Our first-hand account of the very first time we encountered a nascent AC/DC – and how little we were impressed by the future rock 'n' roll legends
Oct 14, 2007 04:30 AM
GREG QUILL
ENTERTAINMENT COLUMNIST
It was one of those moments you never forget.
It's a memory that rises with a sharp pain in the back of my brain whenever I hear "Highway To Hell" or "You Shook Me All Night Long," a memory tinged with regret, fear and revelation.
It came again a few days ago while I watched a promo clip of the two-disc DVD AC/DC retrospective Plug Me In, which hits the stores this week.
It's the memory of my first encounter with AC/DC.
Not pleasant at all.
In Melbourne – Australia's music capital in late 1974 – there was already a buzz about this new band from Sydney. It had something to do with pedigree. Scottish émigrés Angus and Malcolm Young were the younger brothers of George Young, co-founder of the Easybeats with Harry Vanda, Australia's fabled first real internationally recognized rock 'n' roll band.
George and Harry were enormously talented songwriters and producers, whose string of hits in the mid-1960s, co-written with Easybeats singer Stevie Wright, included "Friday on My Mind," "She's So Fine," "Wedding Ring" and "Come and See Her," among others. All were benchmark achievements in the development of a distinctive, original and innovative strain of indigenous Oz-rock in the post-Beatles boom years.
Harry and George were smart, rich and, still in their 30s, head poobahs of their own mighty publishing and production empire. That they had chosen to invest their wisdom, money and experience in George's younger brothers – unknown quantities in the domestic rock 'n' roll circuit in which myself and my band, Country Radio, were among countless road-sore veterans – signalled something more important than nepotism.
But what got me down to the Hard Rock Café in Melbourne's rock club- crowded core that night late in 1974 – or maybe it was Sebastian's or the Thumpin' Tum – was the enthusiasm of AC/DC's new singer and songwriting collaborator, Bon Scott.
I didn't know him well. We'd run into one another on the road often enough. We'd shared beers, joints and occasional yarns backstage at clubs and outdoor rock festivals when Bon fronted the progressive roots/jazz collective Fraternity, a kind of hairy, loosey-goosey, feel-good hippie outfit from Adelaide that came across as a kinder and gentler rural Australian version of The Band.
Far behind Bon were his spangled pop-star days as lead singer with The Valentines, who wore black Spandex, had recorded songs written for them by Vanda and Young and were, a decade earlier, engaged in a relentless sissy celebrity war with Rick Springfield's band Zoot, who wore pink Spandex.
With Fraternity, Bon had earned street cred among Australia's new breed of real rock musicians. Besides, he was a helluva nice bloke, an energetic entertainer and a pretty good singer.
He never forgot a face. He seemed genuinely interested in what other musicians were doing or had to say. He had an engaging smile and an easy manner. When I knew him, mere rock stardom seemed to be the last thing on his mind.
Which is why I was surprised to learn Bon had hooked up with these unknown Young brothers. He had auditioned for them first as a drummer, then took to driving them to gigs before he got a shot as singer.
"You've gotta see these kids," he told me a couple of days before their Melbourne debut. "They're loud and dirty ... and I love it."
I imagined the worst – juvenile acolytes of Billy Thorpe & The Aztecs, Australia's loudest band and the nation's beloved rock 'n' roll gods, whose peculiar brand of extreme, blues-based, three-chord grind-and-stomp was neither clever nor smart, but kept beer flowing in enormous quantities wherever and whenever they played.
But Billy's days were numbered. These were times of great inventiveness and pride in Australian popular music. From Daddy Cool to The Dingoes, from Skyhooks to Split Enz (adopted New Zealanders), from Dragon to Cold Chisel, from the Bushwackers to Spectrum, the field was rich, fertile and diverse. It was mature, musically intelligent, adventurous. "Loud and dirty" sounded retrograde to me. So what did Bon Scott see in AC/DC?
I never did find a satisfactory answer. That first Melbourne show, attended by every musician in the city who didn't have a reason to be out of town – all of them gathered at the behest of powerful club owner Michael Browning, who would soon become AC/DC's manager – was not seductive.
It was a vulgar assault.
Primal grooves and appropriated vintage riffs held together lyrics that reeked of excess, of adolescent fantasies about sex, drugs and bad behaviour. Bon strutted and preened and bellowed with venal fury. He was someone I didn't recognize.
Devoid of taste, subtlety and imagination, and propelled by an antic schoolboy guitarist sporting short pants and a blazer, a back satchel and an obscene sneer, AC/DC drove me into a cold and greasy Melbourne night.
With "She's Got The Jack" still ringing in my ears, I actually felt as if I'd been kicked in the guts. I was queasy. The air around me seemed foul. If this was the future of rock 'n' roll, I thought, we're all doomed.
When I saw Bon a few days later in the Station Hotel in Prahran, the inner city village where I lived, I hoped he wouldn't ask for my impressions.
He did.
"Um ... are you sure you want to do this?" I mumbled. "I really think you've backed the wrong horse. These kids are going nowhere."
And, though I didn't know it then, my career as a music critic was already well underway.
ça fait plaisir ! 
