Issue 03
AC/DSHE
By Debbie Does DexterPhotos By Piper Ferguson
Illustration By Kris Chau
When arenas rocked with a hard K and cameltoe was commonplace; before it got soft, and gave way to angled hair; when 24 tracks were just enough and sometimes too much; that in-between time, riding on the crest of the mid- to late ‘70s, slowly making its way to the digital ‘80s… that was the Bon Scott era of AC/DC. To many fans, it was the best era of the band: dirty, beer-swigging, no-apologies rock and roll. Scott’s delivery epitomized the simplicity of overt sexuality while walking a fine line between subtle innuendo and obvious prose: always cheeky, slobbery, and a bit poetic, it helped more teenage boys get into the bush than beat around it.
However, Bon Scott’s five-year career with AC/DC was short-lived. In 1980, at the age of 34, he was found dead in his car of an apparent alcohol-related suicide.
In the 25 years since Scott’s death, hundreds of tribute bands have come and gone. AC/DShe seems to stand out a little more than the rest. The five ladies of the band don’t seem to mind being derivative. In fact, they almost relish it, studying every character affectation like true thespians. And somehow, in their small way, they are keeping the rock and roll fantasy alive, recreating and starring in the never-ending AC/DC story, gyrating as they take the audience for a trip on Mr. Scott’s Wild Ride.
In an alternate world, these ladies might epitomize Bon Scott’s credo to staying fit: “Alcohol, nasty women, bad food: It’s all very good for you.” But they don’t. Instead, they come across as the girls next door, the pretty girls gone just a little bad: your brother’s girlfriend, your kindergarten teacher; the ones that you could bring home to mom, beaming at you without the heaviness, visible tattoos, or testosterone debauchery. AC/DShe offers a gentler blow, with the same chords, studied movements, and uniforms as their forefathers, only delivered with a punch in the arm and not in the gut.
AC/DShe began in northern California in 1999, when leggy Amy (Bonny Scott) Ward, a well-scrubbed blonde, and her good friend, ‘70s-rock child Nicole (Riff) Williams, decided to learn to play AC/DC songs. Their voyage into rock and roll was purely precipitated by their love of AC/DC.
What kind of fans do you attract?
Nicole: We have some really crazy fans that we have become friends with over the years. We have these two brothers, The Sac Brothers, who we met in Sacramento, and they are crazed. I feel like AC/DShe has taken them downhill. You look at them when we first met them, and then you look at them now; they’ve totally changed.
Amy: They came to see us the first time that we played in Sacramento. From then on, they’ve been to almost every one of our shows. I mean, one of them is flying in to L.A. tonight for the show. He doesn’t have any money. I don’t think he has a job or anything.
Nicole: Last time they came to L.A., they bought a van to come down. It broke down.
Amy: They left it on the highway in between L.A. and San Diego, and they had written AC/DShe on the side of it, really big.
Are they fixated on one of you girls in particular?
Amy: I think they love us all equally. They would marry any one of us.
Nicole: One of them has an AC/DShe tattoo on his back.
Amy: They always go out of their way for us. They act like they work for us. One time we were playing at a show, and someone said, “Your stage manager said you needed towels.”
Nicole: I was like, “That’s not our stage manager.” They wear laminated, fake backstage passes with their photos on them. One fan made them for their entire core group.
Amy: One of them has recently joined a church and moved to Reno, and is actually doing drug counseling for children and is preaching in his church.
He wouldn’t come to our shows for a while and wasn’t sure if he could be into God and into AC/DC, but he seems convinced now that he can do both.
What do they do when they come to your shows?
Amy: They get kicked out of almost every show that they come to, because they are so enthusiastic. They’ll be rockin’ out real hard and people around them don’t get it. They think that they are being scrappy, and people start shit with them. And for whatever reason, the management always chooses to go, “You guys are the fucking troublemakers.” One time, the younger brother was so pissed off that he slammed his arm into a brick wall, and it was dangling…
Nicole: And he got back right back into the club with a broken arm. They’ve gone to jail before as a result of the shows. We’ve intervened with cops on their behalf.
What do your husbands/boyfriends think of AC/Dshe?
Amy: They used to come to the shows a lot. (Laughs)
Nicole: Now, if you ask my husband what his favorite AC/DShe song is, he says, “The last one.”
Amy, I read in your press kit that you like to drink (a lot) during your shows.
Nicole: Well she’s just channeling Bon’s spirit. We think she’s more entertaining when she’s drunk. It’s all part of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
Amy: I think I’m more entertaining when I’m drunk. There’s a fine line. I equate going out and drinking as part of having a good time. There’s definitely drinking going on. Most of the venues that we play supply us with a bottle of Maker’s Mark and a case of beer.
Do you still listen to AC/DC’s music as much as you did before you started the band?
Nicole: When I first started this, I was worried that it would change how I felt about AC/DC. I was like, “We’re going to be playing shows all of the time. Am I going to get sick of this?” But, I can still put on my Walkman and listen to AC/DC all day. It doesn’t change.
Amy: I used to give Nicole a hard time because she used to mouth the words to the songs on stage. And Cliff would never
do that. Because we are a tribute, and not a cover band, we try to be as much like the people whose parts we are playing as possible on stage.
So a tribute band is more like mimicking the originals?
Amy: Yeah, and that’s our definition; I don’t know that everyone thinks of it that way. A cover band is a band that plays covers of AC/DC, Black Sabbath, the Rolling Stones, all together. A tribute band just does one band.
Nicole: We try to have the same stage show, wear the same clothing, play the same instruments, everything the same. We get bent out of shape if people call us a cover band.
Have any wild road stories?
Nicole: We were driving back from L.A. and we went to this gas station, and this guy pulled up in a truck and was like, “Girls in a van!” He was totally checking us out. Then we took off and we were driving down the highway and he came up alongside us, he had his cab light on and had taken off all of his clothes. He was completely naked. We floored it.
Why the Bon Scott era of AC/DC?
Amy: Singing like Brian would have been easier… but Bon, Bon Scott is a legend. He died when I was four. We’re AC/DC geeks. Every time you read the story on when he died, it’s the most saddest story.
Nicole: What’s really cool is some of the fans will come up to us at the end of a show and tell us where they were when Bon died, and what they did that day. One time, a guy came up to the stage, he was this big giant guy and probably weighed 350 pounds, and he told us that watching us play brought a tear to his eye. I don’t know how drunk he was, but it was really sweet to hear that.