To a small group of people gathered around the makeshift stage at Manaveeyam Lane in Thiruvananthapuram, 70-year-old Dave Evans said, “most of you would not have been born that night when we had our first gig as AC/DC.” It was 50 years ago at a nightclub called Chequers in Sydney, Australia, a prestigious place to have played at back in the 70s. His voice was drowned in the sudden burst of hoots and cheers that followed the name of AC/DC, the legendary Australian rock band that generations have followed, even all the way here in Kerala, in the south of India.
Indulgent of the many fans wanting to take photos with him, Dave, who was with AC/DC for nearly a year, sang the chorus of their most popular song ‘Highway to Hell’. He has come to Thiruvananthapuram for the International Indie Music Festival being held in Kovalam Arts and Crafts Village from November 10 to 12. This is the first time any member of the AC/DC, former or current, comes to India for a performance, he tells TNM in a short interview inside a bus that is to take him back to Kovalam.
The three-day festival is put together by the Lazie Indie Magazine in association with the Kerala Arts and Crafts Village which comes under the Tourism Department. More than 10 bands including popular Indian bands such as Indian Ocean, Motherjane, and Girish and the Chronicles, international bands like Psychopunch from Sweden and Melody from Uganda are in the lineup.
Dave will perform on the second day of the music festival, November 11. He is touring the world to celebrate 50 years of the band, he says. Dave had become the vocalist of AC/DC when the Young brothers – Malcolm Young and Angus Young – decided to start a rock and roll band in downtown Sydney back in 1973. “I had answered an advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald that said that a rock and roll band wanted a singer. The fellow at the other end was Malcolm Young, who used to play with the Velvet Underground (different from the American band of the same name),” Dave says.
Dave too was a part of Velvet Underground for a brief while, but that was after Malcolm had left. Dave who grew up in small town Queensland – a place called Charters Towers – had come to Sydney as a teenager. Until then he sang with different bands in pubs and hotels. “I began singing when I was tiny, even before I went to school. My father was a great singer, I have seen him singing on stage when I was a little boy. So I began singing too,” Dave says.
But his father was not a fan of rock and roll and Dave was. He loved the Beatles as everyone did in the 60s and grew his hair long like Paul, John, Ringo, and George. He even went back to the music of the 50s to discover whom he calls the real gems of rock and roll, musicians like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and Elvis Presley. Hearing Dave sing (“louder than the jukebox”) the people in his hometown would tell him to go to the ‘big smoke’ — meaning the big city, Sydney.
So Dave landed in Sydney, became part of Velvet Underground until they split up, and then of course the newspaper ad brought him to AC/DC. The first time they jammed, Malcolm was on the guitar, Collin Burgess from The Masters Apprentices on the drums, and Larry Van Kriedt on the bass. Soon, Malcolm’s younger brother Angus, also a guitarist, joined them. “So that was the five of us and we didn’t have a name. Our manager told us about a show coming up in Chequers and to get ourselves a name before that. We tossed about a few until Malcolm’s sister-in-law – that’s Sandra, his brother George Young’s wife – came up with AC/DC. And we all liked it. Plus it is free advertising when people see AC/DC on their appliances and think of us,” Dave says.
The Chequers show was on New Year’s Eve, 1974. They didn’t have original songs and played a few covers of The Rolling Stones and Chuck Berry. But at one point, Dave says, he made up a song as Malcolm played a tune. “It was called Sunset Strip (like in the place in Hollywood),” he says, and begins to sing a few lines: I got a girl who’s so so fine / I am so glad that she's mine all mine /…/ When I am with my sugar I could do no wrong / I am walking with my baby in the sunset strip.
They kept the song, he says. Dave then sang with AC/DC one of their first original songs, ‘Can I sit next to you girl’. There is a video of their 1974 performance of the song online. The band found success with their very first record, he says.
Watch: Dave sing with AC/DC in 1974
In the months that followed, the band changed character from glam rock to harder blues-rock. There was also a change of lineup and Bob Scott became the vocalist of AC/DC. Dave joined the glam rock band Rabbit, before founding bands of his own, ‘Dave Evans and Hot Cockerel’ and ‘Dave Evans and Thunder Down Under’.