The Story Of AC/DC’s First UK Tour (that almost never was)
When you buy through links on our site, we may earn a commission. Learn more.
March 19, 1976. Guitarist Paul Kossoff dies of a drug-related heart attack on a flight from Los Angeles to New York. AC/DC’s planned UK support tour – their ticket to breaking Britain – collapses before they even board the plane from Australia.
Thirteen days later, on April 1, they land at Heathrow anyway.
The five Australians pile into a cramped terrace house in Barnes with a shoestring Atlantic Records budget and no plan beyond what manager Michael Browning keeps repeating: become a live “road band” first, not radio stars. Outside their dirty little house, London is exploding with safety pins and three-chord nihilism. The Sex Pistols are about to change everything. AC/DC, with their Chuck Berry riffs and blues-rock foundations, are dinosaurs arriving at a punk revolution.
They’re also completely unknown. In Australia, they’d been “big business,” drawing thousands. Here, their biggest success means nothing. Mark Evans puts it plainly in his memoir: they’d come to “plunder and pillage,” but first they need someone to actually show up.
The Red Cow Experiment
April 23, 1976. The Red Cow pub on Hammersmith Road holds maybe 150 people when packed. Tonight, as AC/DC sets up on the tiny stage for their first-ever UK performance, there are somewhere between 30 and 50.
No advertising. No hype. Just a last-minute booking their agent Richard Griffiths scrambled together after the Kossoff disaster. The few punters nursing pints have no idea what’s about to happen.
Mark Evans starts the bass intro to “Livewire.” Malcolm Young’s ominous chords follow. Phil Rudd’s hi-hat. Then Angus Young’s guitar and the drums “absolutely erupted.”
Evans would later say he felt “lifted off the ground” by the volume. The patrons felt it too – the sheer physics of sound in a room that small left them stunned. After the first set, they left. Not in disgust – to find phones.
They “lit up the switchboard,” calling friends, telling them to get to the Red Cow immediately. By the second set, the tiny pub was packed like sardines. Richard Griffiths stood by the stage with his jaw dropped, both “thrilled and a little intimidated.” Later, he’d gasp to the band: “That was the loudest, meanest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
Evans would remember it as the moment they felt “like brothers.” The relief was palpable. The audience “had no idea what was about to hit them.” Neither did London.
The Derek Taylor Problem
Atlantic Records wanted their new Australian signing to meet the staff properly, to play nice with the industry machinery. They arranged a small reception at the Oxford Street office, complete with a receiving line. Among the sophisticated label executives stood Derek Taylor, former publicist for the Beatles.
Taylor greeted them with practiced wit. Bon Scott, never one for pretense, asked him directly: “What do you do around here, mate?”
Taylor smiled. “My dear fellow, I’m Derek Taylor. I worked for the Beatles. You’ve heard of them, haven’t you?”
Mark Evans, next in line, raised his beer to Taylor’s cleverness and responded with a massive, beery burp directly in the man’s face.
Taylor’s look of “utter distaste” said everything about the cultural gap between AC/DC and the London music establishment. Evans would later note that Taylor had no idea “how close he came to a smack in the mouth.” The Atlantic staff smiled, but their smiles “turned a little thin-lipped.”
Meanwhile, Bon was getting into different trouble. He visited the Manor Cottage pub in Finchley, where he’d worked as a bartender years earlier with his previous band, Fraternity. An old enemy – or maybe just a random drunk – recognized him. Bon recalled: “I walked in and opened my mouth to say hello and some bastard broke a glass on my teeth.”
Dislocated jaw. Black eye. Eight hundred quid for new Harley Street dentures. And their first professional UK photo shoot scheduled in days.
The solution: Ray-Ban wraparound shades. The injury was chaos; the image accidentally perfect. The outlaw persona they were building wasn’t calculated – it was just who they were, stumbling from pub brawls to photo shoots while the industry wondered what they’d signed.
Destroying the Headliners
May 11 and 12, 1976. The Marquee Club on Wardour Street in Soho. AC/DC is opening for Crawler, the band that had reorganized after Paul Kossoff’s death. The shows are meant to give AC/DC exposure, a chance to win over Crawler’s established audience.
Instead, they eclipse them completely.
The set is a “revelation” – “streamlined, powerhouse boogie” from a “livewire band in tremendous form.” Crawler follows and the contrast is brutal. The headliners seem “rather lumbering,” “bereft of their charismatic inspiration,” with “little or nothing to offer.”
The reviews are surgical. Critics note that “AC/DC made it impossible for Crawler” because the support act was drawing “significantly more interest.” Compared to AC/DC’s energy, Crawler “seemed middle-aged, stale and totally out of touch with what was going on musically” – particularly awkward as punk was exploding around them.
Mark Evans is blunt about it: AC/DC “just wanted to get out there and blast Back Street Crawler, and the rest of them, to bits.” The packed, sweaty crowd made it obvious “that most had turned up to see the support act.”
The proof was concrete: an unknown Australian band had destroyed an established British act on a legendary London stage. Word spread. The “street vibe” intensified. They were ready for their own tour.
The Lock Up Your Daughters Gambit
June 11, 1976. Glasgow City Hall. The opening night of AC/DC’s first official UK headline tour, sponsored by Sounds magazine. For the Young brothers, it’s a homecoming – Malcolm born in Glasgow in 1953, Angus in 1955, before the family emigrated to Australia in 1963. Bon Scott was born nearby in Forfar. Banners in the crowd read: “WELCOME HOME.”
The crowd is rabid. Almost the entire audience stands on their chairs throughout the set. Then they start ripping the first two rows of seats out of the floor and hurling them around the venue.
The City of Glasgow District Council sends a formal letter to Atlantic Records:
“We have been advised that the audience in attendance at the recent concert featuring AC/DC which you produced were for the most of the performance entirely out of control and were actually standing up on the seats. This has caused some damage to the upholstery and has also resulted in a back being broken off one of the seats.”
The phrase “entirely out of control” would become a badge of honor. The band’s management includes the letter in full-page advertisements for their upcoming Marquee residency. The “bad boy” reputation is no longer just image – it’s backed by official government complaints.
Bon Scott captures the Glasgow energy perfectly: “The kids are really mad – like, half of them are Angus and Malcolm’s relatives anyway… if the cops had stopped the show and arrested Angus the kids would have gone mad. And no one goes mad like Glaswegians, believe me.”
Sounds magazine witnesses the barely controlled chaos: “The audience even at this early stage have nearly demolished the staid City Hall. Bon, halfheartedly and mischievously, asks us all to sit down, ‘or else the management will turn off the power.’ Nobody attempts to find their seat.”
For future shows in Glasgow, authorities station extra security inside the venue and a riot squad outside.
Five People and Full Intensity
June 23, 1976. Brangwyn Hall in Mumbles, Wales. The tour is rolling through Britain. Tonight’s attendance: five people.
Five.
The band plays anyway. Full intensity. Full volume. The same assault they delivered to packed rooms in Glasgow. By the end of the night, all five are converted, dedicated fans.
It’s a statement of commitment: crowd size doesn’t matter. The band doesn’t adjust, doesn’t phone it in, doesn’t save energy. The machine runs at one speed.
The Birthday Brawl
July 7, 1976. The tour ends at the London Lyceum Ballroom. That night, the band gathers at the Russell Hotel on Russell Square to celebrate – both the successful tour and Bon Scott’s 30th birthday. Bon himself is a no-show, having disappeared for several days.
By 10 PM, Angus is telling a story about seeing the Beatles perform at Rushcutters Bay Stadium in Sydney during their 1964 Australian tour. Mark Evans, 20 years old and admittedly “a half-pissed smartarse,” decides to wind Angus up.
The argument centers on the ticket price. Angus insists it cost $4.50.
Evans pounces: “How come it was four dollars fifty to see the Beatles in 1964 when we didn’t even have decimal currency until 1966? Shouldn’t you be talking pounds, Angus, not dollars?”
Angus, defensive: “I should know, arsehole, because I paid for the thing myself.”
The tension simmers. Later, when Evans makes a rude remark about an Alberts Productions employee in front of company executive Fifa Riccobono, Angus jumps up.
Punches Evans in the face.
“Wham, just like that,” Evans recalls. Manager Michael Browning has to restrain Evans and pull him off Angus. Malcolm immediately “lines up with Angus” – the brothers united.
Evans believes this moment sealed his fate: “To this day I feel that my future with the band – or lack thereof – was decided over that incident, which tipped things over the edge.” He leaves for Brighton the next morning to get away from the band.
The punch wasn’t just about a Beatles ticket. It was about the Young brothers’ tunnel vision – their expectation that everyone in the band vibrate at their exact frequency, share their exact commitment. Anyone causing friction, even through a drunken argument, was a potential liability.
Success was creating internal fractures. Ten months later, Evans would be fired.
The Sweat-Box Transformation
July 26, 1976. The Lock Up Your Daughters tour proved demand exists. Manager Michael Browning and booking agent Richard Griffiths convince Marquee manager Jack Barrie – who’d seen AC/DC destroy Crawler back in May – to give them a Monday night residency.
The timing is perfect. And perfectly brutal.
London is experiencing a record-breaking drought-riddled heatwave. The Marquee, already notorious as a “sweat-box” in normal conditions, becomes a “sauna bath” where it’s “virtually impossible to breathe.” Condensation from collected sweat forms on the ceiling and rains back down on the packed crowd.
Week after week, the crowds grow. The heat intensifies. By August 23, the temperature is so extreme that Angus Young discards his schoolboy uniform entirely and “duck-walks straight onto the Marquee stage in running shoes and a pair of jocks.”
The venue’s official capacity is roughly 700 people. Manager Michael Browning estimates they’re packing in “something like 1,400 people.” Week after week, they break their own attendance record. Journalist Phil Sutcliffe captures the atmosphere: “The heat is beyond belief… Guys take their shirts off and within half a minute they look as though they’ve stepped out of the shower.”
Then comes the historic claim: AC/DC has broken the Marquee’s all-time attendance record. More people than The Who ever drew there. More than Jimi Hendrix.
Jack Barrie, the Marquee’s manager, calls them “the most exciting band to play at the Marquee since Led Zeppelin.” Michael Browning believes the record still stands: “I think AC/DC to this day still hold the record for the most people in the Marquee… I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything as hot and sweaty as that.”
This is the moment. The concrete proof. An unknown Australian band arrived in April during punk’s explosion, dismissed as “unfashionable dinosaurs,” and four months later broke attendance records at the venue that launched British rock legends. They transcended the punk/metal divide through sheer live power. The New Musical Express reports: “The only sound coming through the wall was chunka-chunka-chunka, while the bar resounded with ribald Aussies telling me to watch for Angus Young to expose himself.”
The formula had worked: become a road band first, not radio stars. Build word-of-mouth through club intensity. Don’t adjust to fashion. Just hit harder.
The Reading Reality Check
August 29, 1976. Reading Festival. The prestigious institution that makes or breaks up-and-coming bands. After conquering the Marquee, management sees Reading as AC/DC’s “major UK launchpad” – the moment to “explode” into the mainstream.
Sunday afternoon. 5:30 PM. Broad daylight. AC/DC follows the “genteel prog” of The Enid and the “jazz rock noodlings” of Brand X.
The 50,000-person crowd is lethargic. Unresponsive. Apathetic.
Mark Evans: “To call the reaction apathetic would have been complimentary.” The silence is so complete he can hear a lone heckler: “I heard a lone punter yelling, ‘Get on with it.’ That’s how quiet it was, I could pick out a smartarse heckler among 50,000 people.”
Melody Maker calls them “untalented jerks.” Legendary DJ John Peel sleeps through their set – “probably the first person ever to do so.”
The intimate club assault doesn’t translate to outdoor festivals. The theatrical lighting disappears in daylight. The “manic energy” that destroyed clubs lands flat on a lethargic audience immune to hard rock’s charms.
That night, at the house on Lonsdale Road in Barnes, George Young explodes at the band. A three-way brawl erupts between George, Malcolm, and Angus. When Mark Evans tries to intervene, he gets hit: “Get your hands off him!” George tears into Angus for being “such a fookin’ prima donna.” Messages filter back to Evans questioning his commitment: “Who does he think he is? Jack Bruce?”
The frustration is existential. They’d proven they could pack clubs to illegal capacity, but festival crowds remained unconvinced. The formula had limits.
Six Months
November 10, 1976. Hammersmith Odeon. First major headline show in London. Four thousand seats. Only half full – the balcony remains closed – but still a “dazzling” success that confirms cult status.
Bon Scott arrives 20 minutes late because he took the wrong tube train. Instead of heading west to Hammersmith, he went east, ending up 15 kilometers away. When he finally figures it out, he simply strolls up to the stage door, bag slung over his shoulder, no apologies.
The band room erupts: “Where the have you been, you prick!”
That’s who they’d become: professional enough to headline a 4,000-seat venue, chaotic enough that their frontman still gets lost on the tube.
In October, Oxford Polytechnic had banned them for “blatantly vulgar and cheap references to both sexes.” They used it as publicity. The international version of High Voltage was released in May. The “Jailbreak” single dropped in August. The Sun newspaper admitted, grudgingly: “AC/DC are a band we will learn to live with.”
From the Red Cow’s 30 people in April to Hammersmith Odeon in November. From unknown Australians to the band that broke the Marquee’s attendance records. Too raw for prog fans, too professional for punks, too loud for everyone.
And that’s exactly why it worked.
The irony lands perfectly: their support tour with Paul Kossoff died before they even landed, forcing them into pubs and small clubs with no plan. Exactly where they needed to be. The intimate rooms built the word-of-mouth intensity that made the Marquee residency legendary. The plan failed perfectly.
They’d arrived during punk’s explosion as dinosaurs. Left as the band even punks couldn’t ignore. The NME captured it: “The day, Gawd ‘elp us all, AC/DC conquered London.”
Not through radio hits or festival validation. Through sweat-box Monday nights and government complaints. Through sheer volume in rooms too small to contain it. Through refusing to adjust, refusing to play the game, refusing to be anything other than the loudest, meanest thing London had heard.
The wrong revolution. The right band. The records proved it.
