1. Bon Scott moved to Australia with his family in 1952 at the age of six, living in Melbourne for four years before settling in Fremantle, Western Australia.
34 Facts About Bon Scott
1. 2.
Bon Scott formed his first band, the Spektors, in 1964 and became the band's drummer and occasional lead vocalist.
3.
However, on 19 February 1980, Bon Scott died after a night out in London with former musician and alleged drug dealer Alistair Kinnear.
4.
Ronald Belford Bon Scott was born on 9 July 1946 at Fyfe Jamieson Maternity Hospital in Forfar, Scotland, to Charles Belford "Chick" Bon Scott and Isabelle Cunningham "Isa" Mitchell.
5.
Bon Scott grew up in Kirriemuir and was the Scotts' second child; their first was a boy born in 1943, Sandy, who died shortly after birth.
6.
Bon Scott joined the associated Fremantle Scots Pipe Band, learning the drums.
7.
Bon Scott attended North Fremantle Primary School and later John Curtin College of the Arts until he dropped out at the age of 15.
8.
Bon Scott subsequently worked as a farmhand and a crayfisherman, and was later a trainee weighing-machine mechanic.
9.
Bon Scott attempted to join the Australian Army, but was rejected and deemed "socially maladjusted".
10.
In 1966, they merged with another local band, the Winstons, and formed The Valentines, in which Bon Scott was co-lead singer with Vince Lovegrove.
11.
Bon Scott moved to Adelaide in 1970 and joined the progressive rock group Fraternity.
12.
Bon Scott stormed out of the venue, threw a bottle of Jack Daniel's to the ground, then sped off on his Suzuki GT550 motorbike.
13.
Bon Scott suffered serious injuries from the ensuing motorcycle accident, spending three days in a coma and a further 18 days in hospital.
14.
The boys ripped through all these classic numbers and then finally, with enough pressure from Vince, Bon Scott climbed onto the stage.
15.
Bon Scott's appointment coincided with him working as a chauffeur for the band at the time until an audition promoted him to lead singer.
16.
Bon Scott met Irene Thornton, from Adelaide, in 1971 while he was the lead singer for Fraternity.
17.
On 15 February 1980, Bon Scott attended a session where Malcolm and Angus Young were working on the beginnings of two songs that would later be recorded on the Back in Black album: "Have a Drink On Me" and "Let Me Put My Love Into You", with Bon Scott accompanying on drums rather than singing or writing lyrics.
18.
Days earlier, Scott had gone with Mick Cocks to visit their friends the French group Trust in the Scorpio Sound studio in London, where they recorded the album Repression; Scott was working on the English adaptation of texts by Bernie Bonvoisin for the English version of the album.
19.
Sometime during the late evening of 18 February and early morning of Tuesday, 19 February 1980, Bon Scott passed out and died at the age of 33.
20.
Bon Scott had just visited a London club called the Music Machine.
21.
Bon Scott was allegedly left to sleep in a Renault 5 owned by his friend Alistair Kinnear, at 67 Overhill Road in East Dulwich.
22.
Bon Scott was taken to King's College Hospital in Camberwell, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
23.
The official report of the coroner concluded that Bon Scott had died of "acute alcohol poisoning" and classified it as "death by misadventure".
24.
In 1994, when Clinton Walker published his book Highway to Hell, it portrayed Bon Scott as moving in drug-heavy circles in his final days in London but was emphatic that even as an alcoholic and inveterate pot-smoker, he was not a co-dependent heroin user, and it supported the coroner's findings.
25.
An alternative account of Bon Scott's death has been made by Australian author Jesse Fink in his book Bon: The Last Highway, which was first published in 2017.
26.
Bon Scott establishes that Scott's blood alcohol content was.
27.
The author counters that since all the new eyewitnesses Fink uncovered state they did not actually see Bon Scott take any heroin, and since the fact remains that the coroner found nothing in his bloodstream but alcohol, there is still no hard evidence that heroin was involved in his death.
28.
However, it was eventually decided that Bon Scott would have wanted them to continue, and with the Bon Scott family's encouragement, the band hired Brian Johnson as their new vocalist.
29.
The issue of whether Bon Scott's lyrics were used, uncredited, on the album is an enduring topic of debate.
30.
The thing I loved most about Bon Scott, was his almost unique self honesty.
31.
In 2004, the song "Highway to Hell" that Bon Scott co-wrote with Malcolm and Angus Young ranked 254 on Rolling Stones The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
32.
Singer and guitarist Dave Mustaine talked about how much Bon Scott had influenced him.
33.
Fink's books claim that Bon Scott died from a lethal combination of alcohol and heroin, while Walker backs the coroner's finding of alcohol poisoning.
34.
The controversial point that he and Walker both agree on is that many of Bon Scott's lyrics were co-opted, uncredited, into Back in Black.