AC/DC singer Bon Scott visited two separate women in the same maternity ward after both gave birth to his children, according to a new book about the Australian rock band.
Michael Browning discovered AC/DC and managed them as they conquered Australia and then the world.
In his book Browning recalls seeing Scott in a Melbourne hospital in 1975 after he’d overdosed on drugs.
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“Bon was bragging to me the last time he was in that hospital he was visiting two separate girls, both unknown to each other, who were both giving birth to his kids at the same time,” Browning said. “So there’s at least two of Bon Scott’s children out there, or at least two I can vouch for.”
Scott, who died in 1980, made the most of his popularity with women according to Browning.
“Bon was very prolific in the ladies department. Girls loved him. He was always a very gentle and kind soul. He was a good listener. He’d stay in touch with the girls too, he was a prolific letter writer.”
Browning’s memoir Dog Eat Dog documents his first dealings with AC/DC, who had been mistaken for a gay act due to their band name being a euphemism for bisexuality.
“Their previous manager sent them to Perth in the back of a van with no airconditioning,” Browning said. “They arrived caked in red dust only to find out they were the support act to Carlotta in a drag bar. The manager had failed to mention that despite the fact they were called AC/DC they weren’t a gay band. Needless to say that manager didn’t last long. I lent them the money to get back form Perth to Melbourne.”
Browning would later book AC/DC to play the gay night at the club he ran, Melbourne’s Hard Rock Cafe.
“It was fun,” Browning recalled. “Bon used to camp it up, he had a whip. The gay crowd loved them.”
His five years managing AC/DC ended in May 1979, after tensions grew in the band following the dumping of family members Harry Vanda and George Young as producers in favour of American Mutt Lange, at the request of their US record label. Browning said that once he sacked Vanda and Young, he became dead to AC/DC HQ.
While there have been countless books on AC/DC, Browning’s and former bass player Mark Evans’ book are the only “insider accounts”.
Browning is not concerned about offending the band with his memoirs, and was hoping guitarist Malcolm Young may have read it until hearing of his quitting AC/DC due to dementia.
“There’s nothing in the book they won’t like,” he said. “We haven’t spoken for many many years but I was looking forward to Malcolm reading i, t which won’t be on the cards now unfortunately.
“His illness is really sad. He was the musical genius, the Brian Wilson of AC/DC. He was the creator of everything that happened musically really, the main songwriter. I even recall him having a strong hand in the lyrics. Malcolm was my go-to guy, if anything I wanted to do I’d run it by him, he’d run it by the band. He was the business guy in the band as well.
“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to finally catch up with the band one day and reminisce about everything, I would for sure.”
Browning said hiring Malcolm’s nephew Stevie as replacement was a logical move.
“He’s filled in for Malcolm before, it’s great they were able to keep it in the family, they’re all very close. AC/DC is a fairly tight and insular organsition.”
Dog Eat Dog also documents AC/DC’s formative years in Melbourne, including the band’s infamous house in Landsowne Road in East St Kilda.
“It was an after hours hang for every stripper, junkie and groupie,” Browning said. “It was a pretty wild situation, but it was also the place they rehearsed and wrote a lot of their songs.
I remember there were a lot of disgruntled fathers turning up there. One came to Landsowne Road, grabbed Bon, dragged him out through a rose bush and knocked his teeth plate out which he’d had made after a motorbike accident. That was a particularly heavy situation.
“I heard St Kilda City Council are thinking of putting an AC/DC plaque up where the house on Landsowne Road was. They were far from well behaved citizens back in the day I can assure you!”
Indeed, Browning thinks Melbourne’s AC/DC Lane is in the wrong location.
“There could be more appropriate places,” he says. “That lane is a bit of a stretch, they never set foot in it. AC/DC fans gravitate to it and enjoy it, that’s fine. But I would have thought outside where the Hard Rock Cafe used to be, on the corner of Spring and Flinders Street, would be better. Or maybe a statue. Or something in Swanston Street, where they filmed the clip for It’s a Long Way to the Top on the back of a truck. Places they actually went to.”
As well as his early career working with Billy Thorpe, Dog Eat Dog touches on Browning kicking off the career of Noiseworks and signing INXS to their first record contact.
“When I first met INXS I loved them but they were lacking in direction a little bit. They hadn’t quite found their niche. Coming form a rock background, I could see the rock star in Michael Hutchence, I thought they needed to be more rock. So I got them to record a cover of The Loved One, which they’d later re-record for Kick.”
Browning received a royalty percentage from INXS albums up to and including Kick when they left his label to sign with major label WEA.
“That was a good deal for me,” he says.
Browning is now retired from the music industry, helping his wife who owns Sydney furniture and homeware outlet Rust.
I travel around the world buying rustic furniture now. It’s a lot calmer than travelling around with rock bands.”
MICHAEL BROWNING ON ...
AC/DC’s iconic It’s a Long Way to the Top video
“It’s become a fairly iconic video, but at the time it was just the band on the back of a truck in Swanston Street with some bagpipe players miming to the track. Nobody who witnessed it had a clue what was going on, the band were reasonably unknown at that point. It wasn’t like there were fans there, it was just people going about their business.”
Being ‘dead to AC/DC’ after they sacked him.
“The mentality that exists is that you’re dead to them, particularly if you leave on an adversarial note. That’s happened before me and many times since; there’s been many people who have come and gone from that organisation under fairly adversarial conditions. I don’t begrudge them. They set themselves up originally to become a big world band like the Rolling Stones when they first formed. Most people would laugh but they knew where they were going. And in that situation you have to do whatever’s best for the expansion of the businesses to get it where you want it to go. That’s the approach they took and they achieved it so good luck to them.”
On banning AC/DC from using public transport
“I made it a point of not allowing them to get public transport. It ruins the perception of musicians being big untouchable stars.”
On original singer Dave Evans.
“No disrespect to Dave, but they wouldn’t have made it with him as singer. He could sing OK, but he didn’t have the character Bon brought into the band. The character, the sense of humour, the swagger. They were never going to go as far as they went with Dave out front. Bon was the real deal.”
On the phrase ‘It’s a Long Way to the Shop If You Want a Sausage Roll’
“Angus thought of that. He did that kind of thing a lot.”
On AC/DC’s drug use
“It wasn’t rampant. There was a bit of dope smoking. Never with Angus. Bon used to get up to a bit of mischief with heavier stuff. But even then Bon may have this reputation for being out there he was always very professional, he never let me down once. I only have good things to say about Bon.”
On AC/DC cutting their teeth in Melbourne
“I compare it to like when the Beatles were in Hamburg. It’s where they found themselves as a group, it’s where the character in the group came out. They were playing a lot of gigs, playing beer barns where they were having stuff thrown at them. For any band to win those audiences over you had to be pretty good. It was a formative period for them.”
On Bon Scott’s death
“It was a shock but I’d seen Bon nearly dead a couple of times. He always said he had a premonition he’d die young. He used to joke about being a good looking corpse.”
On Brian Johnson replacing Bon Scott
“I thought it’d be very hard to replace Bon. But when they came out with that incredible album Back in Black it was astonishing. It was a powerful statement. It’s difficult to compare Bon and Brian, they’re two totally different singers and approaches, both as good as each other in that sense. Brian brought a more commercial sounding voice to the table.”
On INXS replacing Michael Hutchence
“AC/DC had two stars, Angus and Bon. They lost one of them, they still had Angus. It was different with INXS, Michael was the star of the band. In my opinion it was like the Rolling Stones thinking they could replace Mick Jagger. It was never really going to work unfortunately, they gave it a good shot. Jon Stevens was good, but they never really connected on a songwriting level. If there’d been some new fabulous material, that was a statement like Back in Black, maybe it could have worked.”
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