On This Day in History

On this date in history, 12/11/1977, I saw a truly legendary show. Kiss played MSA with this unknown band from Australia called AC/DC! To top it off, my friends and I were in the front row, crushed up against the barricade.

This was my third concert ever, and my second time seeing Kiss. Let’s begin at the beginning…I can’t overstate just how amazing AC/DC were that night. I was mesmerized from the opening chords. Angus Young was running full speed back and forth across the stage, occasionally hitting the ground and bloodying his knees or simply spazzing out on his back while never missing a note in his frantic lead playing.

As amazing as he was, I couldn’t stop watching Bon Scott. He was one of the first rockers I ever saw with tattoos, and his voice was a whiskey soaked, balls to the wall powerhouse. The songs were loud, tight and in your face, and although I had never heard a note of their music prior to that evening, I left there a lifelong fan! Near the end of their set, Bon and Angus left the stage, leaving Malcolm Young, Cliff Williams and Phil Rudd onstage rocking like their lives depended on it. After the whole crowd roared and a spotlight went to the back of the arena, we all turned to see Bon Scott with Angus on this shoulders on the walkway between the upper and lower seating areas. The band was playing “Bad Boy Boogie” and Angus kept playing lead as Bon carried the thrashing wild man all the rest of the way around the arena and back onto the stage! It was a good thing for Kiss that they had all their pyro and awesome theatrics, because AC/DC came perilously close to stealing their thunder! But, luckily for us fans, Kiss did indeed bring the thunder. Back in those days, they put out a new album every 6 months, so even though I had seen them the previous year on the Destroyer tour, this time around they had already released Rock And Roll Over and Love Gun, so they had a ton of new songs to unleash to the hungry hordes in attendance at this show. Being as close as we were to the stage, my friends and I acquired a few souvenirs from the action. One of my buddies momentarily had his hands on a piece of the guitar that Paul Stanley smashed near the end of their set, but it was a feeding frenzy that he was destined to lose! I still have one of Paul’s guitar picks and a little piece of the towel that Gene Simmons wiped his face with after he spit the fake blood during his bass solo! Sorry for the novel (NOT!) but like I said, this was an EPIC show…one that changed my life…yeah, I saw Bon Scott from the front row…definitely worth bragging about!

Written By Braddon S. Williams aka The Concert Critic