SHE’S GOT
BALLS
S? ouglas 1 photo Credit: Photo by Lisa Johnson ouglas at Rockpalast: Photo by Manfred Becker ouglas 2: Photo - Tana Douglas.
In this extract from her book Loud, Tana Douglas recalls meeting the members of AC/DC for the first time. 58
I
t was August of ’74 and summer was still a distant promise when I first pulled up outside the unassuming single-storey brick home on a tree-lined street in a quiet middle-class suburb of Melbourne. The house was large with several bedrooms but nothing special, maybe a little scruffier than its neighbours with a couple of rosebushes and a hedge as reminders of a time when its garden was cared for. None of this bothered me. I hadn’t come to see a garden – I’d come to meet the band. Standing there for that brief moment, scuffing my shoes on the cracked footpath, waiting for Michael Browning to lead the way, I had no inkling of what waited for me beyond that ordinary front door. In the entryway to the house there was a sense of a more glorious time that had passed. We’d let ourselves in, and Michael led me around a corner to the living room. I held back as he walked up to the group of six men casually standing around a table towards a kitchen area at the back. As a greeting, Michael placed his hand on the shoulder of a tall blond guy in his late twenties, while shaking the hand of the one who appeared to be the other’s business partner, a shorter guy of similar age with dark hair. These two were Harry Vanda and George Young respectively. I guessed they were in charge, as Michael had gone to them first. He called over his shoulder, ‘Tana, come meet everyone.’ The conversation stopped as they all turned to look in my direction, their smiles so big that I didn’t feel nervous. >>> 59
