Bon Scott wasn’t the first vocalist AC/DC ever had, but he was the one who truly helped shape the band into what it is today. Without the lyrics he wrote alongside Malcolm and Angus Young, as well as his incredible vocals and electrifying stage presence, the Australian band certainly wouldn’t have conquered the world as quickly as it did in the 1970s.
Although Brian Johnson ushered in another successful era for the band in the 1980s and is beloved by fans, many still prefer the albums recorded with Bon. Angus has always praised the late singer and the albums they made together, once revealing which one was his favorite.
Angus Young’s favorite AC/DC album with Bon Scott
His favorite AC/DC album with Bon Scott is “Let There Be Rock” and actually is his favorite AC/DC album overall, at least until 2020, when he told Radio SRF this was “the album”. When asked by Hit Parader magazine in 1985, about how that particular record differed from the band’s more recent releases, he praised the album and said it was the one he liked the most.
“Sure, there’s a big difference. I happen to love Let There Be Rock – that’s my favorite AC/DC album. Over time, we’ve all learned a lot about recording technique. We’ve taken more and more time getting our albums together. That’s given us a different style over the years. I think we’ve probably maintained a sound throughout our career that’s very recognizable. I like to think that you can hear the first few notes of an AC/DC song and know who it is right away,” he said. During the conversation with Radio SRF, he explained why, in his opinion, it is such a great album.
He said:
“And the reason why I like ‘Let There Be Rock’ is because my brother, George, who was producing it. When he said to us at the beginning, he had me and Malcolm, and he was sitting with us. He said, ‘What sort of album do you wanna do this time?’ And Malcolm just looked at me, and he said, ‘We just want an album that’s just gonna be pure Hard Rock guitar,’” he said.
Although that album is not among AC/DC’s best-selling releases, it has sold millions of copies. It contains songs that remain staples of the band’s live setlists. Besides the title-track, other famous songs are “Dog Eat Dog”, “Bad Boy Boogie”, “Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be” and “Whole Lotta Rosie”. It was their final album with bassist Mark Evans, who was fired later on and replaced by Cliff Williams.
Young said the album was kind of a response to Punk and Disco music at the time
“That whole album was a guitar album. (…) We wanted a guitar album because you had the different trends of the time. You had Punk music coming out of Europe, America was into the Disco thing. We thought (we should) be totally different, (saying) ‘Hey, we will go out and make a good Hard Rock album with plenty of guitars up front. So we thought that it was our calling card. So if you going to see AC/DC, you knew you were going to get these big loud guitars in your face and there will be no room for the timid (laughs),” Angus Young said in an interview (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
His late brother Malcolm Young also said something similar when talking about the album in the past. He explained how they chose its musical direction and that they were fully focused on making a great album. They believed the record would give them the credibility they needed to evolve.
“We certainly wanted to get heavier in a respect. We thought: ‘Well, we gotta be more of a Rock unit. We’d see a lot of bands coming in from the States, we thought ‘These guys really drag it out, don’t they? They really milk it (laughs). Actually what we were really saying was that they knew how to get the crowds happening, you know? We thought: ‘We’d got to maybe look at some material in that vein rather than the 3, 4, 5 minute songs.'”
He continued:
“Maybe we should look at a little bit, expanding a little. (Also) giving Angus a bit more solo room, just stuff off the wall. So we decided to, you know, ‘Hey, anything is possible with this album. Let’s see what we can come up with. Feel free to suggest what you like. Let’s just look at everything here and stick to the Rock and Roll. Stick to what we really love and let’s not disappear up our own butts. Let’s have a look at it, seeing what we can really pull off, a good album here.”
“It really toughened the music up but again, that’s going directly against radio and everything like that. Ignoring your record, going totally against the business world of music and just sticking to your guns. We thought ‘there’s no hit single there for anyone, this is a Rock album (laughs). So it actually made us more determined to put out a good record like that and get credibility as a band. We certainly thought that ‘Let There Be Rock’ opened that up. It changed a lot of music. I think, in general terms, even in today’s music. You can hear a lot of things that’s come from it, you know,” he told Redbeard in 1997 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).