There have been a number of excellent books written about AC/DC and their late singer, Bon Scott. Jesse Fink now has two of them to his name.
Chronicling the lightning-in-a-bottle frontman's final three years on tour and his death in London in February 1980, Bon: The Last Highway deserves shelf space alongside Fink's The Youngs: The Brothers Who Built AC/DC; Mick Wall's Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be and former bassist Mark Evans' memoir Dirty Deeds, among others.
Four-hundred-plus pages go by in a blur.
Fink has really put in the miles himself, interviewing Scott's former lovers in Australia and the US; friends he made in Texas and Florida, musicians who shared the same bill, and more.
Don't expect anything new from Scott's AC/DC bandmates at the time of his death: any quotes here are from past interviews. Indeed, that silence is as much a part of the story as what Fink has been able to find out, on and off the record.
Hand-on-heart clarity and the haze of memory merge here to do justice to what is both a celebratory and cautionary tale.
Like all of us, Scott's life was a mass - and mess - of contradictions: supremely confident and self-destructive; a lonely man and love-'em-and-leave-'em Lothario; the star onstage but an employee of AC/DC's guitarist brothers Angus and Malcolm Young behind the curtain.
As the band's popularity skyrocketed, Scott's drinking spiralled. Like all the best posthumous biographies, even though you know the ending you still hold out hope for a happier one.
When that tragedy does arrive, Fink is pre-occupied with the two questions that have become the twin mountains of speculation scaled by fans since 1980.
The first is whether heroin, and not alcohol poisoning, was the cause of Scott's demise after a night out.
The second is whether Scott wrote any of the lyrics on AC/DC's biggest-selling album, Back in Black - released with new singer Brian Johnson just five months after his passing.
You'll close the book with your own beliefs either changed or confirmed.
Fink needed a more ruthless editor for the timeline(s) laid down and theories advanced for Scott's final hours but, that shortcoming aside, he has done justice to 'the story of one exceptional but ultimately wasteful man'.
You will learn much on this road trip. You already know the soundtrack.
Harry Guerin
