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The Big Issue: (Bag)Pipe Dreams

Pete WhelanLeave a comment

On a Monday morning in February 1976, the piercing squall of bagpipes
cuts through the usual thrum of Melbourne’s Swanston Street. The
source of this aural intrusion? A young AC/DC on the back of a flatbed
truck, instruments in hand, filming the video for their latest single.


One of AC/DC’s best-loved tunes, ‘It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You
Wanna Rock’n’Roll)’ is a cautionary tale of the struggles of a hard-working
rock band. It’s been covered by everyone from Motörhead to Hanson.


In the clip, we see Acca Dacca thrashing it out in their signature four-
to-the-floor style, flanked by the Rats of Tobruk Pipe Band, as bagpipe-
brandishing Bon Scott prances around the flatbed like a larrikin jester.


Incidentally, Scott is miming. When producer George Young learned
Scott had previously been a member of the Freemantle Scots Pipe Band
he’d suggested the frontman record some bagpipes for the song. Scott
agreed…neglecting to mention he’d never played the instrument before,
and was actually the band’s drummer. Still, he took lessons. His piping
teacher Kevin Conlon later told The Age it would’ve taken at least a year to
play a tune. “He said that was fine and came down for a few lessons, but as
we were only going to be miming, he just had to look like he was playing.”


Filmed for Countdown by director Paul Drane, the clip has since
become a touchstone in Australia’s rock’n’roll history, pushing the song
to AC/DC’s then-peak position of #9 on the Australian charts and helping
turn the scruffy pub band into a household name.


The band’s laissez-faire attitude extended to the clip’s filming, planned
with minimal consultation with the authorities. “You could do something
like that back then,” Drane told The Sydney Morning Herald in 2005. “You
could organise it with the city council and it could be done very quickly.
We didn’t have to shut the streets down or stop traffic. These days you’d
have the street shut down for a day. It would be almost impossible.”


In 2004, the City of Melbourne renamed Corporation Lane, which
runs parallel to the band’s route on Swanston Street, to AC/DC Lane. “As
the song says, there is a highway to hell,” Melbourne’s then Lord Mayor
John So said at the laneway’s opening, “but this is a laneway to heaven.
Let us rock.” A bagpipe ensemble then played ‘It’s a Long Way to the Top’.

The song itself has not been played by AC/DC since December 1979
at the Hammersmith Odeon in London, a little over a month before Bon
Scott passed away. Current vocalist Brian Johnson reportedly refuses to
sing it out of respect for his predecessor.

The Big Issue: Lap of the Gods

Pete WhelanLeave a comment


The Bathurst 1000 is Australia’s most beloved motorsports event, but beneath the pageantry lies one of the world’s most dangerous racetracks.


Much has changed over the 60 years of the Bathurst 1000. Once a testing ground for unmodified sedans from car dealerships, the track now swarms each October with V8 Supercars emblazoned with corporate logos. They hurtle along the winding road at speeds in excess of 200 kilometres an hour. Since day one, though, the summit of Mount Panorama in the NSW town has quietly presided over the squealing tires and photo finishes – its sharp hills and hairpin bends at the heart of one of the world’s most unique motorsport events.

 “It’s an extreme place,” says Steve Normoyle, author of Bathurst: 60 Years of the Great Race. The photo-driven chronicle documents the 161-lap race’s “many tales of triumph and tragedy” over the years. There’s Peter Brock’s staggering 1979 win, which saw him and Jim Richards place six laps ahead of their nearest competitor. Also featured is Richards’ controversial win in 1992, when torrential rain and numerous crashes – including one involving Richards’ leading Nissan GT-R – caused the race to be stopped and the clock wound back. Perhaps mercifully, however, all images of David Reynolds swilling champagne from a shoe after his 2017 victory have been omitted.

 “If I ever won Bathurst, there wouldn’t be a shoey,” Normoyle laughs. Despite these moments of levity, Bathurst is not for the faint of heart. “If you built that track today and tried to use it for car racing, the authorities would laugh at you. It would be considered too dangerous on all sorts of levels,” says Normoyle of the 1000km track. “The drivers themselves all talk about it being the only place where one of their competitors is the circuit itself. You don’t need to be a motorsport enthusiast to watch it and understand just how difficult it is.” 

Normoyle says the “sheer elevation change, the run across the top of the mountain, the drop off the end, and the long run down Conrod Straight” make the track so risky. “In the early days, there were no fences around the top,” he explains, “so if a car crashed off the inside of the circuit, it often rolled down the mountain. It was very much frontier stuff.” The challenges for the drivers aren’t limited to the difficulty of the track – they must also contend with Mount Panorama itself. One of the mountain’s more famous interventions in the race came in 1980, when driver Dick Johnson’s iconic “TRUBLU” Ford Falcon XD struck an errant rock on the track. “In one of the 12-hour races one year, there was a lot of rain,” says Normoyle. 

“During the race, a tree on the inside of the circuit fell across the track. I don’t think that’s ever happened at any motorsport event in the world. “Ironically,” he adds, “it’s probably one of the safer tracks for a photographer.” The elevation allows viewpoints that other tracks could not accommodate. The images Normoyle has compiled tell a story so vivid, you can almost smell the engine oil and burnt rubber. 

But after poring over thousands of photos in the archives, the photographer has yet to decide on his favourite. “If you ask me, any picture of a car at Mount Panorama is worth looking at,” he says with the air of a man who loves his job.

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