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lock up your granddaughters THE SECRET HISTORY OF AC/DC XXXXXXX DEcEmbER 20XX 2013
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51
AC/DC
For the band who have rocked for 40 years, we salute you!
december 2013 issue 191
Features 30 Mott The Hoople
In 1973, a revitalised Mott stepped out of Bowie’s shadow and made their finest album. But their golden year wouldn’t be without casualties.
36 The Winery Dogs
Between them Richie Kotzen, Mike Portnoy and Billy Sheehan may have more chops than a butcher’s fridge but, this supergroup trio have got bite as well as a bark.
38 The Darkness
Bursting out of Lowestoft, they took OTT rock (and bollockhugging catsuits) to the top of the charts. Ten years on, we tell the story of their stellar rise – and inglorious fall.
42 Black Oak Arkansas
Born under a bad sign? Thanks to bad fortune and bad advice, they became the overlooked stars of southern rock. Now they’re back to set the record straight.
51 AC/DC
We celebrate the 40th anniversary of the greatest rock’n’roll band of them all – that’s four decades of dirty deeds, riff raff and rock’n’roll damnation. Including…
52 Their first gig. 59 Creating sparks on their first visit to Britain. 60 Inside Highway To Hell. 66 The 80s struggles. 69 The 90s comeback. 75 The Zappa connection. 84 Inside the AC/DC ‘mafia’. 86 The story of Black Ice. And much more…
p9
Graeme webber
’s whatur o on y cd? free 5
december 2013 issue 191
Regulars 16 The Dirt
New Queen album – with Freddie – coming, says Brian May; Status Quo announce ‘final’ batch of Frantic Four dates; Yes, Deep Purple and Kiss among latest Hall Of Fame nominees… say hello to Dave Hause and The Cadillac Three; welcome back Fish, Vardis and The Hoax; goodnight to Jan Kuehnemund, Lorne Black, Phil Chevron and more who served…
28 The Story Behind The Songs Humble Pie
With its monolithic riff and yelping lead vocal, Stone Cold Fever (the live version in particular) typifies one of the best live bluesrock bands of their era.
49 Competition Win Orange Amps gear worth £1,100! 97 Reviews
New albums from Stone Temple Pilots, White Denim, Dregen, Saxon, Roger Taylor, Fish, Megadeth, Black Label Society, Melvins… Reissues from Alice Cooper, Anthrax, David Bowie, Soundgarden, Deep Purple, Scorpions… DVDs, films and books on Rolling Stones, Joe Bonamassa, Pink Floyd, Ray Davies… Live reviews of Fleetwood Mac, Crosby Stills & Nash, Black Spiders, Johnny Moped…
112 Buyer’s Guide Trent Reznor
After ground-breaking albums with NIN, the reluctant icon found success as the go-to man for ‘edgy’ Hollywood soundtracks.
117 Letters
Got something to say? Let us hear it.
120 Lives previews
Gig previews from Alice In Chains, Saxon, Zappa Plays Zappa, Joanne Shaw Taylor and The Godfathers, plus gig listings – who’s playing where and when.
146 Heavy Load Buddy Guy
“Picking cotton on a farm is a long way from picking guitar in the White House.” The man Clapton calls “the best guitar player alive” talks blues, hard times and playing for Obama.
112
Trent Reznor Our guide to the NIN mainman’s catalogue.
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The Ballad Of
MOTT The hOOple In 1973, a revitalised Mott stepped out of Bowie’s shadow and made their finest album. But their golden year wouldn’t be without casualties. pril 19, 1973. The plush listening room of AIR Studio is a world away from the bustle of Oxford Circus below. The atmosphere is muted with anticipation as Mott The Hoople gather for the first time to listen back to their recently completed sixth album. Drummer Dale ‘Buffin’ Griffin, bassist Pete Overend Watts and guitarist Mick Ralphs are all here, smiling nervously as they ready themselves for the big moment. Finally, Ian Hunter strides into the room, everpresent shades covering his eyes, and nods at his bandmates. Pleasantries are at a minimum as engineer Bill Price feeds thick master tape into the playback machine. It’s a pivotal moment for Mott. With this record, the band have taken a gamble that may prove to be foolhardy, or even downright insane. Not only have they recently lost Hammond organ maestro Verden ‘Phally’ Allen, but also they’ve broken away from David Bowie, the man who saved their career the previous year, and opted to produce this new album themselves. And now it’s time to find out if their gamble has paid off. I’m in the room for this momentous occasion due to my position as president of Mott The Hoople Sea Divers, the fan club I founded after nearly three years of following the band. The fan club members have been waiting with bated breath for this most monumental of albums, and I’m on hand to give them a world exclusive. Despite what’s riding on it, the preplayback wait carries an air of triumph. Pete tells me that the album will be called Mott, and that they’re shortening the group’s name accordingly. “We feel like a new band now,” he says. 30 ClassiCroCkmagazine.Com
They sound like one too, as the accelerating piano intro of opening track All The Way From Memphis fills the room. By the time Hunter gets to the song’s punch line, legs are pumping, knees are being slapped and everyone in the room is grinning with a mixture of happiness, relief and maybe a little disbelief. By the time of the second track on side two, Ballad Of Mott The Hoople (March 26, 1972 Zurich) – a song that poignantly reflects on the band’s split the previous year – this emotionally scrambled teenager is struggling to suppress some potentially embarrassing welling-up. Mott know they’ve cracked it. They’ve produced the best album of their tumultuous career, finally realising the potential that producer Guy Stevens spotted in the summer of 1969 when he formed, named and nurtured them. They’d long been one of Britain’s best live bands, but their record sales had never lived up to their potential. This was the one that would change that. Forty years on, Mott stands as one of the landmark albums of the 70s, with its combination of hot-wired rockers and wide-open, autobiographical ballads. Thanks to a combination of hard graft and sheer self-belief, and despite internal friction and pressure, Mott had reached the highest point of their rollercoaster career; 1973 would prove to be their golden year, even if it would fly off the rails within 18 months. But all that was in the future. Back on that April afternoon, once the last sweet glimmer has faded from the huge speakers, the room is momentarily still before the quiet is broken by an eruption of whoops and celebratory hand-shaking. I ask Ian Hunter what he thinks, and he quietly offers the typically straightforward verdict he would favour in initial press reports: “It’s bleeding amazing.” ➻
Chris Walter / retna ltd
A
Words: Kris Needs
Mott The Hoople, July 1973: (l-r) Mick Ralphs, Ian Hunter, Buffin, Overend Watts.
“We didn’t invent glam rock. It was there so we went for it. We weren’t daft.” Ian Hunter
ClassiCroCkmagazine.Com 31
T
he first time Mott The Hoople’s name appeared in print was in mid-1969, in a copy of Zigzag, the UK’s first serious music monthly. Pete Frame, the man behind Zigzag and the band’s most vociferous early champion, reported how Guy Stevens had put together a new band made up of Hereford outfit Silence and struggling songwriter Ian Hunter. The producer saw the group as a collision of Stones-y rock’n’roll and Dylan-style balladry. Stevens attempted to capture his vision on the band’s self-titled debut album, released in late 1969 on Island. But it was on stage where Mott truly came to life. At a time when dowdy greatcoats and 25-minute drum solos ruled, Mott cast back to rock’n’roll’s original untamed, seat-smashing spirit, their gritty rebel flash tempered by Hunter’s sensitive but tough confessionals. This punk-presaging approach and down-toearth humility grated with the press, but it attracted a fervent following that the band dubbed ‘the Mott lot’. This devoted gaggle mainly consisted of disenfranchised working-class kids (one of whom, a kid called Mick Jones, would go on to form The Clash). In July 1971 these fans made the news when Mott were banned from the Royal Albert Hall after being accused of starting a riot during a particularly lively gig to mark their second anniversary. But while Mott provided an adolescent road map for a legion of teenagers, the band themselves were becoming increasingly frustrated that their albums – the debut, followed by 1970’s schizophrenic Mad Shadows, plus the country-flavoured Wildlife and the frayed, frenzied Brain Capers, both released in 1971 – hadn’t sold well. “You were selling out the biggest venues in the land and you weren’t having any record success,” says Hunter. “That’s not going to work for long. You have to have the record success to go with it.” Something had to give. And in March 1972 it did. Following an on-stage ruck during a grim gig in a disused Zurich gas station, Mott The Hoople 32 ClassiCroCkmagazine.Com
decided to split. Little did they know that the decision would inadvertently set in motion the events that would eventually lead to Mott.
T
he band’s saviour would be David Bowie. The singer had already commenced countdown on the launch of Ziggy Stardust, though he had yet to make the giant leap to true pop stardom – that would come a month later,
“Bowie told me: ‘You’ve got to take this over.’ I told the band, and Ralphs said: ‘Like f*ck you are’.” Ian Hunter
starstoCk/Photoshot
Above: with support band Queen in late 1973. Below: saviour and onetime mentor David Bowie.
with the release of the single Starman. A huge fan of Brain Capers, Bowie heard of the band’s demise when Overend Watts asked him for a job. Horrified, he took it upon himself to persuade them to stay together by offering one of his songs, Suffragette City. When Mott turned it down for not being radio- friendly, Bowie hastily finished off another song he’d been writing and presented it to them: All The Young Dudes. “He played it for us on an acoustic guitar at his manager’s office,” Hunter recalls. “I knew straight away it was a hit. Chills down my spine.” Produced by Bowie, All The Young Dudes was released as a single in July, rising to No.3 and turning a rejuvenated Mott into hit-makers at last. But while its parent album, also titled All The Young Dudes, boasted its share of good songs, Bowie’s production neutered Mott’s power, especially set next to a record like the fearsome Brain Capers. The album stalled at No.21, but Mott were still chart stars for the first time in their lives. Ever since Bowie approached them with Dudes, he and his manager, Tony Defries, had been courting the band with a view to signing them to Defries’s MainMan company. At Bowie’s behest, Defries bought the band out of their Island Records contract and helped get them a deal with CBS. Mott soon found themselves part of the exotic MainMan circus, which included Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. “We were in that circle,” recalls Mick Ralphs. “There was a nice bunch of people involved in that whole set up; bisexual, arty-farty, that we weren’t a party to before. It was interesting, different.” It was during this period that I started their official fan club, Mott The Hoople Sea Divers, named after the final track on All The Young Dudes. Assisted by my then-girlfriend, Karoline, we started carrying the news about the band by writing irate letters to the music press. My first Mott gig in my new presidential capacity was the opening night of the Dudes tour on September 15, 1972 at Dunstable Civic Hall. The dressing room was buzzing with first-night preparations. Ian Hunter had squeezed into a skintight black leather catsuit made by the tailor who had created Iggy Pop’s silver Raw Power strides, and was about to hang a huge, gold ‘H’ guitar around his neck. “Look at this,” he laughed, raising his arms like some superhero fetish god. Overend Watts stood seven-feet tall in winged, leopard-skin platforms, his tresses coloured platinum (achieved by using car spray paint). Phally Allen looked less comfortable, his sartorial extravagance stretching no further than a maroon velvet jacket. The hall was packed with Ziggy-worshipping space cadets here to hear the hit single (and maybe catch a glimpse of Bowie). Ian was conscious that the diehard fans would be glowering that they’d lost Mott to the glam scene. “The old fans didn’t like it because we weren’t theirs any more,” he says. “We didn’t invent glam rock. It was there so we went for it. We knew that was what it was going to take at that time. We weren’t daft. We could see the funny side of it, but nevertheless we still did it.” But the darkness was creeping back in. A show at London’s Rainbow Theatre in mid-October
reX/andre Csillag
MOTT THE HOOPLE
henry diltz/Corbis
Mott in Los Angeles in 1972, with new guitarist Ariel Bender, right.
degenerated into a mess of pent-up rage, aimed at a cynical music press and exacerbated by equipment problems. The set climaxed with the band’s gear being trashed after a cacophonous You Really Got Me. “We deliberately blew it,” says Ian. “We turned the lot up and let them have it.” By the time they played a half-hearted gig at the London College Of Printing later that month, Mott’s star had sunk lower. Dealing with MainMan wasn’t helping either. The band’s ‘ordinary blokes’ ethos was at odds with the cigar-chomping Defries’s ruthless vision. A new song that had been added to the band’s set, Hymn For The Dudes, provided a window into Hunter’s mind. Lines such as ‘Go tell the superstars their hairs are turning grey’ illustrated how he felt it could all end at any moment. After years of scuffling, he wanted to grab any success that came his way while the going was good. In New York, during an American tour in 1972, they met up with David Bowie, who played Ian a new song he’d written, the doo-wop-inspired Drive-In Saturday. For a few days it looked like being the next Mott single. Accounts differ as to why it wasn’t. One version was that the band rejected it as “too complicated”, another was that Bowie wanted to keep it for himself. Either way, it turned out to be the right choice. To follow Dudes with another Bowie song would have belittled Mott’s own songwriting prowess, pushing them deeper under Bowie’s shadow and into MainMan’s pockets. As Ian Hunter said at the time: “We can’t live off David our whole lives , we’ve got to have our own song.” Between the final show of the US tour in Memphis on December 22 and a one-off show at Friars in Aylesbury on February 10 the following year, Mott lost Verden ‘Phally’ Allen. Uncomfortable with glam, and pushing for the band to record more of his songs after getting Soft Ground on Dudes, he quit the band impetuously. “When David came along it cleaned everything
The game-plan was not just to capture Mott’s up,” Phally says now. “We lost our edge with the essence, but also to work out what that essence live thing, and Ian took over. I just went: ‘I’m off!’ was. “We had to find a complete Mott The Hoople I never thought it through. I was driving down sound,” he said. “Like somewhere between the Oxford Street and there was a poster: ‘Mott Shock Stones and Dylan. But it had to be new. It had to – Allen Quits!’ I thought, fucking hell, I’ve left the sound like Mott The Hoople.” band! What have I done? But it was too late then.” Not that they were completely breaking with The show at Friars in February was a warm-up the past. It wasn’t lost on Hunter that on All The before a four-date mini-tour with the Sensational Young Dudes it was the soaring, defiant title track Alex Harver Band supporting. I was at the gig, and that stood out. He wanted every new track to stand while it was odd witnessing a four-piece Mott, their shoulder to shoulder with that mini-masterpiece. set included several promising new songs they’d Being the oldest and most experienced member been working up, including Drivin’ Sister, Hymn For of the band, Hunter had naturally assumed the role The Dudes and Rose. of frontman, singer and main songwriter, although Allen wasn’t the only one on the way out. Mott he had never tried to assert himself as leader. Postwere about to split with MainMan and Defries, Bowie, his rock’n’roll survival instincts also kicked though Bowie was still insisting that he’d produce in, though Mott was still the band’s next album. run as a democracy. “It worked with “That was the MainMan for about problem,” he reflects. a year, then it stopped “I remember Bowie working,” says Hunter. telling me: ‘You’ve got “So Stan [Tippins, to take this over.’ So tour manager] rang I went back and said: Tony and said he’d had ‘David reckons I should enough. Tony only had take over the band. management of the Mick Ralphs And Ralphs said: ‘Like Dudes album. We had fuck you are.’ And that was the end of that. I think contracts with him but I kept ’em at home. We diplomacy had a lot to do with the band’s demise. never signed them. Too sticky.” For some reason it was always a major drama to get And so it was that Mott found themselves all the others to agree to something. All I want to stepping out of the shadow of David Bowie and do is write songs, play good music and, at that stage escaping the MainMan machine. It may have given in the game, stay where we were, which was big.” them a sense of freedom, but it also meant their It was with that in mind that Mott began to look next move would be more important. Everyone for producers for their next album. The wish-list agreed that it was make-or-break time. included Roy Wood and Gary Glitter mastermind an Hunter set out Mott’s post-Bowie Mike Leander, but they were busy. Instead they manifesto. “Mott are only into rock’n’roll began work with engineer Bill Price at AIR 2 because rock’n’roll is music,” he said. “Sure, it studios in London. has its various trimmings. So now make-up is The next single was top priority. Hunter had moving people’s arses. I don’t need that – just give become the driving force behind the songwriting me a spotlight.” process, to the extent that Continued on page 133
“I’d outgrown Mott and I wanted to work with someone who could sing my songs.”
I
ClassiCroCkmagazine.Com 33
The Darkness in 2003: (l-r) Frankie Poullain, Dan Hawkins, Justin Hawkins, Ed Graham.
Patrick Ford / atlantic
38 classicrockmagazine.com
ChoCks AwAy!
Bursting out of Lowestoft, The Darkness took OTT rock (and bollock-hugging catsuits) to the top of the charts. Ten years on, this is the story of their stellar rise – and inglorious fall. Words: Philip Wilding
A
sk the members of It was an early example of both the The Darkness to pick shameless flamboyance and the bloody-minded one memory which stubbornness that would define the band defines that crazy in general, and their frontman in particular. period in the early Although in the case of Justin’s debut appearance 2000s when they in a catsuit, things didn’t exactly pan out as hoped. went from hopelessly unfashionable “He wanted a white one but they got the no-marks to unlikely superstars in material completely wrong,” laughs Dan Hawkins. what seemed like 10 seconds flat, and “And as soon as he started sweating, it turned into their answer is unexpected. a naked suit, a bit like Shakira. He had jeans on, It isn’t the moment when they heard and he started taking them off for the big reveal that their debut album, 2003’s Permission and realised he’d left his shoes on, and he was To Land, had gone to No.1 in the UK. literally on his back while the song started. We Nor is it the wealth and excesses that were trying to keep it going while he was on the subsequently came with it. It’s not the time floor. Someone in the audience managed to prise they picked up three Brit awards on one night. the jeans off for him. A total fucking shambles.” And it’s certainly not the ill-fated headline Little did the people in the audience realise what slot at the 2004 Reading Festival that effectively the future held for the man wriggling around on closed the curtain on their imperial period. stage as his dignity took to the hills. Though it’s fair No, the thing that truly sticks in the mind of to say that half of them wouldn’t have lost sleep if The Darkness is the very first time Justin Hawkins they’d never seen the band again. pulled on his catsuit, for a gig in the back room of “That was a defining moment,” says bassist the Castle pub in Tooting Bec, South London, on Frankie Poullain. “Some people thought we were November 16, 2001. really sad because we were playing a pub and “The catsuit was something I wanted to bring thinking we were 70s rock stars, but then other into it,” says Justin now. “My mother used to people were coming up to say they hadn’t seen hang around with Brian Jones, and she once anything that entertaining in years. We divided described an outfit he was people right from the start.” wearing as being a pink xactly 10 years ago, catsuit seductively unzipped The Darkness were to a dangerously low area. the biggest band in She’d always reminisce the country. Permission To fondly about that. So from Land had crested the charts childhood I always thought on its release in July 2003, a that the catsuit was part of gloriously anomalous splash the rock’n’roll theme.” of colour amid the grim The rest of the band were monochrome wasteland of less keen on this sartorial the early-2000s music scene. extravagance. “I remember Making no secret of their love having a pint with Dan Dan Hawkins of AC/DC, Thin Lizzy and [Hawkins, guitarist and Queen, they weren’t rock’n’roll’s future so much younger brother of Justin] after the suit had as a souped-up, tongue-in-cheek reboot of its past. become a regular fixture,” says drummer Ed More importantly, they brought back something Graham. “We were going: ‘You text him about that had long been missing in music: fun. it!’ ‘No, you text him about it!’ We both ended up The Hawkins brothers had left their home texting him to say: ‘We’re not sure about these town, the sleepy seaside enclave of Lowestoft, ➻ catsuits.’ His response was: ‘Fuck you, x [kiss].’”
“We took so long making the record that we ran out of money. It had all gone a bit Def Leppard.”
E
classicrockmagazine.com 39
1973 The First Gig!
Let there Be rock!
On December 31, 1973, the fledgling AC/DC saw in the New Year by playing their very first gig at a bar in Sydney. Forty years on, the members of that original line-up recall the birth of a legend.
I A New Year’s Eve birth… Acid-fried lamb… A shopping centre riot… Rucking with Deep Purple… Broken toilets in a London pub… Jamming with Skynyrd… “Who the fuck’s Mutt Lange?”
Words: Johnny Black Pictures: Philip Morris
n the early 70s, the Australian music scene was limping like a lame dingo. Slick pop groups peddling three-part harmonies clogged up the charts and the pub scene. But Glasgow-born, Sydney-raised guitarist Malcolm Young wasn’t going to let such trivialities stand in the way of his musical dreams. The stubborn 20-year-old enlisted vocalist Dave Evans, bassist Larry Van Kriedt, drummer Colin Burgess and his own 15-year-old brother Angus for a new band named after a label on a vacuum cleaner. On the last day of 1973, the band made their live debut at Chequers, a dilapidated cabaret bar in Sydney, taking the very first step to superstardom. Malcolm Young: I got together with a few guys interested in having a jam, and thought, “If I can knock a rock’n’roll tune out of them, we’ll get a few gigs and some extra bucks.” Angus Young: Malcolm had been playing on the club circuit, and he said the one thing that was missing was a good, one hundred per cent hard-rock band. Colin Burgess (drummer): I had been in a very successful Australian band in the sixties called The Masters Apprentices, but we broke up in 1972 so I was at a loose end. A chap called Alan Kissack, who was involved in putting bands together, called me up and told me that Malcolm Young wanted to form a band. Malcolm was the younger brother of George Young, who had been in The Easybeats, Australia’s most successful band of the 60s, so I said: “Sure, let’s have a go.” Even then, Malcolm was very ambitious. He was a hard businessman, wouldn’t take no for an answer. We formed the band with Malcolm, myself and Larry Van Kriedt, just a three-piece. Right from the start, it was quite heavy.
Larry Van Kriedt (bass): I was part of the circle of friends of both Mal and Angus. Our main interest and point in common was guitar playing and music. In 1973, I had recently bought a bass and they heard this and wanted me to jam. So I went, and kept going each night after that. We rehearsed a bunch of Mal’s tunes and a few covers. Colin Burgess: We rehearsed above an office building on the corner of Erskineville Road and Wilson Street in Newtown in Sydney. We used to do one Beatles track – Get Back. Threw it in just so we could say we did a Beatles track. Larry Van Kriedt: We had the same room every week on the first floor. Good rehearsals, bad rehearsals, creative moments, sometimes arguments and even fights. It was pretty much Malcolm’s vision and he was the driving force behind it. Colin Burgess: Dave Evans came along a little later, and then Angus. Dave Evans (vocalist): I’d been with an Australian band called The Velvet Underground, which I must say was not the New York band of the same name. So I saw this ad in the Sydney Morning Herald, a band looking for a singer in the style of Free and the Rolling Stones, which I was, and when I rang up I found myself speaking to Malcolm Young. We’d never met but we did know of each other. He invited me over that afternoon for a jam, so I went along to this empty office block; it was being renovated. Angus wasn’t in the band yet, so I went in and introduced myself to Malcolm and Colin. It was hot, getting towards summer, and we just jammed on a bunch of songs we all knew. We only did about five or six songs, we were all smiling away, and Malcolm just looked at the other guys and said: “Well, I’m happy if you guys are.” Colin and Larry both went “Yep,” and I said: “Wow!” We shook
AC/DC
“I was shocked when malcolm asked me to joIn hIs band. I was really frIghtened.” Angus Young hands and that was it. That night we all went out to celebrate that we had a band. About a week later, Malcolm informed us that his younger brother Angus had a band called Kentuckee, which was breaking up, so could Angus come and audition for us? By this point, we felt like we were a band, so we just said, “Sure.” Colin Burgess: Actually, Malcolm was a very good lead guitarist, so it seemed strange for him to want to bring in another guitarist, like Angus.
philip morris
Malcolm Young: It was okay, but I felt it needed another instrument – a keyboard maybe, or another guitar. Angus Young: I was totally shocked when he asked me to play with his band. I hadn’t expected it and I was really frightened.
Malcolm Young: Angus was the player, to be honest. He was always the showman of the two of us when we were kids. Angus Young: I walked through the door, and there was a drummer, and Malcolm goes, “All right, let’s start!” And I’m going, “Wait, isn’t somebody supposed to count us in?” He says, “What? This is a rock band. Go!” And so that was how it started. Dave Evans: At that point we became five rather than four. We’d been rehearsing for a couple of months when Malcolm told us Alan Kissack had got us our first gig, at Chequers night club. This was the number one club in Sydney. I’d played a lot of gigs but never Chequers, so that was great. Gene Pierson (entertainments manager, Chequers): Chequers, traditionally,
School of rock: an early-days gig at Chequers, by which time Angus was in uniform.
had been a theatre-restaurant in the 60s where they’d had acts like Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr, Dusty Springfield, Dionne Warwick, and I was brought in at the end of that era. My job was to get in there and change the format, turn it into a rock’n’roll venue, but the old school was still in charge. The two guys who really convinced me to put the band on at Chequers were their first manager, Alan Kissack, and their roadie, Ray Arnold, both of whom are now dead. Alan was a humble little man with glasses, but he lived and breathed AC/DC. He was convinced they were going to be the biggest band in the world. He and Ray were great gentlemen, much too nice to be in the music industry. It was Alan’s perseverance that convinced me to give them a gig. Dave Evans: The gig was to be on New Year’s Eve, the prime time, and there was a lot of interest in the band because Colin Burgess was in it, and the two younger brothers of the famous George Young from The Easybeats. So there was a lot of anticipation, but we didn’t even have a name yet. ➻ classicrockmagazine.com 53
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