Black to the Future

The death of AC/DC frontman Bon Scott in February 1980 looked like it might've also dealt a fatal blow to the band. But then they got a new singer and made a career-rejuvenating record that became the biggest-selling rock album of all time — Back in Black

- Paul Elliott

FOR ANGUS YOUNG, the pre-show ritual was the same as it had always been. In the dressing room backstage at the Palais des Expositions in the Belgian city of Namur, AC/DC's lead guitarist changed out of jeans and T-shirt and put on his schoolboy uniform, went for a piss and had one last cigarette to take the edge off his nerves. But this was no ordinary gig. On this evening, June 29, 1980, AC/DC were about to perform in public for the first time with their new singer, Brian Johnson. And in the last few minutes before going on stage, as Angus looked around the room, he could see the tension in Johnson's face. “He was shitting himself,” Angus said.

Johnson had big shoes to fill. The man he'd replaced, Bon Scott, had been a great rock 'n' roll singer and charismatic frontman, a free-spirited hellraiser whose easy charm earned him the epithet “Bon the Likeable.” Following Bon's death in February that year, the band had pushed on with Johnson to make the album Back in Black, of which Angus later said, “When I first heard it in all its glory, I thought: 'Fuck, it's magic!'”

But on that warm summer evening in Namur, with the release of the album still a few weeks away, Johnson was a worried man as he waited for showtime, wondering how AC/DC fans would react to him, especially when he was singing the old songs, Bon's words. It was only when he got on stage and looked out into the audience that he realized how much those fans were rooting for him. In the audience he saw a banner raised aloft, on which it was written, “R.I.P. Bon Scott. Good Luck Brian.” “That,” he recalled, “just lifted me.”