ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book started life as a film proposal. It was my friend Tim Ferrier’s idea, and he’s the first person to whom I owe thanks. Tim was already in the film business, and as an old AC/DC fan, he could see the potential in Bon’s story. He asked me, as a writer, to help him, and I shared his enthusiasm for the idea. I remember the summer we spent writing a treatment. Even after only cursory research, Tim and I got it right enough to arouse terrific enthusiasm on the part of a producer and potential investors.

But the project went no further than that. The reason was that Alberts Productions, which owns the rights to AC/DC’s songs, and with whom we had initially had agreeable meetings, simply stopped taking our calls. We could only assume they weren’t going to grant us permission to use AC/DC’s music, and this effectively killed the film. With great disappointment, Tim and I shelved the thing. I still believe Bon’s story would make a great film.

I refused to let go of the subject, though. Bon’s story was such a good one and, I believed, an important one, that I remained determined to tell it in some form. This book is the result.

My intention was only ever to portray Bon through the eyes of the people who knew him best, so I had to seek all these people out. As a result, I got to know a great many people I would otherwise never have met; this was an experience I mostly enjoyed and learned a lot from. I figure I would have liked Bon myself, because I liked so many of his old friends. I have relied on these people, and I extend to them my sincere gratitude for the faith and trust they extended to me, for their time and emotion, and the precious memories and mementos they shared so generously.

Of course, I went to Bon’s family first, his mother and father, Isa and Chick, in Perth. “Ron would have loved this,” Isa kept saying, rolling her r’s in a still strong Scottish brogue. She and Chick both gave me every assistance they could, and to them I extend my special thanks.

I went back to Alberts in the hope that they might now want to join the party, but my hopes were in vain. I still don’t know why—they won’t tell me—they simply refuse to talk about their fallen comrade. Even after we agreed that it was in no one’s interest that I get the facts wrong, they would not help me check facts. They denied permission to quote from Bon’s lyrics. Their lack of grace is astonishing.

Curiously, it was only people who had a purely professional relationship with Bon who were reluctant to talk to me. Plenty of them were keen, but just as many weren’t. Is this book authorized? they all asked. Knowing what they were really getting at—whether or not Alberts approved of it.I would reply, Well, it depends what you mean by authorized.

I would think, I would go on, that only Bon’s family have the right to authorize a book about him, and certainly I have their blessing. At which point they would all say, No, no, is Alberts going along with it? I would say, No—and they would back off. Alberts seems to generate an atmosphere bordering on fear.

Almost without exception though, Bon’s personal friends were delighted that an appropriate tribute was at last being paid to him, and they were unequivocal in their enthusiasm to help.

I am indebted first and foremost to Vince Lovegrove, who not only opened quite a few doors for me—to people, like himself, who were Bon’s oldest friends—but also encouraged and inspired me all the way along the line. That he did so during a time when he was under great personal duress is all the more humbling.

Mary Renshaw and Irene Thornton, Bon’s wife, let me into their lives, and if a man can be measured by the women in his life, Mary and Irene prove Bon was a fine man. Great thanks also to Mark Evans, Michael Browning, Bruce Howe, and Silver Smith. I kept going back to all these people with questions, and to use them as sounding-boards, and their patience never flagged.

I am also indebted to Pat Pickett, Pam Swain, Chris Gilbey, Anthony O’Grady, Christie Eliezer, Juke, Rolling Stone, Mick Cocks, Joe Furey, Peter Head and Mouse, Uncle John Ayers, John Freeman, Helen Carter, Dave Jarrett, Molly Meldrum, Wyn Milson, John Darcy, Doris Howe, Peter Noble, Adrian Driscoll, Terry Serio, Sam See, Maria and Jim Short, Rob Bailey, Hamish Henry, Dennis Laughlin, Anna Baba, Graeme Scott, Keith Glass, Ian McFarlane, Richard Griffiths, Perry Cooper, Coral Browning, Paul Stewart, Chris Sturt, and Dave Baxter. And to the photographers Philip Morris, Bob King, Peter Carrette, Roger Gould, and Graeme Webber. And to a few people who preferred to remain nameless—they know who they are.

I am indebted, too, to other writers whose research I have plundered, particularly Glenn A Baker, who seems to be the only journalist ever to have “penetrated” Alberts. For months, I went back and forth to the Mitchell Library in Sydney and the Victorian State Library to rifle through old issues of Go-Set, RAM, Juke, Rolling Stone and Digger, and I salute their creators and often nameless contributors. I also referred continuously to Noel McGrath’s Australian Encyclopaedia of Rock & Pop, Peter Beilby and Michael Roberts’ Australian Music Directory, Chris Spencer’s Who’s Who of Australian Rock, and David Day and Tim Parker’s It’s Our Music.

Naturally, I read the two previously published AC/DC biographies—Hell Ain’t No Bad Place To Be by Richard Bunton, and Shock to the System by Mark Putterford—and I only hope I’m not found out repeating any of their mistakes!

In general, quotes presented oral history style I obtained myself through first-hand interviews; those presented otherwise were derived from other sources, usually cited.

Of course, there are also my own friends and associates who have helped in different ways, among them Tony Hayes and all the people we met in Scotland, David McClymont, everyone in Adelaide (the Herzs, the Norwoods, the Harrises), Bleddyn Butcher and Jude Toohey in London, Richard Guilliatt and Susan Bogle in New York, Ken West, Bruce Milne, Robert Forster and Karin, Dave Graney and Clare Moore, Steve and Helen, Matthew and Dianne, Peter Blakeley, and Stuart Coupe and Julie Ogden. Thanks also to my family, especially my mother. And last but most of all, my wife Debbie, who means more to me than words can express.

Special thanks to Penguin Books Australia Ltd for permission to reproduce passages from William Dick’s A Bunch of Ratbags; and the Boston Globe for permission to quote from an October 7, 1970 column by George Frazier. And finally, thanks to Katherine Spielmann and Steve Connell for getting this US edition out.