How Bruce Dickinson rates AC/DC’s Bon Scott as a singer

When Bruce Dickinson joined Iron Maiden in the early ’80s, Rock and Roll music had already lost many of its greatest singers, some of them tragically. The legendary AC/DC frontman Bon Scott was one of them, a crucial part of the band’s songwriting and sound who sadly passed away in 1980 at the age of 33. Over the decades, Bruce has rated many singers from that era, including Bon.

How Bruce Dickinson rates AC/DC’s Bon Scott as a singer

Bruce is a big fan of AC/DC and likes both eras of the band, but he has listed albums and songs from the Bon Scott era among his favorites. In his opinion, the late vocalist had an interesting and very flexible voice, with a mixture of styles. “Powerage”, released in 1978 is one of his favorite albums with Bon and he once talked about that record.

“Oh God, wow (the album). It’s AC/DC, what can I say? With Bon Scott! I got to say, I like what AC/DC are doing right now with Brian Johnson with the latest albums. I like that more than ‘Hell’s Bells’ and definitely more than ‘For Those About to Rock’. They’ve kind of taken back control of their sound and changed it slightly to suit Brian’s voice. But their first years with Bon, up until the end of ‘Highway To Hell’, wow. That live album ‘If You Want Blood You’ve Got It’, God! That’s just incredible. So yeah, that line-up… and Bon was just a tragedy, when that happened, it shouldn’t have happened.”

He continued:

“‘Sin City’ is ok, some of them are hard to sing, because Bon had a kind of interesting voice. But it was a very, very flexible voice. It was a strange mixture of styles in his voice. But there was some Blues in there, he could really do good Blues. One of my favorite AC/DC songs is called ‘Ride On’ and it’s got this heartbreaking guitar solo. It sounds like it’s channeling Paul Kossoff from Free in the guitar playing. I mean, it’s great, I love that song,” Bruce Dickinson said in an interview with Qobuz in 2024 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage)

Bruce covered “Sin City” during the tour to promote his first solo album “Tattooed MMillionaireillionare”, released in 1990. He performed that track live 25 times during that year and a version of the track was featured on future releases of the record as a bonus track. The song “Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter”, which Bruce wrote for “A Nightmare on Elm Street” in the late ’80s, was intended to be part of his solo career, but Iron Maiden decided to incorporate the track.

According to him, it felt like it came straight out of AC/DC. “I wrote it in about three minutes. I don’t know where the title ‘Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter’ came from. It just popped into my head. I thought, ‘Bloody hell, straight out of AC/DC!’ And I thought, ‘Nightmare on Elm Street. Yeah, that’ll do,” he said.

Bruce Dickinson said Bon Scott is a unique singer

Bruce Dickinson once defined the heavy metal singing style as a combination of three singers: Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin), Ian Gillan (Deep Purple) and Paul Rodgers (Free and Bad Company). However, in his view, there are singers like Bon Scott who are unique and cannot be put into that mix.

“There are basically 3 bases for the Metal style of singing, and if you join aspect of these 3 singers, you have everything. And these 3 singers are Robert Plant, Ian Gillan and Paul Rodgers. And if you join them in various combinations you have everyone was always talking about well. (So it would be a combination of the three?). No, they are… Are a species of… How do I say this? They are the DNA of the singing Heavy Metal. And a lot of people you can see…”

“I mean, there are people that are unique. You know, like Bon Scott. And people, but effectively, if you hear most rock singers, all can be derived from these 3 voices. The style of each sing the notes they take, qu tones they use in the voices, and things like that. So I would choose one of these 3. There is a lot of people who influenced me, but slightly less than the 3. As Peter Hammil the Vandergraf Generator, Arthur Brown also is a big, big influence to me,” Bruce Dickinson said in an interview with Metal Rules in 2000.

The similarity between Iron Maiden and AC/DC according to Bruce

Although their music is not very similar, in Bruce’s view, there is a similarity between the two bands: both have stuck to their style and have not made radical changes to their sound.

“The whole thing. Maiden, in some respects, is conservative with a small ‘c.’ That’s not a bad thing. It’s like if you go listen to an AC/DC record, you wouldn’t expect to suddenly hear an orchestra and strings and stuff like that. Because it’s an AC DC record.”

“It’s the same thing with Maiden, except that we’ve got our style. Sometimes, you would expect keyboards, and we’ve gone a lot more proggy over the years. But to put our whole concept together around an entire album with Maiden would require a degree of control that I don’t think Steve (Harris) would be willing to relinquish! (Laughs),” Bruce Dickinson said in an interview with Rue Morgue in 2024.