Some rockers live on after death; others are readily replaced

Rockers come and go but a few are irreplaceable.

Singer Bon Scott performing with the band AC/DC (ACDC) in a circa 1976 photo. Scott/singer P/R AC/DC/band Picture: Supplied

In 1980, two famous rock bands faced the same challenge: each had lost key members, alcoholics who had drunk themselves to death. AC/DC singer Bon Scott and Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham each died after titanic drinking sessions, both suffocating in their sleep.

Back then, drummer jokes abounded: What did you call someone who hung around with musicians? A drummer. The difference between him and a drum machine? You only punch information into a drum machine once. Then there was the bass player who locked his keys in the car and had to smash the window to get the drummer out.

The band that would become the world’s most famous had no qualms about changing its drummer — and even with Ringo Starr the Beatles went on to alter the course of 20th century music.

But Led Zeppelin didn’t find a replacement for Bonham. They couldn’t. The untutored Bonham was perhaps the least visible member of the band during its legendary perfor­mances but everyone heard his thunderous, but often finely ­detailed, playing that came to ­define drumming in heavy rock. He was truly irreplaceable.

Few men — drummers in heavy rock bands are always men — could play like Bonham, even when sober. Those who could, such as Deep Purple’s Ian Paice or Genesis’s Phil Collins, had fulltime jobs. So, other than a handful of rare outings since, sometimes with Bonham’s son Jason (and once with Collins, during 1985’s Live Aid), Led Zeppelin put out an album appropriately called Coda and called it a day.

AC/DC, whose “brand” back then pretty much was the image of a seemingly epileptic, guitar-­playing schoolboy riding on the neck of the tattooed tough-nut certain to be ­denied parole for some very dirty deeds, also thought it was the end.

Scott hadn’t been AC/DC’s first singer. Briefly, Dave Evans fronted the band but things didn’t work out with Angus and Malcolm Young, the brotherhood that was AC/DC, until Malcolm’s diagnosis of ­dementia in 2014. Teetotal, chain-­smoking Angus now is AC/DC. Anyone else — everyone else — is disposable. And that goes for Brian Johnson, who has been the band’s singer for 36 years, three years longer than his predecessor lived.

Last month, Johnson’s doctor advised him to cease touring with the band. It seems he had lost hearing in one ear and was risking the other. Some say he walked; others claim he was ­ousted.

Was Johnson sacked? If he was an employee of the band’s then his hearing loss might raise concerns that he was suffering workplace-related deafness, and that he might have a case to pursue against his employers.

What happened with Johnson next was typical, closed-shop, Young-family AC/DC business: the band said nothing.

Johnson suggested his hearing had been damaged racing cars, while friends and relatives issued various claims online that they quickly withdrew and “regretted”. These included Ross Malcolm Young, Angus’s nephew, saying Guns N’ Roses star Axl Rose was replacing Johnson, while Johnson’s friend Jim Breuer claimed his now depressed mate had been “kicked to the kerb” and the ­singer’s tour luggage dumped in his driveway.

Curiously, it was Bon Scott who secured Johnson his gig in 1980. Scott had seen Johnson sing with the band Geordie and had enthusiastically endorsed the man he thought was the living embodiment of Little Richard. Scott loved Little Richard’s raucous singing. So does Angus. They reportedly considered Slade’s Noddy Holder to replace Scott until someone ­remembered Johnson.

So, once again, AC/DC needs a singer. Their ability to sing the band’s easily remembered ­Neanderthal lyrics is one thing, doing so night after night quite ­another. While Jimmy Barnes, Scottish-born, like the Young family, might seem a natural replacement for Johnson, the fact is AC/DC has ­become an American phenomenon and will prefer a singer known to that audience to keep ticket sales brisk. Axl Rose fits that bill (one of the few things Rose still fits, unless recent pictures of him have been cruelly Photoshopped).

AC/DC had made inroads into the US at the time of Scott’s death, but were bankable only in Britain and Australia. Their first album without Scott, 1980’s Back in Black, changed everything, selling 22 million copies in the US alone, and 50 million worldwide. Only Michael Jackson’s Thriller would sell more that decade.

So what are the lessons Angus takes into account when picking Johnson’s replacement?

When the Doors’ Jim Morrison died in Paris in 1971, the band ­considered unlikely choices — Iggy Pop and eccentric English singer Kevin Coyne — as possible ­replacements. In the end they played on as a trio, sensibly ­coming to the understanding that Morrison was a one-off. Not only was he the reason for the band’s success, he remains, 45 years after his death, its most ­famous member.

More than 30 years later, the Doors reformed using several singers, including the Cult’s Ian Astbury. Astbury is a great singer and, had he been on Venice beach in 1965 with Ray Manzarek, might have found himself in a band. But it wouldn’t have been the Doors.

When George Harrison ­walked out on the Beatles during the recording of what became the Let It Be album, John Lennon ­dismissively suggested they call Eric Clapton to fill the bridge. No longer a touring band, Lennon clearly believed it would make ­little difference.

INXS found itself lost searching to reincarnate Michael Hut­chence, trying out Baby Animals’ powerhouse Suze DeMarchi, John Stevens and the artist formerly known as Terence Trent D’Arby (he’d had a dream after which he become Sananda Maiteya — well, it makes more sense than a symbol). The band then resorted to an absurd TV raffle that was won by Canadian journeyman JD Fortune, but INXS’s fortunes waned.

Queen, too, faltered when ­replacing the flamboyantly theatrical Freddie Mercury. Could anyone really see Free and Bad Company’s blues-rock head boy Paul Rodgers singing “Scaramouche! Scaramouche! Will you do the fandango”? Rodgers, as good a singer to be found anywhere, presumably understood the irony as fans sang along with the band: “Let him go!” Queen eventually did. And then hired American Idol finalist Adam Lambert, who’d sung Bohemian Rhapsody on the show, to step in to Mercury’s stilettoes. Lambert has a flexible voice of almost four ­octaves — just short of Freddie — but it is still a tribute band.

As Keith Richards and Mick Jagger feuded over their commitment to the Rolling Stones throughout the 1980s, Richards is also reported to have shown interest in the singer who then still was Terrence Trent D’Arby and still was hot. This was after he had considered The Who’s Roger Daltrey. Meanwhile, Jagger toured the world performing his forgettable solo songs, but mixing them up with Stones classics faithfully ­rendered by guitar ace Joe Satriani, a clearly superior musician to Jagger’s childhood friend.

It’s all about branding. Would fans flock to see a Stones without Jagger? Or without Keith?

Deep Purple, then the biggest band in the world, swapped singers in 1973 — from Ian Gillan to David Coverdale — and immediately scored their second biggest selling album, Burn. But Gillan has been back in the band for decades.

While in the wilderness, Gillan briefly fronted Black Sabbath, one of many singers to step into Ozzy Osbourne’s shoes over the years.

But Ozzy returned for Sabbath’s final album, 13. He was quite excited when told it had gone top 10 in 50 countries. “I didn’t know there were 50 countries,” he said.

Listen, Angus, he could be ­perfect.