Tag: Mark Evans

The Mighty Blues

tice and evans at the sando
[Dave Tice with the funny-lookin’ red guitar, and Mark Evans on the right…]

Fans all over the world salivate over the tiniest scraps of information which occasionally filter through from AC/DC’s management. But the current band members live extremely private lives, subject to speculation of all sorts (will they ever complete a new album? will they ever tour again? do they ever rehearse together these days?).

But how many people are aware of this fact: Mark Evans, former AC/DC bass player, not only performs in an intimate setting every single Saturday afternoon, but if you’re lucky, you might even get to share a beer with him?

Last week, after hitting the second hand record stalls at the flea market, I went down to the Sandringham Hotel in Newtown to see him in action.
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Authentic Value

stevo from gosnells
[Stevo with his “mint condition” voucher for a special AC/DC songbook. Bec the photographer is in the background. Read about my first encounter with Stevo here…]

Stevo from Gosnells is a one heckuva collector.

I got his number from Robi at the Fremantle Arts Centre. As is often the case with the Bon Scott tragics I’ve been meeting lately, my tentative phone call, which is supposedly just “to work out if you might be up for a visit”, results in an avalanche of information being transmitted right then and there on the phone.

“I’m the biggest collector I know!” Steve said, and then he launched into a big list of the AC/DC items he owns. I had to rein him in – a lot of the stuff he was saying didn’t make any sense to me at all. Blue labels? Certificates of authenticity?? Souvenir songbooks??? Bon’s face on a dollar bill????
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Lost Saints

daniel and josh in freo
[Daniel and Josh waiting for the truck to arrive…]

Bec gave me the hot tip, so I raced down to the Fremantle train station to witness a re-enactment of AC/DC’s It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock and Roll). Way back in 1976, on this very day, 23rd of February, AC/DC shot a video clip of the song in downtown Melbourne. They travelled down Swanston Street on a flatbed truck, accumulating a small crowd along the way. The video clip, and the event, have become something of a local legend. A few years ago in Melbourne, a street called Corporation Lane was renamed AC/DC Lane as a memorial to this great moment in rock history.

I arrived just before noon. Small groups were starting to cluster around the station, hiding from the sun under shady trees, craning their necks this way and that in order to catch a first glimpse of the truck. I wandered over and took a photo of two eager young fans, Daniel and Josh. They’re only 16 years old. Daniel told me he’s been listening to AC/DC for four years now. He first became aware of their music while playing a video game, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. The song T.N.T. appears as background music to this skateboarding game, and that’s how Daniel got hooked. He also told me a curious story about his “Pop” and Bon hanging out together. The two rascals once “borrowed” a hotted up Holden to go joyriding around Freo. That must have been sometime in the 1960s I guess. Daniel’s Pop is now 62 years old.
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