It’s fair to say that AC/DC‘s early hopes of making an impression in Britain didn’t go entirely to plan.
When the Australian quintet arrived in the UK in the spring of 1976 ahead of a proposed April tour with their Atlantic Records labelmates Back Street Crawler, ex-Free guitarist Paul Kossof‘s new band, they were in high spirits. But their plans were thrown into disarray when, on March 19, ’76, Kossof died on a flight from Los Angeles to New York, aged 25.
While the band kicked up their heels in their Bayswater digs trying to figure out their next move, they suffered another setback. Vocalist Bon Scott was having a low-key drink in a north London pub in early April when a fight broke out, and in the melee, he was hit in the face with a glass, resulting in him losing several teeth and suffering a dislocated jaw. “
It wasn’t even my fight” he protested to his bandmates, as management dipped into the group’s coffers to cover a £2,000 dental bill.
It’s little wonder then that, when AC/DC finally got to make their UK debut, at the Red Cow pub in Hammersmith, they were feral. At its conclusion, their British booking agent Richard Griffiths, told the band, “That was the loudest, meanest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
“I just like to get up in front of a crowd and rip it up,” teenage guitarist Angus Young told NME as the quintet’s reputation as a killer live band began to spread. “You’ve got to really entertain a crowd nowadays. Personally, I think it helps if a lead guitarist has some kind of visual gimmick.”
Young revealed to writer Roy Carr that, when the occasion demanded, he would deploy his own unique visual display for the crowd.
“I usually do it as a special treat,” he confessed. “I’ve done it at the Marquee when the audience has been really great… I make sure the kids don’t go away disappointed.”
Young liked to call his signature move ‘The Human Kangaroo’, and admitted that it was originally inspired by a routine that Bon Scott used to enact to liven up moribund after-show parties back in Australia.
“What I do,” he revealed, “is go behind the equipment, strip off all me clothes, put me legs tightly together, me hands behind me back and hop like mad across the stage.”
“I just couldn’t stand there in front of the group without doing something!”
Anyone who’s had the pleasure of witnessing AC/DC live in the 21st century will know that ‘The Human Kangaroo’ is no longer part of the band’s stage act. And perhaps, for all our sakes, that’s for the best.
