If you’ve only just tuned in, the Bon Scott Blog might seem a bit overwhelming. Where do you start? How do you find what you’re looking for? Which are the best bits?
So I’ve created this here HIGHLIGHTS page to help you navigate your way through the project with ease! A Readers’ Digest version, if you will…
(You can also find the HIGHLIGHTS by clicking the button in the menu bar at the top of the blog, just underneath the little Bon Scott Lego Man).
Or if you want the FULL BLOG CONTENTS list, check out this page…
Happy reading!
yours fanfully
Lucas
The Bon Scott Blogger
An article has come out in an Australian art magazine about the Bon Scott Project, which describes my blog pretty well, I reckon:
One strand of that conversation has been realised in artist Lucas Ihlein’s popular Bon Scott Blog. Ihlein writes in his introduction, “Lucas was not a fan of AC/DC. You can read about his process of immersion! He is meeting fans, visiting cemeteries, chasing up Bon’s old friends and lovers, attending concerts, and listening to a lot of heavy rock.” It’s a fascinating read. A good starting point is Ihlein’s account of his visit to the Fremantle Cemetery where there’s a humble memorial plaque for Scott, a missing heritage plaque and a steady flow of intriguing pilgrims, including Ben Scott, the alleged love child of the singer. The responses to this entry reveal the wide range of people The Bon Scott Project is engaging.
The article also describes some of the artworks which will be in the Bon Scott Exhibition in May. And there is a photo of me with the statue - that photo was taken by Perth superfan Simmo! You can read the whole article in Realtime Magazine here.
Also, thanks to this article in undercover.com.au, I’ve had a spike in visitors to the site in the last week. The Undercover story was mirrored all over the place, notably in Sleaze Roxx, the Ultimate AC/DC Blog, Brave Words and Bloody Knuckles, themusic.com.au, and of course our good friends over at AC/DC News.
Continue reading ‘Bon Bon Media Frenzy!’
By now, “graphical representations of pop songs” like the one above have probably already weaseled their way past your spam filter and into your inbox, together with viagra and fake rolex watches and whatnot. I was sent a half a dozen or so of them from my friend Chris-O, who is obviously spending a few too many hours procrastinating from his thesis about the withdrawal symptoms of methamphetamine.
Someone has kindly uploaded ‘em all over here. And if rap is more your thing, you might find these mildly amusing. But whoa, google around a little more and you find hundreds of the little critters. Phew. I think I was happier when I thought there were only six.
Continue reading ‘Butt-head Science’
I’ve got one more story to post from Melbourne - about a trip to visit Bon’s loyal roadie Darcy in the Yarra Valley. It’s just in with the experts for “fact checking” before it goes live, but while we wait, lets think a little about writing technologies, shall we?
Bon wrote a shitload of letters. We must remember, kiddies, that in the 1970s there was no internet. There was no email. There were no blogs. If Bon were travelling the world playing gigs today, would he still send letters?
Would he run his own blog? (Now THAT would be something.) Would he, perchance, have his own webcam TV show, or a whacky Alice Cooper or Bob Dylan style radio broadcast? Or be the star of his own Osbournes reality TV show?
Speaking of reality TV …over at the Bon Scott Club (a yahoo group dedicated to keeping Bon’s hell-raising spirit alive forever), the fans are playing a game inspired by those “vote em off” shows, called “AC/DC Song Survivor”.
Continue reading ‘Bon’s Web Walk’
[Ardent fans pose for a photo by Bec Dagnell in the Billie Weston Pool Hall, Scarborough Beach, WA...]
Word just in… tomorrow morning (Tuesday the 11th of March) I’ll be speaking on the JJJ breakfast show about the life and legacy of Bon, his bronze statue, and my own “relationship” with Bon.
Rumour has it that the Mayor of Fremantle Himself will also be shooting the breeze with Robbie, Marieke & The Doctor.
It should all happen at 8:30am or thereabouts.
Should you perchance listen in and then come over to this humble blog to pay me a visit - you might be able to participate!
I am looking to meet up with Bon Scott fans in the greater Sydney area (which is where I will be blogging from now until the middle of April).
Crazy collectors? Shrine in the shed? Tribute bands playing only 1974-80 Acca Dacca? Long lost love child?…
Get in touch and be featured in the blog!
Cheerio,
Lucas
- - -
UPDATE:
you can listen to the interview online here (7 minutes, 6mb, mp3 file). Thanks Josh for taping it! There’s a brief description of the interview in this comment below. I didn’t get to say as much as I would have liked about Bon and me, but that’s breakfast radio for you I guess. Big on high paced laffs and short on thoughtful pauses!
The imminent erection of the Bon Scott Bronze Statue in Fremantle is drawing fans from around the world. Because of the distance, many international Bon-lovers won’t be able to make it on the 24th of February, but they seem to be following the events from afar with fascination. Franck, a passionate fan from Paris, contacted the Fremantle Arts Centre, to enquire about the best way to get to the cemetery. I emailed Franck, asking him if he had any special stories of his own. Here’s his reply:
Hi Lucas,
Many Thanks to contact me…
Of course I’ve got lots of stories about Bon but the best i think it was in 80’s (1981/1982 ?) during the concert in Paris ; I was 17 or 18 (I’m born in 1964) and Bon with Angus on his back climb down in the arena in the middle of people…they arrive just in front of me and i was paralyzed looooooooool
i couldnt move my arms to touch Bon and Angus and it was very easy….at the end of the concert i was crying alone in a place of the arena and a man come in front of me and says what ’s the matter ? I explain my story and he says ok dont cry come with me …we have passed the security and nobody ask me nothing just smiling to this man…and we have arrived in the backstage i have entered in a room and here just in front of me Bon / Angus / Malcom and Phil !!!!
after i have dream many time i was playing guitar with them looooooool but no… i have never play with them …just to speak with them and take a glass of whisky.
At this time it was impossible to live a story like that with the french stars in France…french are too idiot…but with Australian stars it was possible.
so god bless Australia…
cheers
Franck
(Above: a scan from Hana’s 1983 Mexican Heavy Metal zine…)
AC/DC actually can put me in this kind of mood…say if im feeling down or whatever, I can put some of these classic Bon Scott albums on and then I get in that kind of hyperactive mood. Something about it takes me back to being fifteen and then I can tap into that youthful spirit…and I think that’s something Bon Scott carried with him as well. That youthful spirit of living the good life…
-Demolition Damo, February 5th, 2007
With this mood-altering theory of Damo’s in mind, I’m a-bloggin’ away with Back in Black blaring through the speakers. I know, I know, it’s not a Bon album (depending on which side of the fence you sit on, vis-a-vis that conspiracy theory) …but I’m yet to aquire any Bon-era albums beyond T.N.T. (I’ll remedy that later on today down at a discount CD shop on Pitt Street Damo told me about). But in the meantime, I’m trying to spit words out on my keyboard with these driving beats and the screeching of Brian Johnson… hammering out words and headbanging (mildly) at my desk …It really slows my word-per-minute rate down, and I have no idea if the resulting paragraphs will be readable, but it sure feels good…
Anyway, I’ve been rummaging through the Bon Scott Blog Mailbag®. Thanks to everyone who’s written or sent in their stories. Here’s a highlight: an email with attached images from Hana, who seems determined to boost my Bon Scott credibility by sending through some extremely rare old Mexican Fanzines. She writes: Continue reading ‘Reyes Del Sonido Metalico’
(Clinton Walker looking over the Bon Scott timeline he constructed while writing his book…)
It just so happens that one of Bon Scott’s biggest fans lives in Dulwich Hill, only fifteen minutes walk from my house. Last Thursday Katie and I popped around for a cup of tea with him. He took us out to his “den” - a revamped chookshed in the backyard, stuffed with books and records, and spilled the contents of his filing cabinets all over the coffee table.
It’s impossible to recount everything Clinton told us. I won’t even try. In the process of writing Bon Scott’s biography, he accumulated an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject. I was a little overwhelmed by facts and anecdotes. I could have made an audio recording of everything he said, and then uploaded it for you… but then again, you could just go read the book…
Continue reading ‘Meeting Clinton Walker’
The following email, entitled “hero ick, icon ick” came through from my friend Anne today:
hows this. not a word for months and then a deluge. no, but it’s interesting, this next blog you’ll be doing. half an hour ago i was googling heath ledger who’s apparently just overdosed in his manhattan digs. can’t say i’ve ever paid much attention to the bloke, but i enjoyed ‘brokeback mountain’ and ‘i’m not there’. anyways, seems there are a lot of fanclub sites out there for heath, as well. and no doubt for a lot of other stars, alive and dead (another one that comes to mind, coz i’ve just seen the fillem ‘control’ is ian curtis of joy division).
so i was just having a little lie down after getting your email and thought about how we are surely the only species that does this - elevates certain individuals to such lofty heights. i mean, this is definitely not in the order of something as pragmatic as queen ant-ism. we just love mythical figures. or need them, more like. i wonder if it’s a religious urge. icon-ism. especially since pictures and other forms of representation figure so much in the process of elevation and mythologising. bio’s too of course. and when it’s singers, it’s their music and their lyrics combined with their personal narratives. so i dunno. maybe i’m on the wrong track here. maybe it’s about poetry and poets and philosophers, in a new package for popular culture. what do you think it’s about lucas? hmmm … i guess you’ll find out, maybe, by doing this blog. wish i could drive across the desert with you.
Hearing the news, I too had a moment of sadness for poor Heath. He was 28. Bon was young too, only 33 when he died. (They also both grew up in Western Australia.) I guess as the breaking news came through about Heath’s death, it made me realise, to a very small degree, what it might have been like for an AC/DC fan to hear the news of Bon’s death, back in Feburary 1980. A sense of lost potential. The idea that he was only just beginning to hit his stride. That his best work was still in front of him. And so on.
Like Anne, I have been wondering about the transformation of a single human into a “cultural icon” - and the similarity of this phenomenon to religion. If someone is dead, we can make him into whoever we want. And no matter how unheroic the circumstances of Bon’s death (”death by misadventure due to acute alcohol poisoning” or something like that) there is a sense in which he is a kind of “martyr”.
Feel free to leave your messages, tributes, criticism, suggestions, links etc here below.
(If you would like to post images, movies or sound files, just email them to me at this address: lucas[at]bonscottblog[dot]com and I’ll upload them for you!
Cheers, Lucas
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