100 Greatest Songs of the ’80’s #100 AC/DC – Back In Black

Released : 1980

We always want our dead rock stars back. But – and it’s a massive but – would AC/DC have made an album like Back In Black had their former singer Bon Scott not drank himself into a stupor from which he never woke up?

As a celebration of his life the song about life has, post mortem, arguably made Scott the most listened to ex-singer in a band there’s ever been, not that many would realise from his replacement Brian Johnson’s slightly oblique eulogy: “Forget the hearse ’cause I never die/I got nine lives/Cat’s eyes/Abusin’ every one of them and running wild”.

Dead is dead, of course. But be under no doubt that Scott is knocking back a scotch whilst this one plays somewhere, hurtling towards that ninth funeral with absoloutely none given.