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great interview with Mark Evans about early days
for those about to read... Mark Evans was the real "original" AC/DC bassist, from the first touring line up of the band from 1975 through 1977, and played on the classic AC/DC albums "T.N.T." (Australia), (which was also compiled and released as "High Voltage" as AC/DC's first album worldwide in 1976), "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", and "Let There Be Rock". Mark parted ways with AC/DC in 1977 just before the start of the Let There Be Rock tour and was replaced by Cliff Williams, who remains in the band to this day. Special thanks to Volker Janssen for allowing reprint of this great interview with Mark, which is from 1998. Special thanks also to Thomas Schade of the great AC/DC Fanzine MARK EVANS INTERVIEW BY VOLKER JANSSEN: Interview Mark Evans August/September 1998 When did you join AC/DC? In March 1975 my mum and me lived in Prahran which is a suburb of Melbourne. A friend of mine who was sharing the apartment with us - I used to play football with him - knew a guy called Steve McGrath who became a roadie. He phoned me and told me these guys are looking for a guitar player. I had heard of the band, so I went for an audition as a guitar player because Malcolm was playing bass. There is a story that I met them at the Station Hotel in Prahran where I got thrown out of the hotel straight into Bon Scott. That’s not true, but it makes a great story… It’s also not true that I joined after a party for the launch of the High Voltage album at the Hard Rock Café in Melbourne. The Hard Rock Café in Melbourne wasn’t like a Hard Rock Café - it was just a rock club where the band used to play. I just met them through a mutual friend. They gave me some tapes to listen to - that was on a Saturday. On Sunday I went around and played in an audition. I first played guitar and we swapped over halfway through the audition. On Tuesday night I was working with them at the Station Hotel which was just 50-100m from where I was living. I just did one more rehearsal with the band - when we very first went to England to make sure that the PA worked. The band never rehearsed, they just went on. All the songs were written in the studio - we didn’t have any money then, not a cent. Malcolm said “Do you have a bass? Bring it around, we’re working at the Station Hotel on Tuesday night”. I said ”Great, that’s just around the corner from where I live, I’ll come.” On Sunday after the rehearsal I went to the Station Hotel to see another band and got into a fight with the bouncer. So I actually got barred from the hotel. On Tuesday night I wanted to go back in, but they wouldn’t let me in and didn’t believe that I was working with the band. That’s where the story about me getting thrown out of the pub comes from. I actually had to wait for the band to go in. And the band didn’t tell me I got the gig, they just said “We’re working there on Tuesday night”. So I just turned up to see the band. Then they said “Come on, tune up!” and I asked “What do you mean?”. Malcolm said “You’re playing bass.” I said “What do you mean I’m playing bass?” and Malcolm went “You’re in the band.” I’ve never been asked to join the band, they just told me to turn up for the gig. I came straight from work (builders’ labour) and I was dirty so I played with a worker’s overall and big work boots. With a baseball cap on… We did lots of covers, lots of Rolling Stones songs like Honkey Tonk Women and Jumpin’ Jack Flash. A few other songs from the first album that were just taking shape, Baby Please Don’t Go of course. And a lot of Elvis Presley songs like That’s Alright Mama, Heartbreak Hotel and Jailhouse Rock. What did you do before you joined AC/DC? Actually I had two jobs. My main job was working for the government, for Telstra before it was called Telstra - it was called PMG (Post Master General). It was an office job and it wasn’t me… I did it when I was 16 years old and I knew it wasn’t me. At that time I took a four-week holiday and worked as a builders’ labourer during my holidays because I wanted to get some money to go to England. AC/DC was my first professional band. Before that I played in bands amongst my friends - I played half a dozen gigs at parties and small pubs, but nothing serious. How old were you when you joined the band? I just turned 19. I don’t know the exact date, but I joined in between 2 March (which is my birthday) and 31 March (which is Angus’ birthday). I remember joining the band and a couple of weeks later we had a party for Angus’ 20th birthday. Angus is actually a year older then me, he’s 43 now. I was the youngest in the band. How did Bon get the idea of dressing up like a schoolgirl when you performed Baby Please Don’t Go on TV? He also played a business man during Show business… It must have been March 1975 when Bon dressed up as a schoolgirl during Baby Please Don’t Go - that was done for a TV show called Countdown. It was my first time on Countdown, I was just watching… I couldn’t stop laughing because during the rehearsals he wasn’t dressed up like that. And no-one could find him before - it was done live to air - 20 seconds to go and no-one could find Bon! Bon was in the studio hiding because he didn’t want anyone in the band to see him. And then he came out and the place just fell to bits. We were supposed to be a rough, tough rock ‘n’ roll band and there’s Bon dressed up like that… He could do things like that - it was soooo funny! Did Angus always wear his school uniform? I believe he also had a Superman and a Zorro dress… When I joined the band, Angus had about five different identities: Schoolboy, Superangus, Zorro, Gorilla and Prisoner for Jailbreak. There is also a Countdown clip for Baby Please Don’t Go where he’s in a cage as a gorilla and Bon is Tarzan with a little Tarzan thing swinging on a rope. But the gorilla suit was too hot for Angus… Each time we’d appear on Countdown we’d do Baby Please Don’t Go. I saw them performing Baby Please Don’t Go on Countdown before I joined them. The first time I did it was when Bon was wearing the schoolgirl’s uniform. Then, probably in April 1975, we did it again and Angus was in a cage wearing a gorilla suit. We also did one where he was dressed up as Zorro. It was on virtually every second week and everytime we’d go on as different characters. Bon would sing live, but the backing track was recorded from the record. So he actually wore the prison suit on stage as well? Yeah, but the schoolboy gradually took over. And the school suits used to stink - ah! Because he used to sweat so much… He used to drink so much milk and eat so much chocolate, he’d have a lot of gunk coming out. He’d wear a school suit… and sweat. After the gig he would put it into a suit bag and forget about it for the week. So, at the gigs on the Tuesday, Wednesday after it would still be in the suit bag. He opened the suit bag and the sweaty suits have been sitting in the back of the car for a week… He ended up having his own dressing room. Oh, you’ve got no idea what it was like… it was disgusting! The famous Bondi Lifesaver doesn’t exist anymore - where was it? The Bondi Lifesaver was knocked down in 1980 and was where the K mart car park is now in Bondi Junction. Straight across the road in Newland Street used to be a hotel called The Squire Inn - the hotel is still there, but it is called something else now. We used to stay there, so we used to go down the lift straight over to the Bondi Lifesaver, play and walk straight back. Perfect… my head hurts just thinking about it. The Bondi Lifesaver was very, very good. The first round of gigs I did with them, we did Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday night - five 45-minute sets per night. Very hard work… We actually had the record there one night: 15-hundred and something, so it wasn’t big. It had an outside beergarden, so you could have a barbecue out there in summertime. Which songs other than She’s Got Balls and the unpublished Dog Eat Dog were recorded at the Bondi Lifesaver in 1977? I don’t know about that one because we’ve done so many recordings. What we did record though… our first tour back in Australia after being in England. There is this guy who is actually a film director now, his name is Russell Mulcahy. He actually made a film of the tour and Alberts still have it, they haven’t released it. I saw the rough cut of it with the band, it runs for about two hours… and it looked good. It’s placed around a live concert in Melbourne, but they actually went on the road with the band for two weeks. They filmed everything - live and backstage. So there’s hours and hours of footage of the band with Bon - it’s never been released. It’s all done on 24-track, not on video. The tour was called “Giant dose of rock ‘n’ roll”. The original name of the tour was “The little cunts are back” - it wasn’t our idea, it was the promoters’ idea, but they wouldn’t let us do it. We had a tour program that got taken off the market because we couldn’t sell it. It had a photo of each of us with a quote underneath. You know Rod Stewart? He used to have this beautiful wife called Brit Eklund… and I was in love with her. So myquote was “I like to make enough money, so I can fuck Brit Eklund.” They banned it, the police took allthe copies. The whole thing was geared towards not offending people but getting publicity. It wasn’t an all successful tour back here, it was a fairly quiet tour. I don’t know for whatever reason, but it didn’t work. We only did about 20 gigs. That was a real low for the band here between November 1976 and January 1977. Do you remember the Myer Music Store in Melbourne where you planned to do a series of free gigs inSeptember 1975, but the place was torn down by hysterical schoolgirls on the first night? Yeah, we were supposed to do four days. It was a department store like Grace Brothers and we played in the girls’ clothing department on the first floor. We got halfway through the first song… and the place just got wrecked! Without trying to sound like a superman, I don’t get scared of anything - I just thinkof the best way to get out of it. But that was the only time in my life I thought we’re gonna get killed. There were 2000 screaming people, mostly girls - these girls used to love us, I don’t know why because we were ugly. They were okay when we came out on stage, yelling and screaming. School days used to be our first song, but we didn’t get far… The girls in the back started pushing forward, and it went like a wave. So the girls in the front got spat up onto the stage - like a wave of people. We were pushed back into the amps and the amps went down… Bon ended up getting his clothes ripped off. His shoes were ripped off and he got chased through the building. All he ended up having on was part of his jeans! Malcolm got his eyebrow cut. I remember a security guy getting me and putting me in a headlock, he dragged me out - I still had my bass on - and threw me into a cab and said “Fuck off!”. We were all split up until we got back together two hours later. The place looked like after a bombing - I didn’t see it afterwards, but there was a Channel 7 news crew who filmed it. It was just wrecked… About A$ 20,000 worth of clothes had been shop-lifted. The whole inner area was level - just smashed. It was like a warzone, people set fire to things and everything. They said “Here’s your money… don’t worry about coming back tomorrow”. That was the only time with the band I actually got scared that someone might get hurt. Now it’s funny, but at that time I just thought either we or some of the girls are gonna get hurt. With the band we used to attract a fair bit of violent behaviour - all the pubs we were used to work in were pretty rough. The guys who used to follow us were the same that also followed Rose Tattoo, they used to be a bit rough. Sometimes at pubs at 11 o’clock at night there would be fights and all that. But that was just part of growing up in Melbourne in the seventies which was a very rough and violent place. So I was used to see people getting hurt at gigs and that was okay, but this was a different thing. All these young 12-, 13-, 14-year-old girls getting hurt and squashed - that’s the thing that scared me. Not the fact that I was gonna get hurt, but all these girls… You could hear them screaming and all that. Not just screaming “Here’s the band” but screaming because they were getting hurt. I laugh at it now, but at that time it was a little upsetting - you just couldn’t stop it. It was crazy… Do you remember the farewell concert at the Bondi Lifesaver before going to England in March 1976? Is it true that this was the first time Angus dropped his pants? Yeah, he actually took everything off - dancing around the stage like being stupid and shaking his skinny butt all over the place. He had no clothes on, just his shoes, duckwalking up and down the bar. Very unattractive… Angus is tiny - you pick him up and wave him around your head. He was six and a half stone which is about 45kg and 5’1.5” [156cm]. I was the tallest in the band, I was about two inches bigger than Bon - he was fairly small, too. I was a giant… and I’m only 5’7” [170cm]! No-one really knew who you were because the band was so small. People used to think we were really tall. They had this idea of Bon being this big, but he was only 5’4” [162cm]. So we could go anywhere and no-one even recognised Bon. Except in Melbourne - where the band was from - we were recognised a little… Here in Australia they are very hard audiences to play to, very unreceptive audiences. All the time we worked in Australia I don’t think we ever got an encore - and we must have done up to ten gigs a week for about two years. We were playing and people just kept looking at us. So Angus dropping his pants started off as a “Fuck you”. It got us a lot of press because it got us banned from a couple of towns. So Angus just kept it in the act, but it started off as a frustration, without a strip. I think, originally it was during Baby Please Don’t Go, but it changed because Baby Please Don’t Go didn’t stay in the set anymore after going to England. Then it built up over the years and Angus began to strip - and it started being fun. It’s a fun thing, it’s stupid… You’re talking about a band that after 25 years still have got a 17-year-old schoolboy playing guitar… But it’s good fun. People call it a heavy metal band, but it has never been a heavy metal band, it’s a rock ‘n’ roll band… with a stripper at the front. What were your impressions of England with the first gig at The Red Cow in London on 1.4.1976? We were going on the road with a band called Back Street Crawler. I was at the Red Cow one night -after we’ve done the first round of gigs there, it used to be our local pub where we used to go down and play dart. I was standing at the bar talking to this Australian guy… and he introduced himself as me! I said “How are you going?”, he said “Ah, you’re from Australia? Do you know AC/DC play around here?” I said “Yeah, actually I’ve heard…” and he went “Yeah, we’re doing some gigs around here. My name is Mark Evans.” I said “That is quite a coincidence, mate… What are you drinking?” and asked how long he had been in the band. He replied that he hadn’t been with the band for long. Then I said “My name is Mark Evans and I’m playing bass in AC/DC” and the guy just went “Yeah…? Ah, fuck!” Then he explained “You’ll like this, mate… Usually I tell them chicks and it works every time - I get to bone them. I’m just practicing here.” I said “Fine, use this. You just did it to the wrong guy, mate.” So I actually met myself at the Red Cow in London… Our first gig? We used to do two 45-minute sets and there were about 15 people when we started. During the break people would leave… We thought they hated us, but they would get their friends and bring them back, so by the end of the first night the place was packed. In England we did our first gig to no-one and six months later in October we headlined the Hammersmith Odeon doing four nights. The whole thing took off really quickly… I don’t know why. We probably sounded like a band that’s been on the road for years after all the hard work we did in Australia. We were pretty surprised that it all went so quickly. You know, we had a bit of a false start because Paul Kossoff from Back Street Crawler died, and then Bon went to a pub, got into a fight and got his jaw broken. That put us back another six weeks. Did you all live together in a big house in London? We all lived in a nice big house in a suburb called Barnes which is on the western side of the River Thames. 110 Lonsdale Road was an upper middle class place just across the river from the Hammersmith Odeon which was only a kilometre away. We were all in there together - band and road crew - until Bon found an old girlfriend of his and moved out. In Australia all the guys lived in a house in St. Kilda whichis the red district of Melbourne, but as I was from Melbourne I lived in the next suburb (Prahran) with my mother. We had an old bus - like an old Greyhound bus - and the front half was for the band. The back half was partitioned off and all the equipment went in there. After regularly playing at the Marquee Club, how did it feel to play at the Reading Rock Festival in front of 50,000 people on 29.8.1976? All we ever did at the Marquee was six Tuesdays. It was in August 1976 just before we hit the road with Richie Blackmore’s Rainbow. That was what kicked the band off. We started at small pubs like the Red Cow and the Nashville Rooms. The Red Cow was tiny - you could only get a maximum of 100 people in there. Then we were doing the Marquee on Tuesday nights, and it built from there. We got a lot of press. About 200m down the road in Oxford Street there was another club and the Sex Pistols would be going on at about 9 o’clock on Tuesday nights. We’d go on at about 11 o’clock, so people would see the Sex Pistols first and then come down to see us. So it was the Sex Pistols and AC/DC playing within 200m of each other. At that time nobody knew that both bands would become very big, so you could see them for one pound fifty each! The Reading Festival… they fucking hated us. We flopped. The closest I’ve ever been in that band to getting booed off. At the end of the first song - we used to do Live Wire first and we were banging and banging and Angus was going about - we stopped and there were 50,000 people just looking at us. Nothing happened, they fucking hated us. But we just kept on playing anyway… Do you remember your first gig in Germany? Yeah, I do. That was in Hamburg supporting Richie Blackmore. One of Angus’ and Malcolm’s elder brothers, Alex Young, lived in Hamburg. He moved to Hamburg in the sixties, he was a good friend of John Lennon’s, and he was a bass player and a sax player. We stayed in this rotten hotel in Hamburg - I can’t remember the actual name, but it was near the horse market. It was so bad we ended up staying at Alex’s place. We spent the first couple of nights at the Reeperbahn going through all the strip shows, just being 18-year-old guys. That was the first gig of the German tour… after that I can’t remember much. Too many gigs and too many beers… I remember being in Munich for the Octoberfest - that might have been on the Black Sabbath tour. We were in this big bar with all these other people and a hump-pa-pa band. There were these guys wearing hats with big feathers and leather trousers slapping each other. Weird… There were these ladies walking around with all the liter things of beer, and we had those long cigars. It was fantastic… except they kept giving us these things that made us sick. Ahm… rollmops. You got that and a beer and the cigars… and you would go green. But I like Germany a lot, good beer. How much time did you normally spend in the studio recording albums? How did George Young contribute to the band? To do the backing tracks it usually took four or five days. Then Bon would get the backing tracks and write the lyrics. T.N.T. and Let There Be Rock were done in about ten days, Dirty Deeds took about a week. Very quick… Everything was written and recorded within ten days, that’s why it sounded so fresh. Malcolm and Angus would have the bare ideas of songs and sit down with George on the piano - the whole three of them would fit on the same piano stool because they are so tiny, you know. They would work out the songs in the studio. George would pull the songs together and change them around. He’d just take the material and really produce it and get the best out of those ideas. Without George…the band’s not there. And now… They learned so much from George until they parted company, they can do it themselves now. George is brilliant, he’s the fucking best record producer. A really nice guy, too. It’s A Long Way To The Top was actually just one jam and George got the tape and cut everything in. The verses and the chorus are all the same. The song was never played in one piece in the studio - itwas all cut together from one big jam. That was George Young - the guy is a genius. He’s the guitar player from the Easybeats - he’s the most astute, the most intelligent musical person I’ve ever met. He hears things that are there that no-one else hears. He can play guitar, bass, drums, piano and sing. On some of the recordings he has made he played everything. He is still here in Sydney - Albert Productions is still going - but he spends a lot of time in London. When you recorded Let There Be Rock you also recorded Carry Me Home which was later published on the Dog Eat Dog single… No, Carry Me Home, Love At First Feel and Cold Hearted Man were recorded together at the Vineyard Studios in London later on - probably two or three months later - because they needed some more material. We had Let There Be Rock recorded before Dirty Deeds was even released in England. So there was a lapse, the original recordings were about 12 months behind overseas. Did you record any other songs that haven’t been published yet? Yeah, I think there would have been other songs recorded. Lots of different versions of songs - all the different versions of Whole Lotta Rosie - like on the Bonfire. I completely forgot about Dirty Eyes until I heard it. A guy from America played it to me and asked me if I remembered it. I said “This sounds like AC/DC, sounds like Whole Lotta Rosie, like someone has ripped it off.” I completely forgot about recording it. I do remember now after I heard it. So there’s things you actually record you forget about. I’ve seen film clips of songs and I can’t remember filming the clip. I’ve got jeans and a pair of red cowboy boots on… and I’ve never even seen this pair of red cowboy boots before in my life. They were fantastic boots! It was Dog Eat Dog and I was using a Gibson Thunderbird bass. It was recorded in England because there was a big Union Jack behind us, but I couldn’t remember doing it. You just do so many things and so many things happen so quickly, you forget things… Is it true that George played bass on the High Voltage LP? Yeah, absolutely. They didn’t have a bass player. George used to play bass in the studio quite a bit and work out the bass lines. Then I would copy what George had played - he’s a great bass player. Is it true that George also played bass on the Let There Be Rock LP? No, not really. George is on some of the songs and I’m on others. Sometimes I can’t tell who’s playing what because I ended up playing bass very similar to George, but I played most of the bass on Let There Be Rock. George played a lot of bass on Dirty Deeds, some of the songs were recorded when I wasn’t there, so George used to play bass. A lot of how I played bass I learned of George and I’d like to think I played bass a lot like George. He did a lot of work in the studio. He also played some of the guitar, and he possibly could have been playing drums on a few tracks, too. He used to play everything. But most of Let There Be Rock, that’s me. I can sort of tell because I got my own kind of style by then. George is a swingier sort of player - more like rock ‘n’ roll - whereas I’m a heavier player. Things like Let There Be Rock and Dog Eat Dog, that’s me playing. You know, with Let There Be Rock the band started to sound like AC/DC. Is it true that you played some bass on Powerage although you already left the band and Cliff got the credits on the cover? Powerage is a little different because there were a lot of demos done for Powerage when we were recording Let There Be Rock. It’s hard to tell… I’m pretty sure that Riff Raff was recorded during Let There Be Rock. I remember a lot of stuff being left-over from Let There Be Rock ended up on Powerage. And they didn’t record it again? No. During Powerage Cliff couldn’t get into the country (he had a visa problem), so George also played bass on Powerage. I think, a lot of things recorded for Let There Be Rock ended up on Powerage and George played bass on the stuff recorded new. I think… I wasn’t involved with a lot of it at that stage because we had parted company by then. It certainly sounds like George playing bass to me… and Cliff wasn’t in the country. It’s hard to tell if I played bass on Powerage, too. I think Riff Raff, but George and myself play so similar. There’s a lot of things George has done. When we were out and George used to mix it, he would do all the backing vocals, too. Was the famous concert at the Atlantic Studios in 1977 filmed on video? I don’t know, that was with Cliff. It was the first tour of America and I have left just before that. I think that was Cliff’s first tour with the guys. I’ve certainly never seen a film of it, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been filmed because Alberts guard things very, very closely. They don’t let too much out and are very possessive of what they have. Like I mentioned before, there is a whole movie of a tour here in Australia that’s never been released. Did Malcolm always have this vision of “We are gonna be big stars one day”? He is the boss of the band, right? Oh yeah. There’s no question that it’s Malcolm’s band. Malcolm and Angus have always been very talent-visioned. I don’t think failure as a band was an option. They were very set in their ways and very good at what they did. Where they are now is exactly where they planned to be… and more. They’re great - I really like what they have done. We don’t see particularly eye-to-eye in a lot of matters, but I really admire what they’ve done. Except for Rose Tattoo, I think it’s the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band in the world. To my taste Rose Tattoo is a little bit better. You know, the proof is in the pudding - AC/DC got to be one of the best. I don’t think that anyone plays that style of music any better. They were always gonna be successful. Absolutely, failure was not an option. How was your relationship to the other band members? Phil I got on very well with, Malcolm I got on well with. Bon was always a little bit separate from the band. I had a few clashes with Angus, but everyone did because Angus is very intense and very, very talented. Angus is not the easiest guy to live with and neither am I, so we used to clash a bit. Did you feel like a full band member or just like having a working contract? Absolutely a full member. The mentality of the band is that everybody has to be a full member. It’s a real us-versus-them mentality in the band. If you’re in that band, you don’t hate any other band, but you don’t regard any other band in the world as being important. That’s why it works… That’s also why they don’t do any solo stuff… Of course… No-one gets up and jams with them - forget about it. That band is just that band. Brian did some jamming with Jackyl. I don’t know if they’re very happy about that… I don’t think it’s the incentive thing. I’m very surprised that he would actually do that. I’ve never heard of anyone in the band jamming. I’d be interested to see how that went down with Angus and Malcolm. I know, when I was in the band and Bon had done something like that, it wouldn’t have been looked on as favourably. It would have been like “Who the fuck do you think you are? Mick Jagger?” While touring you shared a room with Phil. When did he start his eccentric hobbies? Yeah, I shared a room with Phil. Malcolm and Angus shared a room, and Bon used to have a room by himself or with one of the roadies. Phil was already a little eccentric when I was there. You could see that he was being a little unusual. Anything he did just got obsessive. He bought one of these old movie cameras and started taping movies - that’s all he wanted to do, film things. Then he got into those remote control model boats, so the house was full of fucking boats. Then the boats went and the house was full of this other shit. Then he ended up with cars… He is very obsessive about anything. He used to carry the boats down to where we used to live in Barnes and play the boats, get sick of it and just leave it there for some lucky kid to pick it up. He is very quiet. When he had a few drinks he used to come out of his shell a bit. He used to be a bit rowdy, but then he would get extra-rowdy. He can be a little bit withdrawn and doesn’t say very much. I haven’t spoken him for awhile, but that’s how he was when I knew him anyway. Very nice guy, a real angel, a very good heart, but very withdrawn. Sometimes he could be a little spooky. Do you remember the concert at Sunbury in Melbourne in 1975 where you had trouble with Deep Purple? That was actually before me when George was playing bass with the band, before High Voltage came out. It would have been on the Australia Day weekend which is on 26 January - six weeks before I joined them. The band was supposed to play after Deep Purple, and Deep Purple didn’t go very well, so they weren’t gonna let anyone go on except for two or three hours later. So AC/DC were all carting their own gear to the stage - they didn’t have any roadies. When they started putting their gear onto the stage, the tour manager for Deep Purple grabbed George Young and said “Listen man, you’re not playing.” George replied “Of course we’re gonna play. Fuck you.” The tour manager went “You can’t talk to me like that, I’m from New York City” - George just said “Fuck you, I’m from Glasgow” and boulded him. So they just punched the crap out of the road crew. The crowd saw AC/DC - Angus in his school suit - fighting… and they loved it! The band never played that night, but that’s how I first heard of the band. These guys punched the crap out of Deep Purple on stage at Sunbury. The band got a lot of great press. That’s what actually set up the persona and the image of the band - like “Fuck, we’d fight these guys rather than play.” In April 1977 you were thrown out of the European tour supporting Black Sabbath… Geezer Butler pulled a knife at Malcolm. I wasn’t there when it happened - which was probably a good thing because if Phil and myself were there, Black Sabbath would’ve been looking for a new bass player… It was a bad thing to do. There was certainly tension between that band and us except for Ozzy. We got on great with Ozzy - the guy is a genius, he’s a lovely guy to get along with. But the rest of the band… I don’t know whether they were insecure or scared or whatever. So I wasn’t there, but I know the band’s side of the story. Geezer pulled a knife at Malcolm, and Malcolm just boulded him. And that was the end of it, that was basically the end of the tour. Malcolm didn’t get hurt, but Geezer did - he didn’t wake up for a little while… And there was a lot of fighting going on within AC/DC as well? There was always a tension within the band, but there was no fighting in the physical sense. I never had a problem with Phil or Bon, but I remember Angus having problems with Bon and Malcolm being pissed off at… ah, there was just a general tension in the band. I don’t know why, but that was just the way the band worked. At any given moment someone may have a problem with someone else. It was just not the best atmosphere to work in, but it would be impossible to be in that band and it’d be a whole bunch of really nice guys who got on really well, then go on stage and do what they would do. It’s like Mike Tyson fighting someone and then before the fight going “Oh, hi! How are you going? How’s your family?” and then punching the shit out of him. It doesn’t work, you know what I mean? The personality in the band in general was an aggressive personality and that overflowed into the inter-band relationships. Except for Bon, Bon was just a hippie! He didn’t worry about anything, he just floated around everything. But Angus had problems with Bon? That was before we left Australia the first time. There was a very, very strong movement from a lot of areas to get rid of Bon as a singer. Any decisions for the line-up of the band were not Phil’s or mine or Bon’s area of decision, it was Malcolm and Angus. It’s very much Malcolm’s band, but Malcolm and Angus are the core of it. I remember, we were in a hotel in Canberra in late 1975. George came down, and there was a feeling that Bon may not be the right guy for a long term in the band because they felt that he was involved in a drug thing that was a little bit too heavy. To Bon’s credit, he pulled himself out of all those problems, which was great. But there was a movement to a point of a guy called Adrian Campbell who was in a band named Raw Glory that used to work with us. They always used to support us in Melbourne and had the same manager, Michael Browning. He was here marked as the guy who was gonna take over. George was pushing for that more than anyone else, he was worried about Bon’s lifestyle. I remember the decision was made at one stage that Bon was gone. I don’t think Bon was ever told he was gone, people wised up before that. But Adrian was definitely picked out. It would’ve been a fucking disaster… But once we got over to England, things changed. Later the American record company knocked back Dirty Deeds and they wanted a new singer. That’s fairly common knowledge, they wanted to get rid of Bon. But at that point the guys realised that Bon was obviously a very important part of the band. They wouldn’t have thought the band could continue without Bon at that stage. He was the spiritual heart of the band. Say, if the current line-up with Cliff, Phil and Brian would have been the start of the band, I doubt the band would be where it is now. I think you had to have Bon at the front of the band doing all that hard work and then being strong enough to survive Bon not being there. I don’t think it would have worked with Brian from the start, if you know what I mean. Brian is great, but Bon is a different thing… He had a huge charisma. So you had mostly problems with Angus? You gotta realise the situation. All those years we were living out of each others pockets. Because the thing was so important to all of us, we used to take it very seriously. Therefore there were bound to be tensions. I didn’t necessarily personally have any problems with Angus, but certainly there was a tension. Looking back on it - at the time it wasn’t that obvious - I think basically Angus didn’t like me. For whatever reason, I don’t know. To me it seems obvious now, but at the time I just thought “What the fuck is wrong with this guy?!” Sometimes I would get on with Angus really well - like he’s my best friend - and sometimes… He is a little bit moody. Guys that are as talented as that - and my god, he is super-talented - sometimes get moods. He would have rather large mood swings which could happen in the space of half an hour. When he had these mood swings, I found it pretty hard to get along with him to the point of saying “What’s the fucking matter with you?” Now I could manage it a lot better, but at the time I just couldn’t… Was a big clash between Angus and you the reason you parted company? It was a photo finish between me leaving and getting thrown out. I think, it was really a decision that was in the best interest of the band for me not to be there, whether it was my decision or not. It just wasn’t happening - it actually had become too hard, it was too diversive. So we agreed to part company. If I had stayed a little longer, I would’ve been thrown out. It became very obvious that my future wasn’t with the band - which was unfortunate because I still loved the band. It was a really tough period for me. In an ideal world I wanted to stay with the band, but it was just an untenable position. There was no way you could patch things over or make it work. It was just time to go, there was no final big bang. My health wasn’t good at all because I was drinking too much. I don’t think I would have done permanent damage to myself, but put is this way… If I’d still be with the band now, I think something would have happened to me. I don’t know what, but something would have gone wrong. So it was the right thing for the band and the right thing for me. When was your last concert with the band? I never thought of it, probably somewhere in Europe. It must have been in May 1977, but I’m not sure. You probably know better than me - things like that… I don’t even know the year and the date that Bon died. I just know he went. I remember what I was doing, and it still hurts to think about it. But I don’t know the date and year because it doesn’t matter - it’s just all over. It was 19 February 1980… There you go, now I know. I just know the way it affected me and the way it affects me still. I was in Sydney, I was living in Randwick. I was working with a local band called Contraband and my manager Brian Todd rang up and asked if I had been listening to the radio. I said “No, I’m just about to do some shopping.” He said “I’m just down the road, I’ll come around to see you.” which was unusual for a manager. He said “I need to speak to you. Do yourself a favour and don’t turn on the TV or radio.” Then I realised something was wrong. About ten minutes later he came in with a bottle of scotch and said “This is for you, mate. We need to have a drink… Bon’s dead.” I said “Fucking bullshit”, took about two steps and - bang - I collapsed. Besides my father dying, the worst moment in my life. At that stage I hadn’t seen Bon for awhile. I was numb, just felt cold - I wasn’t upset until a few days later when it sunk in. Nothing could affect me, I wasn’t sad, I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t upset - just like someone had switched me off. See, everyone sort of used to say about him “If he’d die tomorrow, he’s had a fantastic life.” And everyone basically knew he was gonna go away early. No-one thought he was gonna die tomorrow or die when he did, but there would not be one peron that knew him that would have been surprised when he died. It would’ve been a shock, but you could see it coming. Some people aren’t meant to hang around and he’s one of them. I didn’t go to the funeral, I just couldn’t. I spoke to George and the guys. I was invited to go over with them and do it, but I couldn’t face it. The guys didn’t want to go either, but obviously they had to. I regret it, but I just couldn’t do it. I went to the cemetery for the first time only about two years ago and visited Bon’s parents. Sometimes, when I’m in the right mood, seeing Bon on TV looking straight at me can still freak me out… Did you meet the band right after Bon’s death? Yes, I did. I met Phil and Malcolm at the Millennium Hotel in Kings Cross - Phil was having a real struggle with it. He was having a hard time. Phil has always been a little unusual - even when I was in the band - but I think losing Bon gave him that little bit of extra push and he got a little too far out there. As you know, Phil had to leave the band for quite an extended period because he was not in good shape. What did you do after you left AC/DC? I came back here and played in a band called Contraband. We recorded three albums and then I really had enough of the touring lifestyle. So I got into music publishing and did that for quite a few years. Gradually I got back into playing and then got into this vintage guitar thing that I do now (Jacksons Rare Guitars). Finch and Contraband are the same band, we just changed the name. I also did a single with The Party Boys and a lot of things with Swanie (John Swan). I played in a lot of things I wasn’t part of the band - just session work. Didn’t you come back to Australia after the split and joined Rose Tattoo for a few gigs right away? Yeah, at that time bands used to be continuously on the road. Mick Cocks was playing bass and they were doing it as a four-piece. When they would go to Melbourne - I was living back in Melbourne - I’d do the Melbourne gigs with them, so Mick could go back on the guitar. The guys wanted me to join the band, but I was too scared to get tattoos. I probably did between a dozen and 25 gigs with them. They wanted me to move back up to Sydney, but I just wasn’t prepared to get back on the road and - without being too stupid - I wasn’t gonna get the fucking tattoos, forget about it! Do you remember any highlights or any bad experiences touring with AC/DC ? I didn’t really have any bad experiences at all. Or if I did, I can’t remember them. I loved touring Europe - going to Germany and visiting places like Paris. The favourite part was working in Scotland, it was a knock out. When we got to the airport - the first time we flew into Glasgow - there were people with banners saying “Welcome home”… and we’d only been in England for about a month! People just knew that the band was basically a Scottish band. That was fantastic. Touring Europe was really great for me because I was always intrigued by London and European history, so I knew quite a bit about Europe anyway. Just being able to see all these places… I still love Europe - it’s intriguing with all the different languages. I couldn’t see myself living in Europe permanently because I love Australia so much, but I loved being in Europe. The only time people weren’t friendly towards Australians was when you were in Munich for the Octoberfest because they would get a lot of Australians and New Zealanders in there and they’d go fucking crazy - a little bit embarrassing. I really enjoyed living in London. England is beautiful and so is Scotland. My favourite memory is touring Europe, for example driving through the Swiss alps, just seeing a lot of things that realistically I didn’t think I’d ever see. The only reason I ended up seeing them was because I was touring with the band. Then with other bands I ended up living in America and basically saw all of America when supporting Motley Crue with Heaven. The tour was about four and a half months long and we played in 40 states of America, so we virtually covered the whole thing. To me the best thing about playing in a band is getting to see all those places. Not so much as being a tourist, but getting to meet the local people and hang out with them. Now you don’t have much contact with the band members anymore. When did you meet them the last time? I’ve seen Malcolm more often because he only lives 250 yards from my place. They always come back for Christmas, so I run into him at the supermarket, but we don’t talk much. We had some legal problems that had soured the relationship, not on my side though. They’ve never been the happiest people I’ve ever met. I tend to be a fairly positive person and they’re a little bit not like that. I love what they do musically, but they’re really hard to live with on a day-to-day basis. The one I’m more likely to talk to is Cliff. I get on pretty well with Cliff. When they’re in Sydney, he always gives me a call and we might end up having a beer or something. Tell me about Bon’s brother Graeme. He lives in Bangkok, right? He’s got a club, a combined bar & restaurant, in Bangkok - I don’t know the name of it. He married a Thai lady and as far as I know he’s still in Bangkok. I meet Graeme once about every two years or so. He always freaks me out at first sight because he looks so much like Bon. It’s a little bit disconcerting because he’s so similar to Bon, he laughs and smiles in the same way. He has always had long shoulderlength hair. Normally I think of Bon as having short hair, but the hair Bon had towards the end was like Graeme’s. So, if he comes towards me, hand stretched out and a smile on his face, I get the shivers. Do you sometimes regret that you’re not in AC/DC anymore? The only thing I regret about not being in the band anymore is not playing with the band. I still love the band, the sound of the band and the way the band is… with Bon. You know, if I’d still been with the band when Bon went, I would have left anyway. I wouldn’t have continued on without Bon. I’m glad the band did, but I personally wouldn’t have. I do miss playing with the band - the band is a great band- but no regrets. Do you listen to new AC/DC stuff when it comes out? Yeah, I hear it on the radio, but I don’t have many CDs. I’ve got a CD copy of Back In Black - it’s fantastic - and one of Highway To Hell. I think Highway To Hell is the best record, it’s just a knock out record. I don’t think I’ve got any other AC/DC stuff. The only people in bands that keep things are their parents. They keep newspaper clippings and all that. Do you prefer the old vinyl or the CD? CDs are more convenient, I think. You can carry them around in a discman. Records are a pain in the arse… When did you start playing with Dave Tice? After I came back from America - I was living in Los Angeles - in 1984/85, I think. Mick Cocks was playing with Dave in a band called Headhunters. They had a bass player called Joey (Joe Fury) and he stepped aside. Strangely enough, Joey was Bon Scott’s peronal assistant in London until Bon had this girlfriend Silver Smith and Silver left Bon for Joey. That was in 1979 and it fucked Bon up. Obviously Joey was no longer Bon’s personal assistant after that, he became Ronnie Woods’ personal assistant for a while. Then he came back here and worked with Mick Cocks. He was the one that went with Silver to the hospital to identify Bon’s body. Now he’s here in Sydney. It might be worth talking to him… You have been recording a CD with Dave. When does it come out? Pretty soon, maybe October or November. It’s good fun, I’m really enjoying working together with Dave. Dave and myself have been working together for quite a long while, and I’ve always had in the back of my mind that at some stage I’d like to be involved with Dave on a business level. I’ve always enjoyed doing the business side of things - like doing deals and promoting things. We started playing together doing this about three months ago, actually we started at the Amazing Wok restaurant. We’re having fun doing this and maybe we can grow it into something interesting. Dave’s sound is something really marketable, we just gotta find the right area for it. When did you start playing the acoustic guitar? These are the first acoustic gigs I’ve ever done. I played electric guitar in Heaven when I took over for Mick Cocks. Mick and myself followed each other around a lot, you see. Mick was working with Dave doing this and then I’ve taken over for him, but this has only just started. Which acoustic guitar do you use? Gibson J200 1972 and 1948. What is your favourite bass brand and which bass strings do you use? Fender Precision bass, absolutely. Then Gibson Thunderbirds. I use Rotosound Swing Bass 45-105 strings. Is there anything in your way of playing bass that you would consider as being typically Mark Evans? Yes, I learned bass from who I think is the best bass player ever, George Young. Which song from your time with the band do you reckon is the most complex in terms of playing bass? None, they are all pretty straight forward. Which is your favourite AC/DC song? Definitely Girls Got Rhythm.