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Book Review: Dirty Deeds

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 January 5 2012 at 10:42:52 PM



Done dirt cheap. Mark Evans played bass with AC/DC throughout their hungriest, most scabrous period, yielding the incomparable TNT, High Voltage, Dirty Deeds…, Let There Be Rock, and ’74 Jailbreak EP. In short: the most smokin’ shit. The heaviest shit. The classic, towering rocking shit. And Dirty Deeds, Evans’ memoir, relays much behind the scene of the aforementioned—without functioning as some slimy tell-all larded with sensationalist jabber. Yes, readers mostly learn what they knew all along. Rock n Roll’s a business. The Brothers Young are businessmen. The Brothers Young are exceptional guitarists; Bon Scott’s a walking talking snarling Id who also happens to be the greatest frontman since Little Richard or Elvis. And Phil Rudd is a Porsche driving, pussy-magnet who crushes the fuck outta his kit.

Book moves like an AC/DC tune: deliberately, almost maddeningly linear. Evans’ prose is delivered bareback from the barstool. Each bit relayed between many beers. Stories scattered here and there; narrative aided by what is practically eidetic memory, as Evans recalls large swatches of conversation with all band members and their associates, and is comfortable enough throwing quotes around all of it. Little paraphrased here. This life lived marked indelibly, and he’s not too proud to admit it: Evans motherfucking loved AC/DC. He respected the band. He marveled at the band. And he simply refuses to wax poetic, tending towards crystal-clear absolutes. His descriptions make them out to be more like a band of mercenaries, die-cast to their respective roles. Angus and Malcolm the cleanup duo, two warring trolls you send out into the field first to lay waste and get back to base in time for cuppa. Bon’s the quiet, incendiary type with the eatshit grin; you don’t call on him unless you absolutely have to. And Phil and Mark, well, they’re expendable, as we’d all learn later.

Evans? No fool. Knows all of this. On the goddamn wall. But he can’t help himself from living the life onstage and off, drinking, fucking, fighting, rocking. And he still finds some way to stay humble, grounded; aware of the greatness he shares current company with, almost to the point of frenetic fandom. While sitting watching Angus, Malcolm, and Phil play together, on one occasion, Evans goes slack-jawed, moved nearly ecstatic by the trio’s innate power. There’s nothing intimated here. Evans repeatedly plays up his mates’ capabilities, and rightfully so. The riffs that power “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” “Problem Child,” “It’s a Long Way to the Top…,” “Rock & Roll Singer,” “Live Wire,” et al have really become a secret vade mecum, a goddamn guidebook of how to get that broken down beast back on the road to that elusive Joyful Fucking Noise.

Contrast with the current scene and Rock’s bedrocking heyday is unintentionally milked like a lactating freakshow granny. Evans shows us an Angus Young contentedly sitting out on carousing with the mates—and even passing up a free salad days Stones show—to dick around at home, guitar noodle, smoke cigarettes, swill tea. Kinda startling. This head-in-the-sand, eye-on-the-prize player sounds like the only bit of fiction here in Evans’ book, and it definitely ain’t. Angus lives large the solipsism even onstage, where he works his wet sheepdog banger routine to utter exhaustion. It’s just him and his guitar—pure and apt reductionist take on all the members and their respective instrumentation. Evans accesses this point well: Bon, voice & words; Malcolm, guitar; Angus, guitar; Phil, drums; Mark, bass. No separation here. What one plays is what one is. Each song, on each album, just a way of gassing up and going. Constant motion—like a shark to live. Only here you’ve got Malcolm wearing two hats, one denoting music direction, another simply his general identification, The Father—Mr Big Ol’ Heavy Dick; don’t fuck wid’me.

Amidst all the band’s tension and dreary role-playing, there’s stuff about hotel and motel apparitions, snarks at glam and other contemporaries (a particularly hilarious bit about Blackmore and his medievalist fixation), asides about Angus’ foodstuff predilections (chocolate milk, Big Macs), and a particularly Plathian take on road doggin’, where Evans actually comes to the throes of suicide via defenestration, and some how/way works his way carefully out the Bell Jar. There’s no preaching or finger-wagging. Evans is forthright, even in the grip of catastrophic and wrenching family tragedy, that this is just part of life. He’s happy—appreciative, even—to have had his time in that little Aussie band the world came to know as AC/DC. He’s thrilled to have shared time and belts with Bon. To have played second fiddle to gunslingers Young. And it’s all undeniably touching, inspiring, almost played deftly as some sorta Rock n Roll self-help sell. “Keep moving,” writes Evans. “Enjoy life. Never, ever give up.”

[Stewart Voegtlin]

Dirty Deeds: My Life Inside/Outside AC/DC
By Mark Evans
Bazillion Points
www.bazillionpoints.com

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