Fremantle's arty deeds shed new light on Oz rock's greatest enfant terrible, writes Iain Shedden May 17, 2008
MY memories of Bon Scott aren't legion, but they certainly are vivid. During the first sighting he was topless, typically, and was climbing into the rafters of the rather ornate City Hall in Glasgow. This sweaty, cocky phantom of the opera was in his element, grinning, screaming and shaking his fist at the equally manic throng bouncing around below him.
So frenzied did the audience become for AC/DC's Scottish debut concert in 1976 that security not only demanded the lead singer remove himself from the ceiling but also that he tell the audience to sit down. If Scott and his colleagues' rock'n'roll credentials were to be established on their potential to cause a riot, they were off to a good start in Scotland.
Once the cushions and chairs had ceased to fly around the hall and Australia's most compelling rock'n'roll export had left the stage, however, Scott's satanic majesty gave way to unreserved bonhomie. Huddled with guitarists Angus and Malcolm Young in the band's dressing room, they indulged questions from three awestruck teenage fans (myself and two mates) who had talked their way backstage.
Scott shook hands, handed out beers and occasionally paced about the room as if to wear off excess energy. Then the Youngs joined him in asking a few questions of their own. They wanted details about where to party (My mum and dad's? Maybe not) and about the towns and cities they were about to explore in search of their Scottish relatives in the next few days.
While the Youngs were born in Glasgow, Scott's roots were in and around the market town of his birth, Kirriemuir. A plaque honouring him was unveiled there two years ago.
Clearly, getting back to those roots was important to Scott, but through the combination of his down-to-earth manner, his accent and that roguish charm, there was no escaping the fact he was an Aussie through and through.
The Bon Scott Project that gets under way in Fremantle today is also about the singer's roots, but in a city and country that shaped him into the rock singer who is still the focus of wannabe aspirations the world over.
The project, which runs until June 29, is a multifaceted celebration of Scott, who spent much of his childhood in Freo after his family relocated from Scotland.
It's 28 years since Scott died, aged 33, from alcohol poisoning, after a night of heavy drinking at a London club. His legacy as AC/DC frontman lives on, however. His bandmates, along with replacement vocalist Brian Johnson, went on to become our most successful and enduring rock export. Those early albums on which Scott appeared, such as High Voltage, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap and Highway to Hell, have sold far more copies since his death than during his lifetime (AC/DC sold an amazing 2.5 million albums from the band's back catalogue last year alone), helping to preserve the memory of a singer whose reputation as the wild one easily surpassed that of our first rock'n'roll rebel, Johnny O'Keefe.
Scott's burial place in Fremantle cemetery is among the most visited gravesites in the country and has become a national landmark. As a hero to so many across the world, Scott, you imagine, would understand why so many come to Fremantle to pay their respects. Just what he would make of the Bon Scott blog, the Bon Scott fashion forum and the artworks inspired by him dotted around Freo's galleries for the next two months is another matter.
Nineteen local and overseas artists were commissioned by the Fremantle Arts Centre to create works inspired by the singer, even though many of the artists were not Scott fans.
These drawings, animations and a blog share the limelight with a collection of artefacts, including letters Scott wrote to friends in Australia while AC/DC was conquering the rest of the world.
"I reckon he'd love it," says writer and broadcaster Clinton Walker, who wrote the definitive biography of Scott (Highway to Hell: The Life and Death of AC/DC Legend Bon Scott, 1994). "It's a big party all about him. A fair amount of what they are putting on there is in good humour and I'm sure he would enjoy that, too. No one knew how to take the piss out of Bon Scott more than Bon Scott. It's more likely to baffle some of his hardcore audience than it would have baffled him."
That's something one of the participants, Sydney blog artist Lucas Ihlein, found to his cost when he took on the project of creating www.bonscottblog.com for the duration of the project. Ihlein, whose previous works include a blog -- or online discussion forum -- on a small country town and on the Sydney suburb of Petersham (where he lives), had to declare on the launch of the blog that he was not a Bon Scott fan and didn't even know his work.
"I hadn't expected that I'd get such a warm reception from fans," Ihlein says. "I expected some sort of criticism because I had stated from the beginning that I was not a fan. I did get a few fans saying, 'Oh my god, I can't believe you're not a fan. What kind of a hole have you been living in?'
"But now they've got to the next stage and have the chance to convince me as to why I should be a fan."
Part of blogging, Ihlein says, is in bringing a diverse cross-section of people to a subject, some of whom may not necessarily be familiar with it.
"This one began to make sense because I'd done these blogging projects before," he says. "They (the other projects) were based on the idea of bringing a fresh set of eyes to a country town or to my local suburb. This time my teachers were the fans."
Ihlein has been working his way through the AC/DC back catalogue and as a consequence has come to appreciate not only AC/DC's work but also the music that inspired the band, such as the blues. The blogger is also involved in one of the more visible and innovative aspects of the project. The electronic Welcome to Fremantle sign that sits on the Stirling Highway Bridge has been commandeered for the project's duration, and it is now adorned with messages and Scott's AC/DC lyrics. Underneath the bridge, artist Bevan Honey has created an apparition of the singer that appears intermittently to motorists.
Among the other works on display are a collection of images by Rebecca Dagnall focusing on Scott fans and the lengths some of them go to -- particularly with tattoos -- to show their dedication. There's a short animation film by Ian Haig about his experience of seeing AC/DC play at his local shopping centre, while in his charcoal drawing Victorian artist Richard Lewer merges AC/DC members with church figures to convey his Catholic upbringing.
With a variety of venues and locations being used for the exhibits, Fremantle is part of the celebration, according to the project's curator, Jasmin Stephens.
.jpg)
"We're not doing just a history project," Stephens says. "We're drawing attention to the contemporary vibrancy of Fremantle. Fremantle is a city where heritage is really valued. I'm hoping through the project that more conservative members of the community will come to recognise the artistic heritage of the city.
"We knew that having 19 artists working on Bon would draw in a lot of fans, but we see fans as part of the project.
"The relationship between Bon, myself, the fans and the artists ... that coming together of artists who are in their 20s with fans who are in their 60s ... that's the actual project."
She recognises, also, that having such a world-famous name as the focus of an art project will be beneficial to the local community and in particular its arts community.
"We wanted to create a project that anyone could participate in, no matter where they were in the world," she says. "That's why we had an exhibition, why we have the blog. It has readers from all over the world."
Ihlein says the beauty of the blog "is that it sets up a framework where you can bring fresh eyes to a perhaps jaded subject matter".
"It's almost like I have my own TV show, with people tuning in every day to see what I'm up to." There's beauty too, he says, in the fact that the blog has a limited lifespan.
"Afterwards you can go back and watch the re-runs, but the liveness of it is finished," he says. "But I've found from my previous work there are thousands of words that are written, and if you read it from start to finish it takes on the shape of a book."
Now that he has come to know Scott a little better, thanks mainly to the hundreds of fans who have contributed to the blog, Ihlein has also pondered the question of what the singer would have made of it all if he were still alive.
"I wonder if he would keep a blog while he was on the road," he says. "Whenever he was travelling he was always thinking about people back home. Blogs are a bit like that. When I went on a world trip, I used to write home. Now blogs are an open extension of that. I think he would be into that."
The evidence suggests Ihlein is right in his assumption. Scott was a dedicated letter writer during his travels, particularly to friends and relatives back in Australia. A number of these letters are being exhibited for the first time, including one addressed to "Dear Darce and Gab", which reads, in part: "Great to hear from you. It's taken me too long to get it together to write back cause I've been stoned for about three months solid. There's enough hash in London to keep Melbourne stoned for ten f..kin years."
He then goes on to explain the band's upcoming European tour with guitarist Ritchie Blackmore. Other letters are similarly representative of Scott's rock'n'roll lifestyle, with plenty of sex, drugs and alcohol, but they also give a sense of him not quite believing his good fortune in finding himself a rock star.
Finding himself an artwork would have been an even bigger stretch, you feel.
"It strikes me that he was very informal, very cheeky and not particularly taken with things that were organisational or conventional," Stephens says . "I'm not sure that he would have been into such a formal project as this."
As to my appreciation of Scott, I got to see him perform five or six times after that Scottish debut, and each performance was memorable. Common to each one was that sly grin, the menacing voice and his irresistible charisma. "If you're looking for trouble/ I'm the man to see," he sang on Live Wire. And I, for one, never doubted it.
Source www.theaustralian.news.com.au
.jpg)
