![]() ![]() "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.įor years, Bon had always rung his mother on her birthday, February 18th. The next day, Bon Scott was found dead in the car.Ī coroner found the rocker had died of acute alcohol poisoning and death by misadventure. He threw a blanket over Bon in the car and went upstairs to bed. That night one of the friends, Alistair Kinnear, drove Bon home but Bon passed out along the way.Īlistair then drove them to his own home, but again couldn't rouse Bon. "So we more or less asked him if he was looking for a gig." "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. ![]() "And I thought, 'Can I keep up with this guy? My God, he's going to kill me!'"īut as soon as Bon started jamming, Angus Young knew they had found their new frontman. "Here's me, a man 27 years old, there was him, about 18 at the time. "I was really shitting myself," Bon said. Manic guitarist Angus Young was still in his teens. When Bon got up to sing a few tunes with the band at a pub in Adelaide, he was nervous about the age gap. ![]() Vince had heard that AC/DC's leaders, Angus and Malcolm Young, were unhappy with their then-singer, Dave Evans. 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. "He knew most people were finished by the time they were 28, 30. "His problem was that he was 27," says Bon's brother Derek. "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.īut after two years of struggle in the UK, Fraternity had to admit defeat.īon returned to Australia, broke up with Irene and got a job at the Wallaroo Fertiliser plant on the Port Adelaide docks.įor the first time in 10 years, he didn't have a band and he thought his dream of becoming a rock star was over.Īfter the motorbike crash, which came a few months later, he worried that he wouldn't be able to get up and sing again. "While he was in there the others were playing guitars, so they formed a band, and when he came out he had a direction." "It not only taught him a little bit of responsibility, it settled him down," he says. Surprisingly, Derek Scott believes that Bon's time at the juvenile detention centre was probably the best 12 months he ever spent. He was always feeling the need to prove himself.īut 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.Īn 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". "He wanted to be the centre of attention, he loved being the centre of attention."ĭerek Scott puts it down to Bon's small size. "He enjoyed the cheekiness of it all," Lynn says. We all knew that this wasn't going to end well."īon'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. "I just couldn't understand why he didn't really care about everybody who loved him. ![]() Do something about it!'" Bruce tells Australian Story. "I said, 'You are going to f***ing kill yourself. He gave the High Voltage singer a heartfelt warning to cut back on the booze. The experience so terrified him that he swore never to get on Bon's bike again. He'd try anything - magic mushrooms, marijuana, alcohol – and he would take risks on his motorbike."īon'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.īut if there were gaps in the schedule, no shows for a few days or, God forbid, a few weeks, he'd get restless.Īnd the risky behaviour would rear its ugly head again.īruce 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. "He didn't give a bugger about whether he lived or died the next day. "On days when he was bored, there was no future, there was only now. "That's when he would start taking risks, doing wild things," Bruce says. Bruce Howe's voice catches with emotion as he remembers his old friend's biggest vulnerability: boredom. ![]()
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