AC/DC and Other Scots Who Rock Australian Music

Great Australian musicians with Scottish roots

AC/DC’s Angus Young was born in Glasgow in 1955 and came to Australia in 1963. Photo by Matt Becker. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

2020 was intended to be the Year of Scotland in Australia — a yearlong celebration of Scottish music and heritage in the land down under. Sadly, the event was cancelled. But never fear, all is not lost. I’ve decided to showcase some of the great Australian musicians who have Scottish roots.

Peter Dodds McCormick — composer of the Australian national anthem

Thanks to an “aggravated” Scotsman, we Australians have a pretty cool national anthem. Slightly modified over the years, our anthem is inclusive of all and focuses mainly on Australian nature (our best asset) and contains the word “girt”. You can really only pronounce “girt” effectively with a Scottish accent…

Peter Dodds McCormick wrote “Advance Australia Fair” in 1878. The song became our national anthem in 1974 (and in 1984 because we’d swapped back to “God Save the Queen” for a while).

“One night I attended a great concert in the Exhibition Building, when all the National Anthems of the world were to be sung by a large choir with band accompaniment. This was very nicely done, but I felt very aggravated that there was not one note for Australia. On the way home in a bus, I concocted the…