Classic Rock Special – AC DC 10th Edition 2025 – Classic Rock Special

It was a couple of weeks into February 1980 when AC/DC’s core songwriting team – that’s brothers Angus and Malcolm Young, of course – met up in a rehearsal studio in London called E-Zee Hire. As soon as the Youngs arrived they plugged in their guitars to work on some tracks for the follow-up to Highway To Hell.

The duo had plenty of ideas already. The songwriting process for their new album had begun the previous year – in hotel rooms, during snatched moments backstage and on the tour bus – while the band had been out on the road. Angus and Malcolm were strumming away energetically when their singer, Bon Scott, walked into the studio. “Need a drummer, fellas?” quipped Scott, alluding to his pre-AC/DC career when he doubled up on drums and vocals in small-time Australian bands.

“I like to keep my hand in, y’know.” “Alright, mate,” chorused the Youngs. “There’s a drum kit right over there.” A loose, light-hearted session commenced. After some general mucking about Angus and Malcolm began to pummel out a riff that sounded mightily distinctive. Bon allied himself to the beat. Swiftly and surely, a song that would eventually be titled Have A Drink On Me took shape.

Later Bon helped formulate the drum intro to a second song – one of Malcolm’s that would gain the moniker Let Me Put My Love Into You. At the end of the rehearsals Bon downed his sticks and suggested another meeting next week. “That’ll give me time to write some lyrics. Then we can have another go at the songs.”

“See you then,” the brothers replied, quietly satisfied with the way the new tunes were developing at this early demo phase – and even with someone other than Phil Rudd on drums. Bon Scott said his goodbyes and left the studio. He never returned. A few days later, on Wednesday, February 20, the terrible news reached Angus, Malcolm and the other folks in the AC/DC camp. Their frontman was dead. The band were stunned and the global rock’n’roll community was shocked to its foundations.

But the mourning was not only for the man who had been christened Ronald Belford Scott. It was also for AC/DC. Surely, people speculated, they could never recover from the blow of losing such a key member – a man whose roughhouse image, raucous vocals and lewd lyricism were such key elements of their success he previous year, 1979, had been a remarkable one in AC/DC’s history.

re AC/DC the greatest rock band of all time? They just might be. They’re certainly the band that brings the Classic Rock office together – the one band we all agree on. For some people, Led Zeppelin are too poncey – too trendy and celebrated. To others, Deep Purple are too artless, Guns N’ Roses overrated, Black Sabbath too inconsistent, The Who too mod, Iron Maiden too juvenile, Metallica too puerile, blah blah blah… Hey, you can’t please everyone. Unless, of course, you’re AC/DC.

Now, having celebrated their 50th anniversary, it’s a given that AC/DC bring people together. Exciting, heavy, groovy, funny, unpretentious, timeless, they were the cover stars of Classic Rock’s best-selling issue ever (CR125 in November 2008), which came out just as the band returned with Black Ice. For another cover (CR115), Art Director Brad Merrett spent an unhealthy amount of time looking at the bulge in Bon Scott’s trousers – and Photoshopping it out (it was so pronounced, our publisher feared that WH Smith might take us off the shelves.

If you’re up there, Bon, please forgive us). Over the years, we’ve covered Bon’s death – a story that gets a brief update here – and the band’s resurrection with Back In Black, and everything in between. Some of our writers got drunk with Bon (the late Harry Doherty, for one, whose drunken day out with Bon is recounted here), and were there at their first UK gigs. Prog magazine Editor Jerry Ewing – an Aussie by birth – saw them in Australia when he was 10.

When the band announced that Brian Johnson had left and was to be replaced by Axl Rose, we were there for their first European shows with him. What next for AC/DC? Who knows. In late 2020, the band announced a reunion with Brian Johnson and launched a chart-topping new album, Power Up, heralding a new era for the legendary rockers.

But what will that era bring? We’ll have to wait and see. Until then, join us as we celebrate the greatest rock band of them all. Brace yourselves for five destructive decades of dirty deeds, riff raff and rock’n’roll damnation. If you want blood, you got it…

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 404e732031f4c922
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 80,145,267 bytes (76.432 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 149
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 475.39 minutes
• Total Words: 95,078
• Total Characters: 543,045
• Average Words per Page: 638.11
• Average Characters per Page: 3644.6

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