“Well, fuck this”: The AC/DC song written two days after Bon Scott’s funeral
Bon Scott lived and breathed rock and roll. The AC/DC lead singer wasn’t just the perfect person to front the band and deliver some of the most iconic lyrics in their history, but he was also relentless in his approach to life. He would go out a great deal, loved to party and got excited by the prospect of adventure.
Angus Young once spoke about how unpredictable the life of Bon Scott could be. “His mother put him on a plane once, he went to see his folks in Australia,” he said. “She put him on a plane in London. Guy, who was doing our tour managing, went to collect him, you know, he was gonna meet him at the airport, and he got to the airport and called us up, and he said, ‘No Bon’.”
Bon Scott didn’t turn up until a week later, as he called his tour manager and asked to be picked up from the spot they had originally agreed. Guy asked Scott where he’d been, to which the frontman said, “I don’t know.” Young laughed at the absurdity of the whole thing. “His mother had put him on the plane,” he said, “She had seen him getting on the aeroplane. He says he thinks he followed some girl when she got off the plane in Bangkok or something.”
While it’s funny to look back on some of the chaotic stories of Bon Scott, it’s also tinged with sadness, as his haphazard approach to life led to his untimely death. Given that his voice was such an iconic part of the band, many people thought that his death could prove the end of AC/DC, but it was quite the opposite. They ended up recruiting Brian Johnson, who had a completely different tone to Scott. While it took some fans time to get used to the new singer, his introduction to the band represented a new era of AC/DC.
The next album that they released was Back In Black, a record which was a testament to Scott’s legacy. The record mourned the loss of their former lead singer but also introduced fans to a brand new era of AC/DC, one filled with excitement and adrenaline. It was always going to be impossible for them to write an album without paying homage to their friend Bon, but at the same time, they didn’t want to sit around feeling sad, knowing that that’s not what Bon Scott would have wanted.
This is best reflected in the track, ‘Rock N’ Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution’. The song, on its surface, was a fuck you to all of the critics who weren’t happy with AC/DC’s harsh sound. At the same time, a lot of the anger embedded in the song could also have been built-up frustration, given it was written only a couple of days after the funeral of Bon Scott.
“I thought, ‘Well, fuck this, I’m not gonna sit around moping all fucking year’,” said Malcolm Young discussing the decision to head back into the studio right away, “So I just rang Angus and said, ‘Do you wanna come back and rehearse?’” The result was a track that embodied the pain they felt upon losing their friend, which they then channelled in a way that could preserve his and the band’s legacy. It remains one of their biggest hits to this day and is a call to arms for a number of AC/DC fans.
