Youngs : The Brothers Who Built Ac/Dc (9781466865204) by Jesse Fink Page B

Scott died. I said, ‘No, I can’t do that. I haven’t got the range that Bon had. I can’t see a change to my key.’ That’s what happened. George asked me. There used to be a café on the corner in Kings Cross [in Sydney]. He took me around there because they were playing a seedy sort of bar. And he said, ‘Now I’ll tell you something.’ So I sat down. And he said, ‘Say no if you want; you know I’ll understand completely.’ And I said, ‘Well ask me.’ And he asked. And I said, ‘Are you all right?’ But for reasons to do with choice of key I declined. I had nowhere near Bon’s range.”
    On the surface, the story seems unlikely. AC/DC wasn’t playing any seedy bars in Kings Cross in 1980. They did have a residency at the Hampton Court Hotel on Bayswater Road in early 1974. More likely is that Wright has his memories mixed up.
    â€œThat incident did happen in the early ’70s,” says Wright biographer Glenn Goldsmith. “That was before Bon joined and they were looking for a replacement for the original singer. AC/DC were actually playing a gig in Kings Cross.”
    In 1979 Wright was a clean but recovering heroin addict. AC/DC ’s aversion to hard drugs is well known and Wright had been caught using smack in the studio during the making of his 1975 album, Black Eyed Bruiser . The comeback was over as quickly as it had started.
    â€œThat was the end of Wright’s recording career with Alberts,” writes Jane Albert in House of Hits: The Great Untold Story of Australia’s First Family of Music . “[Ted] Albert, [George] Young and Vanda knew there was no point continuing once they realized heroin was involved. They had turned a blind eye to Wright’s other addictions, but heroin was a different matter.”
    As it was for Angus and Malcolm.
    In Highway to Hell Clinton Walker tells the story of Scott’s heroin overdose in the company of sisters Judy and Christine King in Melbourne in 1975. Mick Wall rehashes it in his 2012 biography of AC/DC with more than enough descriptive license. AC/DC ’s former manager Michael Browning tells Wall: “It’s news to me that it was heroin … the brothers experienced the fall of Stevie Wright, who got addicted to heroin, so it was a huge no-no.” Yet no current or former member of AC/DC has confirmed the story and that it was heroin. Until now.
    â€œWhen I found out about it I’d say it would have been down the line a bit,” says Mark Evans. “We were in Canberra, playing a place called The Harmony Club, a German beerfest place. I remember sitting on the bed when I got back to the hotel. The tag was the Banjo Paterson Motor Inn; this squarish tag, emerald green. I remember looking at it and saying to Phil [Rudd], ‘What’s going to happen?’ There were some doubts about Bon at that stage. He’d had a problem or he’d had an OD, very early on. It was just a dabble … Bon just made a bad decision. It was only one bad decision.
    â€œIt’s not something I’m particularly comfortable talking about, I’ve got to be honest with you. But from what I was led to believe and came to believe, it was a very, very isolated incident. I never saw any evidence of anything remotely like heavy drugs [when I was in AC/DC ]. I remember when it happened. It was all very in-house. That was it.”
    But Evans also confirms something more shocking: that because of the overdose there was talk about dropping Scott from the band—even before they got to America.
    It was something he couched in vague terms in Walker’s 1994 book: “I think [Angus and Malcolm] viewed Bon to be ultimately disposable. In hindsight, it seems preposterous, but at the time he was always in the firing line. And there was a lot of pressure, mainly from George and record companies. I think within that camp, there’s been a certain