When AC/DC arrive in Melbourne in mid-November, city authorities want the band to re-enactment of their iconic music video for It’s A Long Way To The Top.

This was shot on a flatbed truck during lunch hour on the city’s main thoroughfare, Swanston Street, on Monday, February 23 1976. They were joined by three pipers from the Rats of Tobruk Pipe Band – Les Kenfield, Alan Butterworth and Kevin Conlon – to whom Bon Scott would send postcards from all over the world afterwards.

It was directed for the ABC TV show Countdown by the show’s Paul Drane for $380 (about $2900 in today’s money). Here are some more bits of AC/DC trivia ahead of their highly anticipated Australian tour.

To The Top

How did the bagpipes end up on It’s A Long Way To The Top in the first place?

The song atypically came out of a jam in the studio. Co-producer George Young then worked on the track all night. In the morning, he decided it needed a drone sound as a call-and-response to Angus Young’s guitar licks.

He recalled Bon mouthing off about being in a pipe band as a child in Fremantle, and gave him some money to go and buy bagpipes.

Angus related to this writer: “George decided to let Bon put his mouth where his mouth was!”

Scott wandered off to a music store on Sydney’s Park Street and got a set for $479 (close to $3,675 today) – which bassist Mark Evans ruefully said in his memoirs, could have bought two Strat guitars for the same money.

The bagpipes were still in their box when the singer brought them back to the studio. Evans remembered, ‘’Three Scotsmen trying to put a set of bagpipes together … like a Scottish Rubik’s Cube. There was swearing… ‘’ 

An exasperated George snapped at Bon, ‘’You said you used to play in a pipe band!’’ Bon responded ‘’I was the drummer.’’

The song was a nightmare to play live. The band had to tune to the pipe. The last straw came during a 1976 gig at St Albans High School in Melbourne, when Scott stored the instrument on side of stage, and fans destroyed it.

After that, AC/DC either used loops or substituted an extended guitar solo by Angus.

Loch Of The Draw

It’s well known that the Back In Black album was a tribute to Bon (“Forget the hearse ‘cos I’ll never die”). A successful one, too. By last year, it had sold 50 million worldwide (the second highest-selling long player after Michael Jackson’s Thriller), with 27 million of those in America.

But Brian Johnson revealed a year or two later, Malcolm and he opted for another Bon tribute – by going to the lake in Scotland where the infamous Loch Ness supposedly lived and luring her out with a box of fireworks.

"We walked straight into the water; we didn't even take our shoes off. And there we were giggling and laughing, trying to set these fireworks. 

“Everything got soaked in the water, and we all fell down, and of course, we thought we had seen it. We weren't sure."

Shark On The Wall

The June 2011 edition of Australian Geographic reported that Matt Waller, a tour operator in South Australia’s Neptune Bay, experimented with what music attracted sharks. 

Using underwater speakers attached to diving cages, he blasted out a bunch of Aussie music but got no response.

But it was a different story, Waller said, with AC/DC’s You Shook Me All Night Long and Back In Black. The great whites swam up to “rub their faces against the source of the music.”

It was not reciprocal, however. While recording in the Bahamas, AC/DC struck up a friendship with Talking Heads, who were also there working and invited them to go scuba diving. They refused. Why? ‘SHARKS!’ they shouted.

In the same way, researchers at the University of South Australia found playing Thunderstruck during chemotherapy treatment was effective at improving the efficiency of the drug.

According to a report, Thunderstruck hit the right button because “It hits all the right notes. Vibrations from the song cause silicon micro particles carrying the chemo drug inside a vacuum to bounce. 

“This results in a polymer coating that prevents the drug from escaping while being administered, improving delivery to cancer cells.” 

Thunderstruck

Will the rumoured 2025 Australian tour sell more tickets than their last visits?

The last one, Rock Or Bust in 2015, shifted 520,000 tickets from 11 Aussie shows, including two in New Zealand. Worldwide, over two years, it reached 4 million fans at 86 shows, grossing US$221.1 million.

Black Ice in 2009 was their biggest tour, moving 750,000 tickets across ANZ, 650,000 in Australia. Worldwide, it did 160 dates to 4.9 million sporting black T-shirts. 

It was one of history's highest-grossing concert tours, grossing $441.6 million, third at the time behind The Rolling Stones' A Bigger Bang ($558.3 million) and U2's 360° ($736.1 million).

On the current PWR UP tour, they sold an astounding 1.7 million tickets on the first day of sale through Europe, eventually over 2 million tickets over 24 shows.

The NME reported that on the Black Ice Tour, a mathematically inclined fan calculated that on average, Brian would sing the words “black”, “rock” and “hell” a combined 163 times a night.

Brain Shake

You Shook Me All Night Long is reportedly the most popular track in North American strip clubs, because the lyrics and groove match with pole dancing. 

We’re not sure how true this is, but we’re certainly not pouring cold water on it.

It was the first set of lyrics written by Brian for the band. They were in the Bahamas working on Back In Black, and Malcolm told him he already had a title for it.

Brian did it in ten minutes while sitting on the bog (as you do), lines inspired by “how women and cars are the same” and by US tourists on the beach “with their American thighs”. 

After it was recorded, he told Malcolm, “That’s the best song ever recorded.” To which the guitarist responded, “You just might be right, Brian.”

It’s been covered extensively, including by Celine Dion, Shania Twain and bluegrass band Hayseed Dixie.

Forever Youngs

There were seven Young brothers and a sister, George, who was with The Easybeats, and of course, Angus and Malcolm. An elder brother, Alexander, who didn’t migrate to Australia, was in the less-successful pop band Grapefruit.

Nephew Steve, an AC/DC member, has a son, Gus (for Angus), who played in AC/DC tribute bands in the UK.

An apparent relative is filmmaker Brendan Young, who started out as a child actor, credited in the first Mad Max movie (1979) as “Boy outside the Halls of Justice.”

During The Easybeats’ heyday in the 1960s, fans in their school uniforms would turn up outside the family home at 4 Burleigh Street in Burwood screaming, and police would be called. Once, when Angus was returning home from school, he was not allowed in because they thought he was another fan.

Hell’s Bells

AC/DC and conservative Christians have been duking it out for years, for alleged satanic references in their lyrics and gory album covers. There were accusations that AC/DC really stands for Anti-Christ Devil’s Children or After Christ, Devil Comes. There were burnings of AC/DC records and protests outside shows.

After transforming the Biblical phrase “let there be light” to Let There Be Rock (Bon found it in a copy of a bible he bought), it’s possible the Christian loony-right got their own back. While recording the track, Angus’ guitar amp caught fire – but he had to keep playing as George shouted from the studio control room, “Keep going!”

The video was shot in July 1977 at the Kirk Gallery Church in Surry Hills, Sydney. Most of the band were dressed as altar boys, Angus with a halo prop, and Bon as a priest. At the end of the shoot, Bon took a theatrical leap off the podium for the cameras… and broke his ankle.

Dog Eat Dog

Gene Simmons of KISS tells how he went to see AC/DC’s first show in Los Angeles in a club (“I think it was the Troubadour”). There were only a handful of people there, but he was zipped by the way they played as if to thousands.

He went backstage to introduce himself (Angus: “uh, you’re that guy”) and invited him to a 1 am snack at his fave hot dog joint, Ben Franks on Sunset Strip.

“Angus asked for a hot dog and beans, but without the roll. When it came, he picked up the dog and put it sideways in his mouth and started to chew because in front, there were no teeth. It was unbelievable.”

Simmons invited AC/DC on to KISS’ next tour, putting them in front of 50,000 people a night and seeing them whip up a storm.

Chunderstruck

Bon Scott’s daring motorbike riding gave him the nickname Ronnie Roadtest. 

He used to take the Canning Highway from his hometown of Fremantle to his favourite watering holes in Perth, including the Raffles Hotel. Its reputation for accidents led to locals calling it the Highway To Hell.

On early Australian tours, Scott decided he’d ride from gig to gig on his bike rather than on the tour bus. The worried road crew nicked the bike and told him it was stolen, forcing him onto the relative safety of the bus. 

Miraculously it was “recovered” on the tour’s final show. The bike was “stolen” on the next tour too, and “found” at the end, and Bon never sussed.

Hell Ain’t A Bad Place To Be

Around the release of 1995’s Ballbreaker, there was a deal with Marvel Comics where the album cover would be depicted as comic book heroes illustrated by David McMacken (later replaced by a Robert Ellis shot of Angus) with inside sleeve portraits by Thomas Tenney.

There was also a comic book series planned with Tenney. It was based around Bon in hell, winning a card game, allowing him to return to sing with the band. Apparently, the band wasn’t doing hoops over this. In any case, Marvel went through a shake-up, and the comic idea disappeared.

Witch’s Spell

Here are some strange coincidences.

The Scottish town of Kirriemuir, where Bon Scott was born, is in the county of Angus. 

Bon’s mother, Isa’s maiden name, was Mitchell, which is Malcolm’s middle name.

Velvet Underground, the Newcastle, NSW, psychedelic band Malcolm played in, also had a singer named Brian Johnson. But this was not the one who kept setting himself on fire onstage as part of his routine. Both Brians came from towns named Newcastle.

The first time that Bon Scott sang live with AC/DC as an official member was at the Masonic Hall in Brighton-Le-Sands, Sydney. The date was October 5, 1974 – the same day as Brian Johnson’s birthday. 

Bon, at the time, their tour van driver had “auditioned” for them a month before at the Pooraka Hotel in Adelaide. He downed two bottles of bourbon before he got on. “I hope he can walk, much less sing,” a bemused Angus told Malcolm.

Heatseeking

It’s well known how naming the band after the ‘AC/DC’ ("alternating current/direct current electricity) output on Malcolm and Angus’ sister’s sewing machine was a pivotal moment in the band’s timeline.

So, too, was another household item: a Hoover vacuum cleaner.

After Bon’s death in 1980, they thought of the Easybeats’ Stevie Wright, Gary Holston of Heavy Metal Kids and Allen Fryer from the Sydney band Heaven, who were, incidentally, managed by early AC/DC manager Michael Browning.

The Youngs recalled how Bon had spoken about how he’d seen Brian Johnson in his band Geordie and what a great performer he was, falling and writhing on the stage.

(In fact, Johnson was having an appendicitis attack at the time, but felt obliged to finish the gig off in pain before rushing off to the hospital.)

When Brian got the call inviting him to come to London for a try-out, he was 32 (much older than the band), washed up, had an auto mechanics shop, and was living in the basement of his parents’ home in Newcastle. “A loser”, he shrugged.

He wasn’t really interested in being a band again and had no intention of auditioning.

As luck turned out, thirty minutes later, he got another call from London, this time from an old friend who’d joined an ad agency. 

He had landed the Hoover account and offered the singer £350 to appear on a jingle for it. It was on the same day as AC/DC’s audition.

It was good money, so Brian did the 5.5 hour drive to London. After doing the jingle, he was ready for the drive back. He realised the AC/DC audition was just a street away and, on impulse, walked over.

He found them looking miserable, with no luck in finding a new singer. Malcolm pressed a bottle of Newcastle pale ale in his hand as a greeting, and they roared through Whole Lotta Rosie and Highway To Hell.

Johnson suggested Tina Turner’s Nutbush City Limits “because I really like the song.” The others looked mortified. But it was the clincher. Johnson said, “I got goosebumps, they got goosebumps.”

At the end, he thanked them and said he had to go back to Newcastle to open his shop at 6 am. They yelped, “You can’t go!”

Within a few weeks, he was announced as the new boy, and in the Bahamas, working on Back In Black at Compass Point Studios.

It was a baptism of fire. Electrical storms kept cutting the power to the studio, their gear got held up at customs, and crabs would walk across the studio floor.

They were firmly told by the studio’s fierce matriarch to keep six-foot fishing spears in their bedrooms (“more like concrete cells, really, very basic”) in case of knife-wielding burglars at night.

Nevertheless, Johnson would say, “It was the most magical time of my life.”