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And Finally Artist News Gigs & Festivals
Perth Festival to pay tribute to AC/DC’s Bon Scott with its own Highway To Hell
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 21 October 2019
The Perth Festival in Australia will next year close one of the city’s busiest roads and turn it into a venue in order to pay tribute to AC/DC and their late frontman Bon Scott.
Marking the 40th anniversary of Scott’s death, the road-based concert will be named ‘Highway To Hell’, after the last AC/DC album the frontman appeared on before his death in 1980. The road set to host the festivities is called the Canning Highway, which links Fremantle, the port town where Scott lived, with the inner Perth suburb of Victoria Park.
The director of Perth Festival, Iain Grandage, notes that Scott himself used this particular stretch of the Canning Highway when travelling from his Fremantle home to play gigs in the city’s Raffles Hotel, then a rock n roll hangout.
“The idea of closing down the highway to celebrate a favourite son is an exciting way to celebrate our city and bring the curtain down on the 2020 Festival”, says Grandage. “Everyone is invited. As Bon Scott sings in the song that inspired this event: ‘And all my friends are gonna be there too'”.
Although named after ‘Highway To Hell’, the format of the Canning Highway venture takes its inspiration from a video recorded for an earlier AC/DC track, ‘It’s A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll)’, in which the band were filmed performing the song on the back of a flatbed truck driving around Melbourne.
During the Perth Festival event, various artists will perform AC/DC songs on the back of trucks that will slowly work their way along one half of the Canning Highway. Festival-goers will then be encouraged to sit on the other side of the road watching each performance as it goes by. There’ll be four main performance areas with audience members encouraged to pick a spot, enjoy a picnic and watch the entertainment on each truck as it parks alongside.
The eclectic mix of artists due to take part includes Steve ‘n’ Seagulls, Shonen Knife, Amyl And The Sniffers and the WA Police Band.
