Classic Rock
Tom Morello recalls playing AC/DC with Springsteen and Vedder
Besides being a famous member of Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave, the guitarist Tom Morello also worked with Bruce Springsteen and toured with the E Street Band, appearing in shows from 2008 to 2015.
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In 2014, Bruce was touring across Australia and after visiting Bon Scott’s grave, Morello talked with Springsteen about performing the classic AC/DC song “Highway To Hell”, inviting the Pearl Jam vocalist Eddie Vedder to the stage at the time, since he was doing a solo tour in the country during the same time. Morello recalled that experience in an interview with Classic Rock.
Tom Morello recalls playing AC/DC with Springsteen and Vedder
“We were playing in Perth, the home of Bon Scott, and I visited his grave to pay my respects late one night. I was there and I couldn’t find his grave. It’s a big cemetery and Bon Scott’s grave does not have a spotlight on it. And out of the darkness comes this motorbike and there is me and a guy in a motorbike in the middle of a cemetery.”
“The fella’s got like a German World War Two helmet on and a T-shirt that says ‘I don’t give a shit but if I did, you’re the one I’d give it to’. I was like, ‘that guy is probably gonna know where Bon Scott’s grave is’. Sure enough, he did, and I paid my respects.”
When he returned to the hotel he asked The Boss:
“‘Is there a way that the circle of AC/DC and the circle of the E Street Band overlap in any way?’. He replied, saying: ‘Maybe,’. “We began rehearsing Highway To Hell at soundcheck. A few days later, we were playing a huge football stadium in Melbourne and Eddie Vedder happened to be at the show, he was on a solo tour at the time.”
“I knocked on Bruce’s dressing room door and I got an idea of ‘what if here in the home where AC/DC is king, where the song Highway To Hell is like the unofficial national anthem, what if we opened the show with Highway To Hell with Eddie Vedder?’ And Bruce was like, ‘that sounds like pretty good idea’. So we did it and it was an apex moment in the history of live rock’n’roll. I mean, if you think you’ve seen people lose their minds, you haven’t – unless you were there,” Tom Morello said.
Bon Scott tragically died back in 1980 at the age of 33 and was replaced in the same year by Brian Johnson, who debuted in the band on their grounbreaking album “Back In Black” (1980).
