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AC/DC guitarist Angus Young has set the record straight on Bon Scott’s involvement on what would become the band’s best-selling album.
In an interview with Paste Magazine, Angus Young corrected a long-standing rumor that former singer Bon Scott recorded anything for their album ‘Back In Black’.
Angus said that at the time before Scott’s death he and Malcolm had started working out ideas for songs for what would eventually make their way on to ‘Back In Black’. The Young brothers would meet at their rehearsal room with their guitars and a drum set & then they’d take turns who was playing guitar and who was tapping out a simple rhythm on the drum set. Then one night as they were working Scott came over and they had him get behind the drums. Angus noted that before joining AC/DC Bon originally started out as a drummer.
When Scott joined the brothers they were working on what would become the intro for “Hells Bells”. Once they had sorted that out and how they wanted the song to kinda go they turned to start working on the intro for what would become “Have A Drink On Me”. Angus says that was really the only involvement Bon had with any of those songs.
He notes that after that writing session that night Bon told them that they would get together the next week to start going through stuff, but unfortunately he passed away before that could happen.
After Bon had passed Angus did admit in the interview that they were debating on whether they wanted to continue with a new singer or call it quits. He said it was a hard decision because Bon had his own unique style and character. The odds of finding that kind of frontman were going to be hard, but they wanted somebody that had their own character that wasn’t going to be just a Bon rip-off. Luckily for the band, they met Brian Johnson and they felt he had his own unique character and decided to push forward with Johnson fronting the band.
AC/DC’s ‘Back In Black’ album went on to peak at number 4 on The Billboard 200 Album Chart in 1980 and has since been certified Diamond by the RIAA for over 25 million copies sold in the US alone!
