“He was a long-haired recorder-playing hippie,” says Bidstrup. Bon Scott pictured with two very excited female fans while arriving at Melbourne Tullamarine Airport, November 27, 1976. The pair had a history, she told me. And although he smiles for the camera and appears to put on a fair show for the French audience, the poses are not even ironic, merely rote, the inevitable plastic white cup full of whisky glued to his hand, his movements stiff as though in pain.When the world tour finally ended Bon was so floored he slept for most of the 26-hour flight home, waking only to pick at the in-flight meal and guzzle as many free miniature bottles of scotch and bourbon as he could stay awake for. “You just never quite knew which one you were gonna get – until it was too late.” He laughs, but the sadness in his voice is still there.So what’s the true story of Bon Scott? With his wild larrikin laugh, glint in his eye and piratical tattoos festooned along his taut muscly arms, Bon was fond of a ‘blue’ – Aussie-speak for a punch-up.
I remember him wandering around chomping on a leg of roast beef at one very acid-soaked party.”As with The Vallies, Fraternity enjoyed a couple of local hits – notably, “The first time I saw him I think I sort of grimaced a bit,” Irene says now, with a laugh. Not that they were choosy. His charm was disarming.” But that was Bon Scott.
Before AC/DC, says Irene, “he felt like he was an old bloke in the music world and a has-been… like it was all finished for him.” When, within weeks of joining, Malcolm ordered Bon to cut his long hair, he complied immediately. There is plenty of detail, from immigration papers to the origin of the band's name - it came from the electrical safety plate on the Young family's vacuum cleaner.Bon Scott shows off his tattoos in a picture for charity. A half-kilo of mince?
There were various jobs – tractor driver, fisherman, apprentice mechanic. By the time he was a teenager, even his mates called him Bonnie – or Bon, for short.Good at athletics, but better at music, he was the under-17 marching drums champion five years running. Please refresh the page and try again.Louder is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher.
I was prepared for a fairly rough encounter.
The Scotts had been a powerful lowland clan, whose motto was The musical side came from his father, Chick. Bon Scott shows off his tattoos in a picture for charity. Scott writes to Thornton in 1975.
"She lent us some really lovely personal material, like Bon's last passport and his photo album. "After 35 years, 200 million albums and 60 tours, the band remain Australia's best-known musical export.
How AC/DC became stars at home, before setting out to conquer Britain, and, finally, after many setbacks, America, with an album, The stories have been told but the truth has rarely been allowed out from where it’s been hiding in plain sight all these years. After all, they are ones of the largest living cats in the world, taking an honorable second place after the tigers. He was tattooed, tooth missing. “He was drunk most of the time or sleeping it off. Other letters tell of drinking ("I'm a peaceful drunk now") and drugs.
Explaining the Vallies’ appeal, Vince Lovegrove said: “I’m more popular than Bon. Bon Scott would have turned 69 this July 9th.
It’s really not Bon Scott’s death we should be remembering him for, but his extraordinary life.“It keeps you fit, the alcohol, nasty women, sweat on stage, bad food – it’s all very good for you!” Bon had proclaimed in 1979. He was also a prodigious drug-taker, serial womaniser, heroic drunk, poetic lyric writer. Nobody was going to argue with the little hard nut just out of the slammer and Bon’s raucous version of The Kinks’ It was at a Spektors gig that Bon met a stunning 17-year-old blonde named Maria Van Vlijman. His wanderlust was instilled early, when the family emigrated to Australia in 1952, taking advantage of the same ‘assisted passages’ that would later allow the Young family to make a new life for itself there.Staying initially with Isa’s sister in the Melbourne suburbs, Ronnie was enrolled in primary school, where his skills as a marching drummer made him popular with the other kids. “He was lovely to women, and women loved him,” says Fifa Riccobono, former CEO of AC/DC’s label, Albert Music. He hated it and would fight anyone who used it in the playground, but it stuck. How Bon replaced original vocalist Dave Evans, bringing a more earthy image to the band, as well as a staggering talent for storytelling lyrics and a marvellously characterful voice, part-Paul Rodgers, part-Artful Dodger. In private, stoned and tired and unable to see past the next day, he talked of “getting out”. It wasn’t long before he was part of the local ‘mobs’ – street gangs of teenage hoodlums. Hobbling around on crutches, sleeping on Lovegrove’s couch, Bon was working as a gofer at Vince’s talent agency the first time he met the band with whom he made his legend.Fifa Riccobono was A&R manager at Albert Music in the 1970s. The same age as Bon, and with the same tastes for the exotic, Silver had left Adelaide and begun travelling not long after Bon had returned from London with Fraternity.“I just set off around the world on my own and met a lot of very interesting people,” she recalled in a rare interview with 891 ABC Radio in Adelaide in February 2010.