By STEVE MASCORD
FORMER AC/DC member Simon Wright says he heard a cassette of Bon Scott playing drums on the song “Back In Black” – which bizarrely was dedicated to the singer after his death.
In a video interview with Hot Metal, Wright said he was played the tape by guitarist Angus Young in 1983. Young has previously confirmed Scott played demo drums on two songs from what became this history-making album Back In Black – but that they were “Have A Drink On Me” and “Hell’s Bells”.
“I read a couple of books like yourselves,” Wright told Hot Metal. “I don’t know, I wasn’t there. You know, it’s speculation and stuff.
“I remember one time, it wasn’t long after I joined and I was staying at Angus’ house. We were just demoing some songs, me and Angus and Mal.
“And he played me this cassette one time and it was actually Bon playing drums to ‘Back In Black’, ’cause he could play drums apparently.
“And it sounded pretty damn good too. I was like ‘that’s incredible, he’s great’.
“But … all of them were pretty tight-lipped about Bon. They would chat amongst themselves and reminisce about him a little bit but not very much.
“They were very quiet about him and I got the impression the quietness about it all was because of their love for him and respect for him.
“So, reading some of these books, it could me true, it (might not be). How Bon passed away too is another thing…”
Not only did Wright play in AC/DC but he was also a one-time member of UFO, whose bassist Pete Way and guitarist Paul Chapman are often mentioned in dispatches surrounding Scott’s death and alleged links with heroin.
“I really don’t know more,” Wright said.” I mean, I read Pete’s book and he said he hadn’t seen Bon in four, five days before he passed away.
“Bon had gone to a UFO show in London or something, they met up and Pete hadn’t seen Bon for three, four days after that.
“So it’s not like he was around. I don’t know. I’m just going off speculation.”
Angus Young’s quotes about the demos from Paste magazine in 2021 are as follows:“At the time, me and Malcolm were writing songs, which became the songs for Back In Black.
“We were in London in a rehearsal room, and Bon had come down, too. And what used to happen was, me and Malcolm would get together and get a drum kit, and Malcolm would get behind the drums sometimes, and I’d get on the guitar and just tap out a riff. Or other times, Malcolm would get on the guitar and he’d get me to just knock out a simple beat on the drums.
“Anyhow, we were working away, and it was on an intro which was actually what became the intro for ‘Hells Bells’. So Bon showed up, and Malcolm said, ‘Oh, great, Bon. You can get behind the kit.’ Because originally Bon started as a drummer. So Bon got behind the drum kit so we could try and work out this intro, how we wanted to do it. So we sorted that out how we wanted.
“And the other one was ‘Have A Drink On Me’, a riff Malcolm was playing around with. So we worked out the intro on that and how the song was gonna go. So he had Bon tapped to do a demo for that. So that was it, really. If you were looking up what Bon had done, it was really just to help us with those demos on the drums. And he even said to us, as we were knocking off in the night time, ‘Look, we’ll hook up next week.’
“He’d been working on some lyrics, and said, ‘We’ll hook up next week and maybe the three of us can just start going through stuff.’ But unfortunately, he passed before that.”
