AC/DC thought of firing Bon Scott

Angus and Malcolm Young considered firing Bon Scott from AC/DC after he took a heroin overdose in 1975, former bassist Mark Evans has said.

The Young brothers, who founded the Australian outfit, are well-known for operating a zero-tolerance policy to hard drugs.

And Evans suggests the only reason they didn’t dismiss the frontman – who died in 1980 – was that his behaviour was a one-off incident.

The claim appears in a new book, The Youngs: The Brothers Who Built AC/DC, by Jesse Fink, and it’s regarded as the first time it’s been revealed how Scott’s iconic status was misunderstood by his bandmates during his lifetime.

Evans, who left the band in 1977 after a two-year stint, says: “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.

“There was a moment of madness – there was disquiet. In any decision like that I had absolutely fuck-all influence. It was just something that filtered through the band: things weren’t looking good for Bon.

“There was mention of another singer. But it never got to that point. There wasn’t a lot said at the time. It was: ‘There may well be a change coming.’”

Author Fink tells The Australian: “This is important to know. Finally, after close to 40 years, we’ve had someone who was inside the AC/DC sanctum reveal that Bon Scott was seen as dispensable as anyone else in the band who wasn’t a Young brother.”

The Youngs: The Brothers Who Built AC/DC is published by Random House on November 1.