“You can stick your nine to five living and your collar and your tie. You can stick your moral standards cause it’s all a dirty lie.”
Bon Scott knew it, lived it and died by it.
Millions of AC/DC fans will spend this Friday marking the 30th anniversary of Scott’s “death by misadventure” as the London coroner pronounced. On Feb. 19, 1980, the Scottish-born singer was found in a car after a night of hard drinking, dead of acute alcohol poisoning at age 33.
Fans around the world have been flocking to Fremantle, Western Australia to pay their respects at his final resting place, reportedly the most visited grave in that country and a national heritage site. For good reason too: If school-uniform clad guitarist Angus Young was the face of AC/DC, then Scott gave the band its cavalier damn-the-rules-and-have-fun ethos, delivered with his trademark bare-chested rock ‘n’ roll strut.
All the more tragic that Scott’s death coincided with AC/DC finally getting the recognition it deserved after years of cult status. Highway To Hell, released in 1979, went platinum seven times over and was the band’s first album to break into the U.S. Top 100, catapulting AC/DC to superstardom among the world’s top hard rock acts.
The approach stayed the same as ever: Unsophisticated pulse-pounding riffs accompanied Scott’s powerful and at times self-deprecating working man’s sensibility and insatiable lechery (Scott roars on track Shot Down In Flames, “She was standing alone over by the jukebox like she’d something to sell. I said, ‘Baby, what’s the going price?’ She told me to go to hell.”). Add in classics like Girls Got Rhythm, Touch Too Much and Night Prowler (a favourite among strippers and at least one serial killer, unfortunately) and you’ve got something instantly resonant with every young red-blooded male just trying to make his way in the world.
Within weeks of Scott’s cremation, AC/DC reorganized with new lead singer Brian Johnson, to cut a tribute album to their departed friend. Released in July 1980, Back In Black became the second-highest selling album ever next to Michael Jackson’s Thriller, with an estimated 50 million copies sold worldwide to date. In 1997, the band released Bonfire, a tribute box set featuring a collection of unreleased tracks —including a grittier version of If You Want Blood (You Got It) — two live performance discs and a remastered version of keystone album Back In Black.
It truly is a long way to the top, if you wanna rock n’ roll. Luckily for AC/DC, he played a big part in getting them there.
“I ain’t too old to die, but I sure am hard to beat,” Bon Scott once declared on track Ride On.
Amen to that.
