Chequers Club - First AC/DC concert

Chequers Club on Market Street in the Sydney CBD is where AC/DC played their first public concert on New Year's Eve, December 31, 1973. The band had formed weeks earlier when Malcolm Young recruited his teenage brother Angus, borrowed vocalist Dave Evans, and assembled a rhythm section. They had barely rehearsed. They plugged in at Chequers, a nightclub in the heart of the city, and the noise they made that night was the beginning of one of the loudest stories in rock music. Angus wore his school uniform, which had been suggested by his sister Margaret as a costume idea shortly before the show.

AC/DC's first year was one of frantic activity: performing relentlessly at clubs, pubs, and venues across Sydney and Melbourne, cycling through vocalists until Bon Scott joined in October 1974, developing the blueprint of the band that would eventually play to stadiums on every continent. The Chequers show is the origin point of that story -- a New Year's Eve performance by a band that didn't yet know who they were, in a Sydney nightclub that no longer exists.

The Chequers Club in its original form closed long ago, and the Market Street location has been redeveloped. No physical trace of the venue remains in the current streetscape. The first AC/DC concert is documented in the band's biography and in the memories of those who were there -- a handful of people who witnessed, without knowing it, the first performance of a band that would sell over 200 million records.