Ronald Belford "Bon" Scott 09/07/46 - 19/02/80.
DC/79 are essentially a tribute to Bon, much more so than a tribute to AC/DC. AC/DC are very much a living, breathing animal and with Brian Johnson, still a thriving band...and there are lots of great bands paying tribute to them. DC/79 are trying to keep Bon Scott's memory, his spirit, his love of life, his energy and most importantly....his music...alive.
Ronald Belford Scott was born on 9 July 1946 at the Fyfe Jamieson Maternity Hospital, Forfar, Scotland to Charles and Isabelle Scott, and grew up in Kirriemuir. A younger brother Derek was born in 1949. The Scott family emigrated from Scotland to Australia in 1952 where they initially lived in the Melbourne suburb of Sunshine. It was at Sunshine Primary School that he received his nickname; there was already a classmate with the name Ronald and as he had recently arrived from Bonnie Scotland he was dubbed "Bon" and the name stuck. Bon Scott replaced Dave Evans as the lead singer of AC/DC in September 1974. AC/DC released High Voltage, their first LP in Australia in February 1975 and within a few months Phil Rudd and Mark Evans were hired as a permanent members and AC/DC began recording their second album T.N.T. which was released in Australia in December 1975. The first AC/DC album to gain international distribution however was a compilation of tracks from the first two albums, also entitled High Voltage which was released in May 1976. Another studio album, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap was released in the same year, but only in Australia; the international version of the album was released in November 1976 in the U.K. and in March 1981 in the U.S. with a different tracklisting. In the following years, AC/DC gained further success with their albums Let There Be Rock and Powerage. The 1978 release of Powerage marked the debut of bassist Cliff Williams (who had replaced Mark Evans), and with its harder riffs, followed the blueprint set by Let There Be Rock. The album was the last produced by Harry Vanda and George Young with Bon Scott on vocals and is claimed to be AC/DC's most underrated album. Only one single was released from Powerage — "Rock 'n' Roll Damnation" — and gave AC/DC their highest chart position at the time, reaching #24. An appearance at the Apollo Theatre in Glasgow during the Powerage tour was recorded and released as the main part of If You Want Blood...You've Got It. The band's sixth album, Highway To Hell, was produced by Robert "Mutt" Lange and was released in 1979. It became AC/DC's first LP to break the U.S. top 100, eventually reaching #17.
Bon Scott, 33 at the time, passed out after a night of heavy drinking in a London club called the Music Machine. He was left to sleep in a car owned by an acquaintance named Alistair Kinnear at 67 Overhill Road in East Dulwich, South London. The following afternoon, Kinnear found Scott lifeless and alerted the authorities. Scott was rushed to King's College Hospital in Camberwell where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Pulmonary aspiration of vomit was the cause of Scott's death, and the official cause was listed as "acute alcohol poisoning" and "death by misadventure". Scott was cremated and his ashes were interred by his family in Fremantle, Western Australia, the city to which they had moved when he was six.