AC/DC recorded this a few months after lead singer Bon Scott died of acute alcohol poisoning after a night of heavy drinking. The album is a tribute to him, and futures his replacement, Brian Johnson, on vocals. This is the first track on Back in Black, AC/DC's biggest album. In tribute to Bon Scott, it starts off with the bell tolling 4 times before the guitar riff comes in. The bell rings another 9 times, gradually fading out. When played live, Brian Johnson would strike the bell. You don't honor Bon Scott's memory with a bell from a sound effects reel, so the band needed a real bell, and a big one. The first attempt to record the bell took place in Leicestershire, England at the Carillon and War Memorial Museum. This proved insufficient, so the band commissioned a one-ton bronze bell from a local foundry that they would use on stage. The bell wasn't ready in time for recording, however, so the manufacturer (John Taylor Bellfounders) arranged for them to record a similar bell at a nearby church. According to engineer Tony Platt, that didn't go well, as there were birds living in the bell, so when they rang it they also got the fluttering of wings (the birds would retreat back inside the bell after the toll). They decided to use the bell that was in production, so they borrowed a mobile recording unit owned by Ronnie Laine and wheeled it into the foundry. The bell was hung on a block and tackle and struck by the man who built it. Because of the harmonics, bells are not easy to record, so Platt placed about 15 microphones with various dynamics in different locations around the foundry to record the sounds. Once it was on tape, Platt brought the recordings to Electric Lady Studios in New York, where he and Mutt Lange chose the right combination of bell sounds, put a mixer together, and slowed it down to half speed so the one-ton bell would sound like a ominous two-ton bell. This was integrated into the mix, and the song was completed. Listeners with very sharp ears will notice that the bell when chimed live is an octave higher than when it is on the recording. This was one of the first songs regularly played as entrance music for a Major League Baseball relief pitcher. In the '90's, the bell signaled the entrance of San Diego Padres relief pitcher Trevor Hoffman. This bit of home team intimidation was copied through out the league, most famously by the New York Yankees, who appropriated Metallica's "Enter Sandman" as Mariano Rivera's entrance music.