AC/DC frontman Bon Scott led a high-voltage life. But his friends say the singer’s unglamorous death at age 33 was not a surprise

He’s Australian rock music’s most iconic figure.

After slogging it out through 15 years of touring, boozing and in-your-face performances, Bon Scott was on the cusp of international stardom with AC/DC.

Then, out of the blue, he was found dead in a tiny Renault on a freezing day in London in 1980. He was 33.

Bon, holding his bagpipes, performs for the video for It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock’n’Roll).(Australian Story: ABC Archives)

It was an inglorious end to a life lived in technicolour, one that has spawned countless books, articles and theories from fans and devotees around the world.

I’ve read most of them in the course of researching tonight’s Australian Story episode on the enigmatic singer.

However, the story that most rings true to me is told by a 75-year-old in a wheelchair in the Adelaide working-class suburb of Largs North.

Health problems have prevented Bruce Howe from playing his beloved bass guitar for the past seven years.

But, in the early 1970s, he was Bon Scott’s housemate and the undisputed leader of Fraternity, the art rock band that Bon sang — and played recorder — with before joining AC/DC in 1974.

Bon and Bruce rehearse during Fraternity days.(Supplied: Victor Marshall) Bruce Howe played bass in the 1970s rock band Fraternity.(Australian Story: Tony Hill)

Bruce Howe’s voice catches with emotion as he remembers his old friend’s biggest vulnerability: boredom.

“That’s when he would start taking risks, doing wild things,” Bruce says. “On days when he was bored, there was no future, there was only now.

“He didn’t give a bugger about whether he lived or died the next day. He’d try anything — magic mushrooms, marijuana, alcohol – and he would take risks on his motorbike.”

Bon’s top priority was always the band, always looking forward to the next show and doing everything he could to make sure it was a cracker.

But if there were gaps in the schedule, no shows for a few days or, God forbid, a few weeks, he’d get restless.

And the risky behaviour would rear its ugly head again.

Bruce remembers catching a ride on the back of Bon’s motorbike after a big night in Adelaide’s Lord Melbourne Hotel, zooming around corners so fast that their boots were almost scraping on the road.

The experience so terrified him that he swore never to get on Bon’s bike again. He gave the High Voltage singer a heartfelt warning to cut back on the booze.

“I said, ‘You are going to f***ing kill yourself. Do something about it!'” Bruce tells Australian Story.

“I just couldn’t understand why he didn’t really care about everybody who loved him. We all knew that this wasn’t going to end well.”

Friends say they warned Bon Scott to stop drinking or face an early grave.(Supplied)

In May 1974, after a fight in an Adelaide pub and a bit to drink, Bon was almost killed in a horrific motorbike crash that left him scarred, toothless and in hospital for weeks.

When Bruce heard the news, he was too angry to even visit his mate in hospital.

“I just couldn’t believe that I was right, that he was going to hurt himself badly, if not kill himself,” he says. “Thank God he didn’t.”

Bruce Howe’s sentiments are echoed by Bon’s brother, Derek Scott.

In the first interview he’s ever given about his famous sibling, Derek told Australian Story there was pattern to Bon’s behaviour.

“He did get bored very quickly,” says Derek. “That was the biggest problem. When he got bored, he drank.

“He never worried about tomorrow. Tomorrow is another day.”

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 2 minutes 37 seconds2m 37s What happened the night Bon Scott almost died in a motorcycle crash, as told by the driver. How ‘Ronnie from Bonnie’ became a rockstar

Derek is speaking with Australian Story at his spotless home in Fremantle, WA, not far from where the Scott boys grew up in the 1960s.

The family moved from Kirriemuir, Scotland, in 1952 to seek a new life in sunny Australia.

Bon, or Ron as he was christened, was five years old at the time.

“My mother used to call him Ronnie,” Derek says. “So it was Ronnie Scott from Bonnie Scotland.

“It wasn’t until he started in the band that they broke it down to Bon. In the family, we always called him Ron.”

Derek Scott has given an interview to the media for the first time.(Australian Story: Marc Smith) Derek visits the grave of his late brother and AC/DC frontman Bon Scott, buried at Fremantle Cemetery in Perth, WA.(Australian Story: Marc Smith)

Music was in the family, with Bon’s father “Chick” playing bagpipes and Bon picking up the drumsticks at an early age.

In 1962, as members of the Fremantle Scots Pipe Band, they performed together at the opening of the Empire Games in Perth.

A young Bon with his father “Chick” Scott, both wearing Scottish pipe band uniforms.(Supplied: Scott family)

Bon’s friend Lynn Prior, who met him as a teenager, says he was very quiet one-on-one, but when other people were around, he was always a performer.

“He enjoyed the cheekiness of it all,” Lynn says. “He wanted to be the centre of attention, he loved being the centre of attention.”

Derek Scott puts it down to Bon’s small size. He was always feeling the need to prove himself.

But at 16, Bon Scott had a run-in with the law and was sentenced to 12 months at the Riverbank Juvenile Detention Centre in Perth.

An article published in March 1963 in The West Australian lists an (unnamed) 16-year-old youth pleading guilty to charges of “giving a false name and address to police, escaping legal custody, having unlawful carnal knowledge, and stealing 12 gallons of petrol”.

Surprisingly, Derek Scott believes that Bon’s time at the juvenile detention centre was probably the best 12 months he ever spent.

“It not only taught him a little bit of responsibility, it settled him down,” he says.

“While he was in there the others were playing guitars, so they formed a band, and when he came out he had a direction.”

Bon started off on drums in his first band.(Supplied: Scott family)

He joined a band called The Spektors, playing covers of all their favourites, with Bon on drums.

Singer Vince Lovegrove, from the rival band The Winstons, suggested they join forces and form a new band, The Valentines, with Vince and Bon sharing the singing duties.

“Bon was the better singer out of the two of us,” says Vince, in an interview recorded in 2004 (he died in 2012).

“The unspoken word was that if we did anything that required a bit more vocal range, then he would sing lead and I would sing harmony.”

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The Valentines became hugely popular in Perth but broke up in 1970 after being busted for marijuana possession.

Bon was immediately snapped up by Fraternity, a musically ambitious band that went on to win the biggest prize in music at the time, the Hoadley’s Battle of the Sounds.

First prize was $2,000 cash and a return trip to Los Angeles by ship.

But Bon’s conviction for drug possession and his misdemeanours as a youth meant he couldn’t get a visa for entry into the United States.

So the band headed for England instead. Not long before they left, Bon married his girlfriend of four months, Irene.

Why the rush? Because Fraternity’s management would only pay the fares for wives, not for girlfriends.

The Valentines were an Australian pop band from 1966 to 1970.(Supplied: Victor Marshall) Wrong band at the wrong time

Arriving in London with an entourage of 17 people and their own bus shipped over from Australia, they soon found that getting gigs was harder than expected.

Bon likened it to “bashing your head against a wall”.

“We got a house, 20 people in one house, and we played gigs that cost us twice as much to play as we got paid for,” he said in a 1978 interview in Atlanta.

In the words of Fraternity’s Bruce Howe, they very quickly realised they were the wrong band at the wrong time.

While waiting for gigs, Bruce coached Bon on how to become a more dynamic performer.

At the time, he barely moved around the stage, hugging the microphone stand like it was a security blanket.

Fraternity perform at Semaphore beachfront in South Australia.(Supplied: Victor Marshall)

They even studied the local TV newsreaders, practising how to look straight down the barrel of the camera to keep people’s attention.

Bon worked doing manual labour after his music career stalled in the early 1970s.(Supplied: Victor Marshall)

“Bon was like a sponge, learning and taking and grabbing bits to make his craft better, and Fraternity was where Bon learned to be a frontman,” says his old friend Jimmy Barnes.

But after two years of struggle in the UK, Fraternity had to admit defeat.

Bon returned to Australia, broke up with Irene and got a job at the Wallaroo Fertiliser plant on the Port Adelaide docks.

For the first time in 10 years, he didn’t have a band and he thought his dream of becoming a rock star was over.

After the motorbike crash, which came a few months later, he worried that he wouldn’t be able to get up and sing again.

“His problem was that he was 27,” says Bon’s brother Derek. “He knew most people were finished by the time they were 28, 30.

‘Can I keep up?’: Bon joins AC/DC

It was Bon’s former bandmate Vince Lovegrove, by this time working as a promoter in Adelaide, who suggested he try out for a hot new band called AC/DC.

Vince had heard that AC/DC’s leaders, Angus and Malcolm Young, were unhappy with their then-singer, Dave Evans.

When Bon got up to sing a few tunes with the band at a pub in Adelaide, he was nervous about the age gap.

Manic guitarist Angus Young was still in his teens.

“I was really shitting myself,” Bon said. “Here’s me, a man 27 years old, there was him, about 18 at the time.

“And I thought, ‘Can I keep up with this guy? My God, he’s going to kill me!'”

But as soon as Bon started jamming, Angus Young knew they had found their new frontman.

“I think from the moment he got on stage he was just one of those people that had that presence,” Angus told the ABC in a 1998 interview for the Long Way to the Top documentary series.

“So we more or less asked him if he was looking for a gig.”

Bon Scott in 1976.(Getty Images: Dick Barnatt)

When AC/DC played in Sydney a few weeks later — with Bon on vocals for the first time — Fifa Riccobono from the band’s publishing company, Alberts Music, was sent to check him out.

She thought he was rough and rude – but perfect.

“He had a tooth missing, he had tattoos all over him,” Fifa tells Australian Story. “He was loud, he was cussing, but he just fitted in so well with the band it was ridiculous.”

Within months, they were in the recording studio, where the band became known for their high-energy performances, playing as if there were 10,000 screaming fans in the small room with them.

And then the following year, along came Countdown. If ever there was a band that was tailor made for the new ABC youth music show, it was AC/DC.

It was a chance for Bon to try out his new, more extroverted stage persona, and his new skills in working with a television camera.

Molly Meldrum dresses in drag for AC/DC’s 1975 appearance on Countdown. The band would go on to appear 40 times.(Australian Story: ABC Archives)

“They would absolutely thrive on the atmosphere of having the audience there, touchable, only a few feet away,” says Paul Drane, producer/director of Countdown from 1975 to 1977.

“Bon just ate up television. He was made for it.”

Bon dressed up as a schoolgirl for an appearance on Countdown. The photographs of this performance are digitised from the ABC archives for the first time in 40 years.(Australian Story: ABC Archives) ‘He drank far too much’: Death of a rock legend

By 1976, AC/DC had gone as far as they could in Australia and set off for London.

From the start, it had been their vision to go out and conquer the world, and for Bon it was a second shot at overseas success after the failure of Fraternity.

AC/DC on the set of the Jail Break music video in 1976.(Supplied: Philip Morris)

AC/DC spent the next three years performing and touring relentlessly, building up an audience first in Britain, then in Europe and finally tackling the American scene.

Bon performs with AC/DC in Hollywood, California, in 1977.(Getty Images: Michael Ochs Archives)

By the time the Highway to Hell album came out in 1979, everything was falling into place, according to Murray Engleheart, author of the book AC/DC Maximum Rock and Roll.

“Within the next 12 months, they were expected to be one of the biggest acts on the planet,” Engleheart says.

“The next album was going to be the one that was really going to kick them over the goal posts.”

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But friends were starting to notice a change in Bon’s state of mind when he came back to Australia each Christmas.

He was drinking a lot, even by his standards.

He seemed lonely and told one old friend that he’d been looking to buy property in Perth, not far from where his parents lived.

The last time Fraternity’s Bruce Howe saw him, Bon was hinting that he wanted to settle down and have children.

“Maybe he’d come to the stage where he’d achieved his dream, he’d found his holy grail, but the holy grail might have looked like an empty goblet,” Bruce says.

By 1976, AC/DC were ready to go international and success followed.(ABC Archives)

Back in London in early 1980, the band set to work in the recording studio.

Angus and Malcolm Young were working on guitar tracks, and Bon was told he wasn’t needed for a few days.

It meant Bon was vulnerable to his biggest weakness — boredom.

“That pattern of getting bored and restless, for him that was excruciating,” Bruce says.

To relieve the boredom, he called some friends to go drinking with, and they drank way too much.

Bon would often combat boredom by turning to drinking.(Supplied: Philip Morris)

That night one of the friends, Alistair Kinnear, drove Bon home but Bon passed out along the way.

Alistair then drove them to his own home, but again couldn’t rouse Bon.

He threw a blanket over Bon in the car and went upstairs to bed.

The next day, Bon Scott was found dead in the car.

A coroner found the rocker had died of acute alcohol poisoning and death by misadventure.

“Bon’s passing as he did, on his own in a car in the freezing cold, after all his hard work and all his heartbreak getting there, was just an incredibly sad, lonely and unglamorous way to go out,” Murray Engleheart says.

It was February 19, 1980.

For years, Bon had always rung his mother on her birthday, February 18th. But this time when the phone rang, it was AC/DC’s Malcolm Young.

“[Mum] thought, ‘Oh, Ron’s ringing me to say happy birthday,’ which he often did the next day because of the time difference,” Derek Scott says.

“Malcolm didn’t have time to explain because it was hitting the airwaves and he didn’t want them to hear it on the radio. So he just said, ‘Ron died.'”

For his old friend Bruce, the news was heart-wrenching but unfortunately not surprising.

“He drank far too much,” Bruce says. “I did wonder if he would push it too far one day. And sadly, he obviously did.”

Friend and former Young Talent Time host Johnny Young’s view is that Bon had just wanted to go home and be with his family.

Unfortunately, he went for the bottle instead.

As it turned out, it was Bon’s parents who urged the remaining members of AC/DC to continue the band. Bon would not have wanted them to give up.

Within months, they had recruited as their new lead singer Brian Johnson, who Bon had met and admired while in London with Fraternity years before.

AC/DC’s subsequent album, Back in Black, became the second-best-selling album in music history, and the group remains one of the biggest rock acts in the world.

Meanwhile, four decades on, Bon’s legend has only grown.

His grave in Fremantle has become a kind of shrine to the iconic singer, regarded by millions as the ultimate rock music frontman.

AC/DC fans still gather in Fremantle to see Bon Scott’s memorial statue.(ABC: Kate Leaver)

“He was the best rock and roll singer I’ve ever seen,” Cold Chisel singer Jimmy Barnes says. “To this day, I don’t think there’s a rock and roll singer in the world that can hold their own against him.”

For Brian Johnson, Bon Scott remains an inspiration, not just for his singing but for his cheeky sense of humour.

“When I hear him talking in old interviews, I still laugh, even if I’ve seen it 20 times,” Brian says.

“He was a special guy. I wish I had got to know him more. But I didn’t,” he says, ruefully. “But that’s life.”

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Posted 16h ago16 hours agoSun 8 May 2022 at 7:52pm, updated 1h ago1 hours agoMon 9 May 2022 at 10:00am