity, Scott’s consistent priority was creating electric performances, and when he was bought into the fold of AC/DC to replace Dave Evans, it should’ve provided the confidence he seemed to be lunging for, but it couldn’t.
“Maybe he’d come to the stage where he’d achieved his dream, he’d found his holy grail, but the holy grail might have looked like an empty goblet,” Howe mused. Whatever the reason, at its most innocent, Scott’s flair for on-stage theatrics is a treat for AC/DC fans to watch, and their Australian television debut will remain an infamous example of Scott not at his most playful but also at the peal of his vocal performance.
