The Eternal AC/DC Question – Bon Scott Or Brian Johnson…Who’s Your Favorite AC/DC Singer?

I was getting ready for that oldest of summer traditions, the family vacation, last weekend – gassing up the wood paneled station wagon, pulling together a picnic basket of bologna sandwiches, strapping luggage to the roof, etc – when my mind turned to AC/DC. I couldn’t help but think of that 40+ year old question that always used to pop up around AC/DC, who’s your favorite of their lead singers? Sadly, other than lead guitarist Angus Young, AC/DC has had to replace each member of the band at one point or another. They changed bass players early on. Drummer Phil Rudd quit and returned a few times. Alas, we lost rhythm guitarist and founding member Malcolm Young a few years back.  But perhaps the most seismic loss in AC/DC was when original lead singer Bon Scott died in February of 1980 while out on a drinking spree. It was ruled a “death by misadventure,” which for Bon seems fitting, although very sad. He’d been drinking all evening and passed out in the backseat of a car, alas to never wake up again. A few months later, after deciding to carry on after Bon’s loss, the band hired Brian Johnson and the rest, as they say, is history.

I mentioned above that I was thinking about all of this Bon vs Brian stuff last weekend because that’s when I intended to post this. I was actually supposed to fly out last Sunday early in the morning – sorry I made up the part about the wood paneled station wagon, I was flashing back to my youth…I can still taste the warm bologna – when those rat bastards at American Airlines cancelled my flights. I had to fly out a day later. I thought that perhaps that extra time at home, while being spent with a dangerous and highly agitated wife, might at least give me a chance to write about Bon and Brian before we flew out. However, my Karma, not sated with just screwing up my flight plans decided to enlist Mother Nature to brew up a brutal rain storm that knocked my power out at the house. I spent Sunday icing stuff down from my freezer. I spent today throwing all of it away. Sigh.

Anyway, vacation rant aside, it probably seems a little crazy now, but there were some of us who were a little confused about AC/DC’s lead singer “back in the day.” With Bon Scott at the microphone in 1979 they’d really just established themselves in America – at least in the Heartland where I was – with Highway To Hell.  Suddenly, you were hearing AC/DC blasted out of open car windows, playing on the local rock radio station. There weren’t too many folks who knew much more about AC/DC than that one album. I didn’t know anybody who owned High Voltage back then… although now that I think about it my brother did. I had Highway to Hell on cassette. But then Bon Scott passed away in London as the band were just starting to put together a follow-up. The band hired Brian Johnson and the resulting album was Back In Black. It was an enormous smash. You couldn’t go anywhere or to any party without hearing that album. Of course that timing – Bon passing as they’d begun to tinker with ideas, Brian coming in as an unknown quantity and suddenly they’ve got to the biggest LP of their career – has led to many, many conspiracy theories that Bon actually wrote some or all of the lyrics for Back In Black. Brian, of course, claims he wrote it all. 

The problem I had, and I think many of us did have back then was that Brian sounded so much like Bon to our unsophisticated ear that some of us didn’t, uh, realize there was a new guy at the microphone. Maybe it was our self absorbed youth. I remember watching, I believe, The Midnight Special, or some other rock show after 10pm on a Saturday and they were showing a video of the Brian-led version of the band singing “You Shook Me All Night Long.” My buddies had snuck out of their homes – they’d go home at curfew and then sneak right out after their parents cut the lights – and had wandered to my backyard to yell up at me through my open window. I couldn’t sneak out, we didn’t have a sliding glass door. If I’m being truthful, I shouldn’t say I couldn’t sneak out, it just took me longer to sneak out. Anyway, I’m watching AC/DC and my buddy Brewster yelled up at me and the conversation went something like this:

• Me: “Dude, I can’t sneak out, my parents are still up and I’m watching this AC/DC video…”
• Brewster: “Which lead singer?”
• Me: “What the fuck are you talking about? It’s AC/DC?”
• Brewster: “No, no, the Highway To Hell guy died… the new guy is named Brian, I think?”
• Me: “The singer is wearing a hat…”

And alas, for a bunch of kids in late junior high school, that was the difference between the singers… one of the guys wore a hat.

Obviously, all these years later I think there is a clear and obvious difference between Bon Scott and Brian Johnson. I think AC/DC was bluesier with Bon. His vocals are more raspy and dare I say, dangerous. To this day I’m not sure if Bon Scott owned a shirt… well not one with sleeves anyway. He had tattoos back when they weren’t fashionable… back when only sailors, strippers and the Japanese mafia had tats. I imagine Bon did well with the ladies, he was just so charismatic. The lyrics he wrote were so much darker. There were tales of serial killers (“Ride On,” “Midnight Prowler”) and drugs (“Gone Shooting”). There are some who think that AC/DC’s album Powerage, and the dark lyrics on that record were something of a premonition of Bon’s impending loss. I think his lyrics were always dark.

Brian has obviously had the longer tenure. He’s sung on some of their biggest LPs, the aforementioned Back In Black, the follow up For Those About To Rock, and so many great late period LPs: Stiff Upper Lip, Ballbreaker, and Power Up. While Brian’s voice has gotten raspier over the years, he might have the better singing voice. Although Brian has never seemed as dangerous as Bon used to feel. Ironically, I think Brian seems more like the guy you’d have a beer with in the bar… Bon would be too busy talkin’ to chicks. They both had a great sense of humor. I think because of his length of service, most people would pick Brian as the favorite of AC/DC’s lead singers. I know the Rock Chick is all in on Brian. I made her an AC/DC mix-tape to run to back a few years… she was mad because I put “Jailbreak” on the list. One Bon Scott track and it was rejected. Although she’s warming to Bon songs… like when I was dating her, I’m wearing her down.

It’s a hard choice to make but I think I fall on the side of Bon Scott. Don’t get me wrong, I love almost everything AC/DC has ever done with the exception of maybe Fly On The Wall or Flick Of The Switch. But with that undercurrent of danger and murder and mayhem and that slightly more bluesy sound I gotta say I love what Bon brought to the band. He also wrote my favorite AC/DC song, “Gone Shootin'” about heroin. But keep in mind, it’s ok to pick Brian Johnson. Like I said, mine is a mixed marriage – the Rock Chick is on team Brian and I’m on team Bon. It still works.

So tell me people – who is your favorite singer from AC/DC? Is it Brian, is it Bon? Let me know in the comments if you like. Either way, it’s Friday night, we’ve lost the legend Tony Bennett, it just seems like a good night to crank up some AC/DC while you grill up some burgers or brats or what not.

Cheers! And uh, “have a drink on me…”