“Meeting your heroes can be disappointing, but not with Bon. It was our first real tour, and he was great to us”: Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott pays tribute to the late, great AC/DC singer Bon Scott

On this day (19 February) in 1980, AC/DC singer Bon Scott died in London at the age of 33.

The coroner’s report cited the cause of death as “acute alcohol poisoning”, and certainly Bon had a reputation as a heavy drinker.

But he was also one of the greatest rock singers and most charismatic frontmen of all time, and as Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott says, Bon was also a generous spirit and just a great guy to be around.

Def Leppard were the support act on the UK leg of AC/DC’s Highway To Hell tour, which kicked off on 26 October, 1979 at Newcastle Mayfair. And for Joe Elliott, who had just turned twenty, this tour was an experience he would never forget.

“Two years after we first saw AC/DC in Sheffield we were opening for them,” Joe recalls. “It was madness.”

The gig that Joe remembers most vividly was the second date of the tour, at the venue where AC/DC’s classic live album If You Want Blood You’ve Got It was recorded.

“After our set I went out into the crowd at Glasgow Apollo,” Joe recalls. “I was up in the balcony, and when they opened up with Live Wire, with the bass pumping, I swear that fucking balcony was moving twelve inches up and down. It was like an earthquake!

“The people were going so nuts I thought the balcony would collapse. I was watching the audience, soaking up that reaction, and I thought, I want a bit of that! Thinking back, it still makes the hairs on my arms stand up.”

AC/DC - Live Wire (1979 Paris) - YouTube

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On every other night of that tour, Joe and the other members of Def Leppard watched AC/DC’s performance from the side of the stage.

“As a band we learned a lot from AC/DC on that tour,” he says. “The presentation, the high energy.”

And Joe kept a close eye on the singer.

“Bon used to talk a lot between songs, and I loved that banter,” Joe says. “Communication with the crowd is an integral part of rock’n’roll, and Bon was a master at it.

“Sometimes he didn’t even have to say anything. He did it with his facial expressions. He was royalty. And I watched to see what he did when he wasn’t singing. He had a way of standing in front of the drum riser. Shirt off after three songs, lots of sweat, controlled aggression in the voice.

“He didn’t look like he was trying. He was like a tap – you just turn him on. He was born to do it.”

To Joe Elliott, Bon was one hero who truly lived up to a fan’s expectations. “Meeting your heroes can be disappointing,” Joe says. “But not with Bon.

“He wasn’t a pretentious prick. He was a natural talent. And there was always a sparkle in his eye.

“Bon was the most outgoing guy in the band. He always had this shit-eating grin on his face.

“He was this cool rock star, at that moment in his life when every light was green. We were like, ‘You fucking lucky bastard!’ It was our first real tour, and he was great to us.

“One night he walked into a bar in his cut-off denim jacket and saw we had no money and pulled a wad of tenners out of his back pocket. He stuck a tenner in my hand and said, ‘Here – buy yourselves a drink, Give it me back later. See you down the road.’

“And he wasn’t just being flash. It was more cool, kind of like Dean Martin. And that was the thing with Bon. He wasn’t like John Bonham or Keith Moon, swinging from the chandeliers. Bon liked a drink, but he wasn’t just a wild man.

“The sad thing for me," Joe says, "is that I never got to pay him back.”