Former AC/DC Bassist Mark Evans - "Bon Scott Was Used To Calamity"
September 15, 2011, 12 years ago
Bassist Mark Evans joined AC/DC as a local Australian bar band, and he remained with them through several international tours and multi-platinum records, including High Voltage, Dirty Deeds, and Let There Be Rock. Evans has now written the first insider account of the Bon Scott-era of the band, Dirty Deeds: My Life Inside/Outside AC/DC. This "honest and comical look at AC/DC's rise to the upper echelons of hard rock" is scheduled for November 2011 release in North America, and is currently available for pre-order with a limited color metal badge from publisher Bazillion Points. For more information, visit Dirtydeedsbook.com.
In the book, Evans carefully illuminates at length the little-known real-life character of legendary frontman Bon Scott, with whom he shared buses, hotels, and stages for years.
"Bon was used to calamity," Evans writes about one of the singer's many scrapes. "Before joining AC/DC he endured a long stay in an Adelaide hospital after a near-fatal motorcycle crash. Bon was always willing to show me the bloodstains on the inside of his black leather bike jacket, courtesy of that smash. It was a favorite jacket of his and showed up in quite a few photos over the early years. It was a funky black leather number; Bon had sewn fake leopard-skin patches on the shoulders. He was handy with a sewing needle, that boy.""Bon was very big on comics. That's one memory of Bon that comes to me quite regularly: his head buried in a comic book, reading with intent if it was Conan or having a good giggle if he was reading BC. Bon was also an avid letter writer; he was always knocking out postcards or letters to family and friends, keeping them up with news from the front-or should I say, his front. My other strongest memories of Bon are his laugh and his cheeky grin. You know the grin, where you can't help but think he was either up to mischief or had just gotten away with something. That was a hell of a grin."
Dirty Deeds: My Life Inside/Outside Of AC/DC, is the first bio written by a band insider during AC/DC's early years, a true-to-life storybook of the struggles and camaraderie that fueled the rise of hard rock's most successful group. Mark Evans provides the first-ever street level view of Malcolm Young, Angus Young, Phil Rudd, and the late Bon Scott, in stories involving such rock and roll icons as GEORGE HARRISON, GENE SIMMONS, PHIL LYNOTT, BLACK SABBATH, ROSE TATTOO, AHMET ERTEGUN and METALLICA.
