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Rock Reads: Dirty Deeds: My Life Inside/Outside of AC/DC by Mark Evans
Reviewed by Kevin Wierzbicki
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Evans was the bass player for AC/DC during the Bon Scott era and played on the High Voltage, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap and Let There Be Rock albums. Evans takes about thirty pages to cover his family and upbringing but then quickly gets into what fans are hungry to know about. Yes there are plenty of stories about the band's well-known appetite for boozing but some of the most endearing anecdotes are the funny ones, like when Evans first meets Scott and Scott expects Evans to iron his stage clothes before a show, or when Evans is caught by his mother while indulging in his first m�nage a trois. The book is packed with hundreds of such incidents. Another interesting aspect of Dirty Deeds is the revelation that AC/DC was far from an overnight success; Evans details how the band struggled on the club circuit in their native Australia and how problems continued after relocation to England. The U.S. was not an easy go either; fans may think today that the legendary Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap album catapulted the band to instant stardom but in fact the classic, recorded in 1975, didn't even see an American release until 1981. Evans' tale is one of typical rock'n'roll debauchery, one that many would envy and aspire to, but there is also an underlying theme of disappointment. Evans is not bitter but he did kind of get jinked when he was unceremoniously kicked out of the band, ostensibly because the rest of the group wanted a bass player that could sing. Shortly thereafter Bon Scott would die and the band would begin to cash in on all the groundwork they'd laid. At that point Evans went back to playing on the same Australian pub circuit that AC/DC had outgrown years before. Today Evans remains active as a member of an acoustic duo with fellow Aussie Dave Tice. The book includes eighteen pages of color photographs.
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