From Bondi Beach to the Agora Ballroom: How AC/DC’s American invasion really unfolded
By Website Content Manager
“Just four days after Let There Be Rock hit shelves, AC/DC touched down in the United States, ready to launch their first North American tour — even though virtually no one there had heard of them yet.”
Susan Masino’s Let There Be Rock: The Story of AC/DC first appeared in 2006, drawing on interviews with Angus Young, Dave Evans, Keith Emerson, Robin Zander, industry insiders, and longtime friends to chart the rise of Australia’s biggest rock export. A revised edition arrived in 2020, expanding the narrative to cover Black Ice, Rock or Bust, Axl Rose’s stint with the band, and the then-rumored new record.
This excerpt rewinds to 1977, when AC/DC first stepped onto American soil.
In June of that year, Angus Young and Bon Scott joined Rose Tattoo onstage at the Bondi Lifesaver in Sydney—one of their final appearances before preparing for their long-awaited U.S. run. Let There Be Rock hit American record shops on July 23, 1977, just four days before the band’s scheduled show at the Amarillo World Headquarters in Austin, Texas. The album would eventually climb to No. 154 on the Billboard charts. Before flying out, the band played two low-profile warm-up gigs at the Bondi venue, performing under the names The Seedies one night and Dirty Deeds the next.
To prepare for AC/DC’s arrival in the States, Atlantic Records assembled a fresh promotions team. One of the newcomers was the late Perry Cooper, whose very first project at the label was pushing AC/DC. “I’d been working with Michael Klenfner at Arista—he was VP of promotions and I handled special projects, though I collected titles left and right,” he recalled.
“We spent a couple of great years there working with Barry Manilow, Melissa Manchester, the Outlaws, the Bay City Rollers—fantastic times. When Michael got an offer from Atlantic, he brought me with him as part of the deal.”
Shortly after they settled in at Atlantic, label president Jerry Greenberg approached them. “‘We’ve signed a band from Australia that’s doing reasonably well,’” Cooper remembered Greenberg saying. “‘But the lyrics are a little risky, radio won’t touch them, and we need help. See what you think.’”
Greenberg handed them a kinescope—an old-school film cartridge. “Michael will deny it, but he told me he didn’t care, so I was the one who actually watched it,” Cooper said. “I see this guitarist duck-walking across the stage, clearly inspired by Chuck Berry, and I thought, ‘They need to be touring here. They’re incredible live.’ So that’s exactly what we pushed for.”
After viewing the footage, Cooper returned to Greenberg convinced that the band had real potential. His idea was simple: get AC/DC in front of American audiences. “They ended up touring nonstop for two straight years,” he said. “Our whole philosophy was: ‘If people see them, they’ll get it.’”
AC/DC arrived in the U.S. on July 27, 1977—quietly, unlike the Beatles’ legendary fanfare—and, much like the early Rolling Stones, piled into a used station wagon to tackle their first American tour.
Their first three shows were as openers for Moxy, with dates in Austin, San Antonio, and Corpus Christi. Texas audiences embraced them immediately; Angus later joked that Texans “really know how to party!” On July 30, they played a free show at the Electric Ballroom in Dallas hosted by radio station K2EW.
From Texas, the band headed to Florida, beginning the long grind that would stretch over two years and later be remembered as their personal “highway to hell.” Their Gainesville gig on August 4 was canceled, but on August 5 and 6 they co-headlined with REO Speedwagon in West Palm Beach and Jacksonville.
A radio station in Jacksonville placed several AC/DC songs into rotation, dramatically boosting their profile. Instead of being paid $500 to play a small club, AC/DC suddenly found themselves performing for 8,000 people at the Coliseum with Pat Travers as support. Jacksonville quickly became one of their strongest markets.
After playing “A Day for the Kids,” a charity concert at the Sportatorium in Hollywood, Florida, before a crowd of 13,000, the group began making their way inland. They joined bills with Foreigner and UFO, performing at Mississippi Nights in St. Louis on August 9 and Memorial Hall in Kansas City on August 10. From there they hit B’Ginnings, a club in Schaumburg, Illinois, and opened for the Michael Stanley Band in Cleveland. They then spent two nights supporting The Dictators at the Agora in Columbus before driving north toward Wisconsin. Bon wrote to a friend that he was loving the U.S.—“especially the chicks.”
AC/DC were scheduled to play a campus bar in downtown Madison on Tuesday, August 16, 1977. It was technically their fifteenth show of the tour, though only their fourteenth actual U.S. performance due to the Gainesville cancellation.