by Fink, Jesse
* * *
In August 1977, AC/DC went to Florida where, thanks to Bill Bartlett, Jacksonville had already been conquered. But the Australians had bruised a few egos, none bigger than those in Lynyrd Skynyrd. The popular tale is that the two bands were great mates, hanging out at the local group’s compound in the backwoods, Skynyrd even inviting AC/DC for a ride on their private Convair CV-300—the same plane that crashed killing Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines and Cassie Gaines and three others that coming October.
Yet Bartlett has another story.
“AC/DC was so big in Jacksonville that they outsold Lynyrd Skynyrd,” he says. “I’d known Skynyrd since I was 13 years old, as I went to school with several of the members of the band. I remember at the time that Ronnie was not all that happy that they had been upstaged by this Aussie band.
“One night, I made a statement on the radio that AC/DC was outrequesting and outselling hometown boys Lynyrd Skynyrd. Ronnie immediately called me up on the radio and said he was coming out to ‘talk’ to me. He came to the station and I showed him the sales data and request data that I collected and he was baffled. His last words to me that night were, ‘AC/DC huh?’”
With Atlantic now right behind them, American audiences beginning to fall under their spell and their most exhilarating album yet under their belts, AC/DC’s long way to the top was rapidly shortening. But, according to Riley, it was mostly credit to Alberts not Atlantic.
“They were the rock company of Australia and that’s where AC/DC got their liftoff,” he says. “They had support from Alberts that gave them the ability to go on tour, relentlessly, all through England and Europe.”
Interestingly, Chris Gilbey, who arrived in Australia from England in November 1972 and started working for Alberts in January 1973, says that while the company’s commitment to AC/DC was substantial it wasn’t because Alberts had a mission to be the rock ’n’ roll record label from hell.
He evokes an image of Alberts that is at odds with its reputation as the Mordor of Australian hard rock, recalling how when he turned up in a cheap but elegantly tailored Penang white suit, about to head up their publicity and marketing, the offices were “all oak panels and elderly ladies walking softly across deep pile carpets, keeping as quiet as they could” and “like a gentleman’s club: leather overstuffed chairs, bookshelves, an antique tooled leather desk.” It was largely Gilbey’s industry and his versatility—he’d recorded three singles in his own right in England with a band called Kate, would go on to manage The Saints and produce The Church’s first album—combined with the creativity of Vanda & Young and the passion and deep pockets of Ted Albert that gave AC/DC that initial liftoff. Gilbey would leave Alberts in 1977.
“I happened to arrive in Australia when Ted was trying to get the business energized and I think I provided the street smarts and energy he needed,” he says. “George and Harry arrived back in the country around the same time. They hadn’t been able to cut it in London and came back to Sydney to make a fresh start. They convinced Ted to fund them in a little eight-track studio that they built at one of their homes, I believe. They had a bunch of unfinished songs in their heads, and then started recording. They kept very much to themselves. But why wouldn’t they? The company then was so 19th century, it was ridiculous.
“Alberts wasn’t run on corporate guidelines. It was a small business. But that was paradoxically its strength. So there were several nodes to the business: there was Ted, who was the rich uncle who wrote the checks, and who had a genuine love of the music business, because he just loved it. He kept his father happy; he was a very straight-laced old money scion. Then there was Brian Byrne, the chief financial officer, who would have preferred that the record label be discontinued because it was a drain on cash. But he had to indulge the whims of the younger son of the family. Then there were the two older brothers, who both became lawyers and who said that they gave the music company to Ted because he couldn’t get a proper job.”
But, in the end, old money and rich fathers besides, what pushed AC/DC over the line was the work ethic of the Youngs: sheer graft and unrelenting determination.
“Those fucking blokes, they really did put in the hard yards,” argues Riley. “That and the fact their music was so accessible to normal people is what put them on the map. That persistence. It’s incredible. The rest is history. They got out there and did the hard yards with good catchy songs and Bon Scott, who had a cheeky grin and a fantastic ability to charm people. They had an amazing thing going, which got the ball rolling.”
* * *
It’s a good point by Riley about Scott’s charm. Were it not for Scott’s force of personality, startling showmanship, vocal delivery and lyrical contribution, AC/DC most likely wouldn’t have become the titanic stadium band they are today. Not just because the long-dead, much-loved singer, frequently regarded as the most charismatic frontman of all time (and undoubtedly worthy of being spoken of in the same breath as Mick Jagger, Freddie Mercury, Robert Plant and Jim Morrison), made up for whatever social skills the Youngs might have lacked. Rather, their set list would be very thin. Most of what AC/DC performs today in concert was co-written by Scott during the six years he spent writing what he called “toilet poetry” for the band. He was a clever writer as much as he was the waking nightmare of every father with a beautiful teenage daughter.
As Mark Gable puts it: “I will always go back to AC/DC’s early albums to listen to that raw energy and absolute fun that they must’ve been having. Bon Scott’s lyrics were amazing. If you want genius lyric writing then just read out the lyrics to ‘Let There Be Rock.’”
Certainly, as true originals go, Scott likely will never be surpassed: a hard-drinking, substance-abusing, book-reading, poetry-writing, groupie-shagging, asthmatic, wild-eyed, square-chested, snaggle-toothed Fagin to the scamps that made up the rest of the band.
“Bon Scott’s high-waisted flares and Sharpie haircut were definitely cringe inducing to a teenager in tight Levis and cowboy boots,” says Radio Birdman guitarist Chris Masuak, who first saw AC/DC on Australia’s Countdown TV program in 1975. “Still, there was something likable about him. He was kind of cheeky and tough, despite his questionable dress sense. And those early clips gave me the impression that they were a kind of novelty act. I slotted Angus in his school uniform in the same bag as Skyhooks, who I loathed more than words could convey.”
But AC/DC proved to be no novelty act, thanks largely to Scott, who gave the band an identity, edge and singleminded purpose that their previous singer could not.
“He was the best,” says Steve Leber. “When he was alive there was nothing like it. He and Angus were amazing.”
The impact on the band’s fans was just as strong. The awful manner of Scott’s demise in 1980, his exceptional body of work (created in such a short space of time) and the good vibes that trailed in his wake like magic dust have long combined to enthral not only the band’s tens of millions of hard-core fans but rock journalists, biographers and directors.
“One of the greatest rock singers in the history of popular music,” says Phil Carson. “He was a charismatic performer who lived the life.”
And one who didn’t tolerate pomposity, no matter the levels of society in which he moved. Kim Fowley recalls dining in an expensive Sydney restaurant with Scott, Harry Vanda and George Young in the late 1970s: “Bon reprimanded the waiter for being rude to his teenage girl dinner date, who didn’t know how to order from the fancy menu.”
* * *
The reclamation of Scott as a modern folk hero started back in 1994 with Clinton Walker’s still-to-be-bettered biography of the man, Highway to Hell, and probably reached its pop-culture apotheosis in the 2004 Australian movie Thunderstruck. Featuring a pre-Avatar Sam Worthington, it’s about four young men who travel across the Nullarbor with the ashes of their dead friend (Worthington’s “Ronnie”) on a pilgrimage to the singer’s gravesite in Fremantle. When it was released in the United States, Variety magazine said
the “under-representation of AC/DC music will disappoint audiences seeking an Oz equivalent of Detroit Rock City.” It not only disappointed audiences. It bombed for all sorts of reasons, not least that it wasn’t a very good movie. But in Hollywood at an Australia Day party in 2013 I met one of its stars, the Australian actor Ryan Johnson, who played “Lloyd.” According to Johnson, when the producers asked Alberts if they could briefly use AC/DC songs they were told it would cost $250,000 … a song. The director, Darren Ashton, won’t be drawn on the figure for the three songs that were eventually used.
“It wasn’t so much about the money for AC/DC but about the content of the film,” he says.
But if that were really so, why charge at all? Hollywood studios can easily afford that sort of coin, but not struggling indie filmmakers. What do AC/DC’s Australian handlers care if there’s money to be made?
Rumors have circulated that Alberts also refused to allow the band to be used as characters in the film. The band members’ faces are darkened and obscured in the concert that opens the movie. In the one scene featuring a character referred to as “Angus,” only the back of his head is seen. Ashton did not respond when I asked if this stipulation was indeed true.
Each year brings whispers of another tribute to or commemoration of Scott, most of which never achieve realization. Vince Lovegrove, Scott’s former bandmate in The Valentines, was killed in a car accident in northern New South Wales in 2012. His daughter Holly confirms that he was writing a “movie script on Bon pre-AC/DC” and though her father and the Youngs never got on they had been “extremely generous to us since he died.”
There has been the Bonfire box-set release. There’s Bonfest in Kirriemuir, Scotland, where Scott was raised as a child before leaving for Australia and there is a campaign to erect a bronze statue in his memory. (He was born in nearby Forfar.) Perth television screened a documentary called Bon Scott: A Tribute in 2006. A feature film project called Bon Scott received seed money from the Australian government in 2011 but was purportedly knocked on the head by Alberts. During the writing of this book, a stage show called The Story of Bon Scott: Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be was due to open in Melbourne; a Sydney producer was trying to get Bon: The Musical greenlighted by the Youngs; and an American film production company was trying to drum up investors for Bon Scott: The Legend of AC/DC, a biopic of Scott’s final days in London, to be filmed in (of all places) South Carolina. Lawyers representing AC/DC and the estate of Bon Scott later sent the producers cease-and-desist letters.
What else is there to say about his story? Not much.
What hope do all these projects have when the AC/DC brand is protected so ferociously by the Youngs? Very little.
Why so much resistance to celebrating the band’s greatest icon?
Alvin Handwerker, AC/DC’s manager, is said to be of the view that Scott is ancient history and Brian Johnson has been the lead singer for the lion’s share of the time the band has been around: the focus should be on Johnson. If that is so, it’s remarkably shortsighted, if not stupid, and takes AC/DC’s audience for idiots.
There isn’t a part of the world where what Scott has come to represent—living life by your own rules—doesn’t entrance people. He stands for a positive message even if the circumstances of his death were atrocious. In death, like so many rock stars before and after him, he is far more appreciated than he ever was when he was alive.
That AC/DC has gone on to become even bigger without him, despite the fact that for 30 years the Youngs have had an ordinary lyricist in Brian Johnson or simply done away with him altogether and shared lyric-writing duties between themselves, is extraordinary. Johnson stopped writing—or was asked to stop writing—in 1988. The Youngs have handled everything since, either because they thought they could do it just as well or better, a desire for complete creative control or, as their critics will tell you, outright greed.
In Why AC/DC Matters, Anthony Bozza writes: “As the ’70s gave way to the ’80s, it was an unplanned but impeccably fitting aesthetic shift for the band. Johnson’s blunt, observational, often nonlinear lyrics suited the ADD-addled, video-saturated times ahead, whereas Scott’s lyrical storytelling suited a more organic, gilded age of rock and roll.”
Or he simply wasn’t as good.
* * *
Let There Be Rock marked a young Mark Opitz’s first introduction to production. He had been working in Sydney as a local artist label manager for EMI, Alberts’ distribution company, but got sacked for what he calls “stupid, erroneous reasons.” Harry Vanda and George Young took him on as an apprentice producer.
“I was there at the transition of AC/DC’s sound from sleazy pop-rock to rock,” he says. “I can remember the very first time I heard the song ‘Let There Be Rock’; that was the first major change, that one song. That was it. That was the indicator. I don’t think the album Let There Be Rock totally pointed overall to the change but the song did. Because it had that intro, it had the feel, and it wasn’t a spoof on girls or a rock love song, so to speak, like ‘The Jack’ or ‘Whole Lotta Rosie.’ The lyrical content had changed as well.
“In the early days, knowing George and Harry on the first albums, they would have been stuck right in. They’d almost be writing the songs. Malcolm would come up with a riff and then they’d just be like, ‘Okay, let’s do that, let’s do that and let’s do that,’ and of course in those days Malcolm and Angus would have gone along with it because they’d be thinking, ‘Yeah, that’s working, it sorta sounds like us.’ I guess it wasn’t until that maturation of Let There Be Rock and then having a couple of American tours under their belt and starting to feel good about themselves that, like most bands, the process of one and one equalling three started.”
“The closest to it was Ted Nugent,” says Doug Thaler of the album and its title track. “From 1975 to ’77, Ted was the hardest rocker on the scene and AC/DC came and just upped that by a little bit. It was power rock. But it wasn’t noise rock. It had form. It was played tightly.”
And that is what makes it like nothing AC/DC has done before or since. Right from the clack of Phil Rudd’s sticks, “Let There Be Rock” is full throttle. The Youngs’ guitars—the hammer of Malcolm, the bolt of Angus—are so ferocious they smoke. The rhythm section undulates beneath them like the quick breathing of a man who’s had his chest slashed with a knife. The music is so intense, for once even the teeth-gnashing Scott seems superfluous to it all. When there is some respite from the onslaught—drums, bass and vocals keeping the Youngs at bay like snapping dogs on a chain—it starts all over again … and then again, until it enters what Clinton Walker accurately describes as “a realm of pure white noise.” “Let There Be Rock” is a band pushed to its playing limits but not missing a beat. It is six-and-a-bit minutes of beauty, chaos, precision and primal fire.
Mark Evans is also convinced it was a watershed moment for AC/DC: “That was when the band really started being the band.”
What about the title track?
“Phil Rudd.”
Right. That’s it?
“That’s it,” he replies, laughing. “Brilliant, man. Just like fucking no one else. Brilliant drummer. As much as Charlie Watts is The Rolling Stones, Phil is AC/DC.”
Without question Let There Be Rock was the high point of Evans’s tenure with AC/DC. But in the 2003 Sony compact-disc reissue with its lavish 14-page booklet and multiple shots of Bon Scott, Angus and Malcolm, there isn’t even one clear photo of the bass player. In all of the photos of the band on stage (bar Evans’s dark silhouette on the cover, back facing to camera, and one where the headstock and neck of his guitar, a leg and the top of his head is visible behind Scott) he’s been miraculously eliminated. Wiped from the face of the earth. Not satisfied with the beating to Evans’s ego the first time around, the Youngs appear to have struck again with a vengeance.
In another booklet photo, one from their first US tour, his replacement, Williams, has been cropped out. For the Let There Be Rock reissu
e, AC/DC effectively is a band without a bass player.
What does Evans make of his being omitted?
“It doesn’t surprise me all that much.”
Why?
“That’s the way it is.”
But there are photos of the band on stage and we can’t see you.
“I’ve got to be honest with you. I didn’t even know that [before you told me]. It’s not something I pay attention to.”
You weren’t aware of that?
“It doesn’t bother me one bit. It’s a non-issue.”
Cliff’s been taken out of some photos, too.
“Well, there you go,” he laughs. “Really, I’m surprised.”
There’s no photos of you. There’s no bass player.
“Oh really? Like The Doors?”
In the other reissues, you’re there, but in Let There Be Rock, it’s like you don’t exist.
“There you go,” he laughs. “Was I really there?”
* * *
Mark Evans wasn’t the only person who worked on the album to be denied due recognition. The man who designed AC/DC’s iconic logo, Gerard Huerta, saw it used on the US issue of Let There Be Rock for the very first time. It was, he claims, a one-off commission specifically for that album.
“I still have the purchase order and invoice for the job,” he says. “I was paid what was fair for an album lettering job at the time. It was done for a specific album. They used something else for a follow-up album [Powerage], then came back to this.”
But ever since it’s been used on anything to do with the band. It is a huge part of their appeal, immediately identifiable, religiously worshipped, commercially extremely lucrative.
In papers filed in 1996 and registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in 2003, a Dutch company called Leidseplein Presse B.V. (a name commonly seen in the fine print of AC/DC products) makes a trademark claim for the logo on such products as “pennants made of paper and mounted on sticks,” “decals and windshield decals strips,” “corrugated cardboard storage boxes,” “beach coverup dresses” and “diaper sets.” Similar claims have been made on the name and design around the world. Leidseplein Presse B.V. even successfully appealed to the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board after Angus’s well-known caricature of himself as the devil was initially rejected as a trademark.
