Bruce Dickinson’s opinion on AC/DC and Bon Scott

Bruce Dickinson started his musical career 1976 and first achieved notoriety as the vocalist of Samson, but everything really changed when he was invited to Join Iron Maiden  in 1981, replacing Paul Di’Anno. He was a crucial part of the band’s sound from then on and helped them to become one of the best-selling groups of all time.

Over the decades, Dickinson talked about many other bands and singers he admired and gave his opinion on them, including AC/DC and the late legendary vocalist Bon Scott.

Bruce Dickinson’s opinion on AC/DC and Bon Scott

Bruce really loves AC/DC and was a huge fan of Bon Scott, who tragically passed away in 1980 at the age of 33. He praised the band and the singer in an interview with Qobuz (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage). He was asked to talk about the album “Powerage” released in 1978 and then praised the band.

“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’.”

He continued:

“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.”

“‘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.

Bon Scott was the vocalist of the band from 1974 until his death in 1980. Since then Brian Johnson remained as the band’s vocalist, only being replaced on some tour dates in 2016 by the Guns N’ Roses vocalist Axl Rose.

Bruce Dickinson once listed “Back In Black” as an essential album

Although Dickison told Qobuz that he prefers the recent albums with Brian Johnson, he listed one “Back in Black” as an essential record. He did that on the website of his old BBC radio show “Masters Of Rock”.

In 2024 when he was promoting his new solo album “The Mandrake Project”, Dickinson gave an interview to Rue Morgue and when explaining the difference between his solo album and a Maiden album, he mentioned AC/DC.

“You know, I wanted to do a comic book/story/movie for Seventh Son of a Seventh Son from the beginning to end. 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.