The rock and roll community took a hit on Saturday, Dec. 16, 2023, when it was announced that AC/DC’s original drummer, Colin Burgess, had passed away. He was 77 years old.
No cause of death was given in the announcement, made via the band’s Instagram page, where uncredited members of the rock group sent the late musician off with a solemn “rock in peace.”
Born Nov. 16, 1946, Burgess was a frequent presence in Australian rock music. The bands that he played with were multitudinous: The Untamed, The Haze, The Masters Apprentice, etc. But it was the drummer’s brief stint with AC/DC that brought him into the spotlight. Burgess performed with the group for just four months — from November 1973 to February of the following year — when he was let go for being drunk during a performance. It was an occurrence that he would later blame on a surreptitiously spiked drink, but whatever the cause, the damage was done.
Burgess’ exit sparked a cascade of replacement drummers that took a year to resolve itself, evening out in early 1975 with the band’s recruitment of Phil Rudd. In a no-hard-feelings moment that you don’t see enough of in the music industry, Burgess was brought back into the AC/DC fold briefly later that same year, subbing in for Rudd while he recovered from a hand injury.
In the years after his stint with surprisingly-recent-Grammy-nominees AC/DC, Burgess continued to rock, helping to form the band His Majesty with his brother, Denny, in addition to The Burgess Brothers Band, later rebranded as Burgess Burgess. In 1998, both Burgesses recovered from a severe car accident, which would partly inspire a 2005 documentary, The Comeback Kings.