Highway to Hell

by Clinton Walker

  “Oh, he used to open the fridge in the morning, and I had to bite my tongue, because I don’t like drink. But it was his way of living, I couldnae . . .”

  CHICK: “You’d go into any of the rooms in the house and you’d find an empty bottle.”

  ISA: “He wanted to buy us a house. But we already had the duplex we were in. I said, Ron, we don’t need it. He did take us out one day and we went around looking at a bit of ground, to build a house. But it fell through or something.

  “And then he went away again. I said, Ron, you ought to make a will. He said, I’m not going to die.

  “He said, I don’t need to make a will, I’m not going to die.”

  Although Bon returned to Australia from late 1979 to early 1980, he did not make any public appearances. This photograph shows his last performance on Australian soil, an impromptu one at a party for AC/DC at the Cremorne Strata Inn in Sydney, February 5, 1979. Left to right: drummer Ray Arnott, Angus, Malcolm, Bon, and George Young on bass. (Philip Morris)

  15. FEBRUARY 1980

  Bon arrived back in London at the start of a new year and a new decade. He had just over a month to live.

  Before anything else, he found a flat in Victoria, not far from Buckingham Palace. Located in a block called Ashley Court, it was small but nice. Silver lent him a few things to help set up house. He liked things neat and tidy.

  Bon then went off to France, to play seven gigs in seven days (January 16–23) and still manage to drop in on the annual MIDEM music industry convention in Cannes, where AC/DC collected a pile of precious metal records. France awarded them two golds—one each for If You Want Blood and Highway to Hell—Canada gave them a gold, and Britain, a gold and silver for Highway to Hell.

  Returning to London, there was little on the calendar to interrupt time designated for writing songs for the new album. Bon was very excited about that, constantly scribbling on scraps of paper and in little blue exercise books that he carried around, in and out of the studio where he was working with Malcolm and Angus, manning the drums. The band still had to honor ticket holders to the two gigs that were cancelled on the last tour, the Newcastle Mayfair and the Southampton Gaumont, which were rescheduled for January 25 and 27 respectively. A Top of the Pops appearance was also being organized, to promote the current single “Touch Too Much.” And Angus’s wedding to his Dutch girlfriend Ellen was on. But that was all.

  A great deal of this time Bon spent with a Japanese girl he met known as Anna “Baba,” who moved in with him. Anna was a friend of Ian Jeffery’s Japanese wife Suzie. They had been at boarding school together in London in 1976. Anna went back to Japan to complete her education and as soon as she was able she returned to London, which she loved so much. “The best time in my life it could be. Indeed it was. The best thing and the worst thing happened to me there then.”

  Anna got in contact with her friend Suzie as soon as she arrived back in London. On January 27, she was invited over to the Jefferys’ for Sunday dinner, and afterwards, maybe they’d go to Southampton to see AC/DC.

  ANNA: “Had a Sunday dinner with Bon and Jefferys and ridden in the bus to Southampton with them. When their show starts, I mean, when the singer turn up the stage with shiny smile and rhythm, I knew I was naturally in it. After the music over, all the audience gone and the roadies fixing all the instruments on the stage. Busy. Bon stands there with contented smile. How did you like the show? It was beautiful.

  “Back to London, highway to the town. By the time bus stopped around his flat, I’ve seen him being quite high with a bottle of booze in his hand. Being drunk but not so quietly and gentle. And his back going home alone, unsteady on his feet.”

  The next morning, Bon phoned Suzie to ask her to ask Anna if she’d like to come over to his flat and cook him a Japanese meal. Anna obliged. Bon wooed her “like the sweetest gentleman.”

  After going with him to the BBC on February 7 to tape the band’s Top of the Pops appearance (they performed “Touch Too Much,” which would prove to be so prophetic), Anna spent her first night with Bon: “Waking up in the morning with him playing Billy Preston. ‘Get dressed,’ he says, ‘We go to your place and get a couple of things.’ We got a cab to Finsbury where I was staying then, but on the way back not a couple of things but all my belongings were with us.”

  Mick Cocks had by then moved into a flat in Kensington with Joe Furey. “I ran into Bon in Victoria; I went to a gig there one night, and after the gig I just bumped into him. He said, Come back for a drink, so I said, Okay. He was into sake because his girl was Japanese. We’d just be sitting on the couch, and she’d come out with this warm sake in a pot, and we’d get rat-arsed. And then she’d cook. It’d just arrive, so we’d eat.

  “She couldn’t speak English. Bon was teaching her a bit, and he was learning a bit of Japanese. She was more like the mothering type. She was a sweet girl. Bon liked her. I think he was experimenting. But it was fairly obvious she wasn’t going to satisfy any of his deeper needs.

  “Drugs were rampant at the time, but I know drugs were not a problem for Bon. It was alcohol, it was a social thing. I’m not saying Bon didn’t have the odd toot . . . everyone did, but he was busy writing the new album. He was really positive. He wanted to experiment with his lyrics. He was always reading them to me over the phone, and I was encouraging him.”

  Bon’s last appearance with AC/DC, performing “Touch Too Much” on Top of the Pops, February 7, 1980. (©LFI)

  JOE FUREY: “He was constantly having to simplify stuff to fit in with the Youngs’ format of the band. Lots of stuff he just didn’t even bother showing to them. Like, that line, ‘She had the body of Venus with arms’—that would have gone straight over their heads. Like, Who’s this Venus, some chick without arms?”

  SILVER: “For quite a while after we broke up, I still cashed his checks for him. It was probably only a matter of a couple of months he’d been doing that sort of stuff for himself.

  “Getting that flat was a big thing for him. He was kind of really proud of that. I lent him a lot of stuff, because he didn’t have anything, you know. But he was quite pleased with himself.

  “He was probably a bit more tired in that last while. I think his health just started deteriorating very early in his life.”

  Bon was in fact seeing a doctor for problems with his liver.

  ANNA: “Just the way things seemed to rush us. Going to Albert Hall, London Zoo, horse riding he’d teach me how, and to Hyde Park to listen to the Sunday speeches there, and this summer, just drive through Europe by bike without a map. How wonderful! And more and more Bon suggest: We go there too. Never made it.

  “I realized, in those days, that when we were holding hands, he often take fast hold of my hand like he’s saying something doing that. Something not for our bright future but something so hopeless. Maybe in a tormented hell.”

  Bon was drinking heavily, as Anna testifies: “Waking late in the morning, start with a glass of Scotch and music.” He was listening to Eric Clapton’s Slowhand, John Lennon’s Imagine, the Pretenders’ first album, which had just come out, and Tchaikovsky.

  Suddenly though, something snapped inside Bon. He told Anna she would have to leave. He said he had to start working. Anna was devastated. Bon had told Ian Jeffery that Anna was distracting him. Suzie explained to Anna that she was smothering Bon.

  ANNA: “So next morning, before he wakes up, very quietly I packed my suitcase and left. I went to the shop on the street to get some fresh milk, as it was running out and he always liked it in the morning.”

  Anna rang Suzie from the public phone in the shop to ask if she could stay with her that night.

  ANNA: “She says, Okay, but Bon just phoned and said you’re gone. Going back to the flat, and just taking time opening the door as it’s heavy, hard to unlock always. And there was Bon’s back at the record player, playing “Wonderful Tonight”, my favorite song on Slowhand.

  “Where are you going? Bon seeing my suitcase packed. Just
trying to get close to the moon, I answered. Who’s gonna cook for me if you go? Bon said. And the plans for coming days. This Sunday, he wants to invite his friends from Paris, Trust, for Japanese food party.”

  Bon had dropped in on his French friends while they were doing a session in London on February 13. It was then that he made his last recording, a version of “Ride On” that would eventually be released in 1998. “That’s why I’m lonely,” he bawled. “So lonely . . .”

  ANNA: “Till then, I said to myself, I’d be with him here just till then.

  And another day busy being happy . . . He said, It’s been the best for a while, like he’s angry with it.”

  Trust came to dinner on Sunday. Mick Cocks was there too.

  ANNA: “It was like the Last Supper. Had lots of fun. Bon seemed that he didn’t want me to smoke though. Why?”

  The next day was Monday, the 18th, Bon’s last. He left the flat in the early afternoon. Anna got dressed after about an hour, and left too. She bumped into Bon on the way out. “My bank is closed,” he said. “I’m hungry.”

  “Do you want me to cook something?” she asked.

  ANNA: “Quick cooking of Japanese soup and fish cake. Doing dishes, I turn back and saw him giving me such a sad look as if he’s the one who’s hurt separating tonight. Dishes done, he calls my name, says, Thank You. Too formal, we’ve never been like this. And, See you, he said firmly.”

  Anna went over to the Jefferys’ in Maida Vale.

  ANNA: “Ian came back, said nothing. Plug, the roadie who’s staying there, came back later, said that Bon didn’t come to the studio. About 11 o’clock at night, he phoned and says: How are you doing?

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Just checking if you are okay.’

  ‘Fine, I’m fine. How are you?’

  ‘Just sitting on my own. Drinking and writing lyrics. I didn’t go to the studio today, maybe tomorrow. (That means I can’t see you tomorrow either?) Do you have a blanket?’

  ‘No, I’m sleeping in the sink. No, I have a blanket. And you? Do you have a blanket?’

  ‘I have too many for one.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, I just wanted to check if you were okay. Is Ian there?’

  “And he spoke to Ian and the night fell. I was wrapped up in a blanket that Plug left on the couch. In the middle of the night or before dawn, I woke up and saw this white light coming through the door. Pain in the abdomen but it went through to the window next second and back to sleep unaware. Maybe I was dreaming.”

  Next day, in the afternoon, Anna went shopping with Suzie. But all her strength had left her. The city seemed dusty and unreal. Back at Maida Vale, when Ian came home, he said Bon hadn’t shown up at the studio again. When Plug came back later, he was irritated. “Where the fuck’s Bon?” he demanded.

  ANNA: “Suzie suggest I phone him at the flat. I was afraid. Say no. But can’t face this. Decided to ring him up at 12:00 a.m. Up to 12:00, I’ll wait for him. No phone rings. Time goes slowly. And finally at 12:00, when I put my hand to the phone, I jumped back for fear. The phone started to ring. Suzie nod. So I pick it up. Is Ian there? Not that dear voice, husky, but the biting businesslike manner. I handed the phone to Suzie and left the room.

  “After a while, I heard some sort of screaming. I walked into the room. And there Suzie is sitting with Ian having his arm around her and crying.

  “For some tragedy she was crying. I fell down on my knees, asked, Is it Bon? She took my hand and nod. Her face furrowed by tears. Has Bon died? I asked again.

  “Soon, many people walked in the sitting room. They all look tamely. But no one aware that a petal of the cyclamen Ian gave to Suzie on Valentine’s Day fell down without a sound.”

  16. TOUCH TOO MUCH

  The news first appeared in London’s Evening Standard on the afternoon of Wednesday, January 20th. By Thursday morning it was in all the dailies, under such predictable headlines as “ROCK STAR DRINKS HIMSELF TO DEATH.” The same story was repeated in all the articles: Bon had died in a car parked outside a friend’s flat in South London, having been left to sleep off a drunk on Monday night, or more accurately in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Bon’s friend, identified as Alistair Kinnear, a “bass guitarist,” had found him unconscious on Tuesday evening. Bon was subsequently pronounced dead on arrival at nearby Kings College Hospital. Police said there were no suspicious circumstances.

  The Evening Standard’s John Stevens located Kinnear, and reported:Speaking from his third floor flat in Overhill Road, East Dulwich, a distraught Mr. Kinnear described the drinking bout which led to the Australian star’s death.

  “I met up with Bon to go to the Music Machine, but he was pretty drunk when I picked him up.

  “When we got there, he was drinking four whiskies straight in a glass at a time . . .

  “I just could not move him so I covered him with a blanket and left him a note to tell him how to get up to my flat in case he woke up.

  “I went to sleep then and it was later in the evening when I went out to the car and I knew something was wrong immediately.”

  These comments were the first and last that Alistair Kinnear offered publicly. After that, he seemed to vanish from the face of the earth.

  As a result of Kinnear’s apparent disappearance, combined with the twin rumors—both well founded—that some people had wanted Bon out of AC/DC, and that Bon moved in heavy drug circles, conspiracy theories began to spring up almost immediately.

  These conspiracy theories grew more and more elaborate over the years—right up to the moment when Alistair Kinnear was effectively flushed out by an article in London’s Guardian newspaper on the 25th anniversary of Bon’s death in February, 2005, written by Richard Jinman. In it, this author was quoted exasperatedly asking the one final question neither he nor anyone else had ever been able to answer: What happened to Alistair Kinnear? His disappearance was so complete, his identity so nebulous, it was as if he had never even existed.

  Indeed, it was this idea—that Kinnear never existed—that formed the basis of the principal conspiracy theory: that “Alistair Kinnear” was merely another alias among many used by Joe Furey, and, relatedly, that drugs were involved in Bon’s death. Just weeks before Jinman’s Guardian piece, veteran metal journalist Geoff Barton had written a cover story for Total Rock magazine based on the shifting memories of various former members of UFO, which placed Bon with them on that fateful Monday night, and going off to see “Alistair Kinnear” (whoever he might have been) to score smack.

  It’s true that Bon was friendly with UFO (two weeks before he died, he was photographed backstage at a gig of theirs at the Hammersmith Odeon); it’s also the case that Joe Furey was one of their dealers; but the garbled and conflicting accounts of these recovering addicts never added up, any more than any of the other conspiracy theories did. Joe Furey may have been able to pass himself off as someone else to his junkie clients, but to the police? The press? The coroner? If Alistair Kinnear didn’t exist, how come Bon had an entry under his name in his phone book? If drugs were involved, how could an autopsy fail to find them in Bon’s system?

  No, the way Bon died was pretty much the way the “official” version always had it, as this book concluded from its very first edition in 1994 onward. And when the real Alistair Kinnear, who had been living in Spain since the early 1980s (he still works as a musician there, in the bars of the Costa del Sol), released a statement later in 2005 to Metal Hammer magazine,2 the final piece of the jigsaw fell perfectly into place.

  The inside back cover of Bon’s pocket diary, showing Alistair Kinnear’s phone number. (courtesy Anna Baba)

  Bon was at home in the early evening on February 18, 1980, trying to write. He was drinking, of course. Trust’s Bernie Bonvoisin would later sing in “Your Final Gig”: “Everything had gone great, we’d laughed the night before”—but Bon’s mind was wandering. Mid-evening he called Silver (he also called Coral Browning in Los Angeles, as we
ll as Ian Jeffrey and Anna). He had never gotten over Silver, who by then was a fully-fledged heroin dealer. Joe Furey was still heavily involved with her, as he was with UFO.

  SILVER: “Bon phoned up, he wanted to go and see someone, I think at Dingwalls, just check ’em out, and he didn’t want to go by himself. So Alistair and Bon went. I didn’t hear from Bon again. I got two more calls from Alistair.”

  Kinnear was a fringe figure on the London rock scene. He’d first met Bon as a result of sharing a flat in Kensington with Silver in 1978. He told Metal Hammer: “On the night of 18 February 1980, Zena Kakoulli, manager of the Only Ones and wife of bandleader Peter Perrett, invited me to the inaugural gig of her sister’s band at the Music Machine in Camden Town. I phoned Silver to see if she wanted to come along, but she’d made other arrangements for the evening. However, she suggested that Bon might be interested, as he had phoned her earlier looking for something to do. I gave him a call, and he was agreeable, and I picked him up at his flat on Ashley Court in Westminster.”

  Bon was at home when Kinnear got there around midnight, and then the pair drove across town to the Music Machine (the venue was renamed the Camden Palace a couple of years later).

  KINNEAR: “It was a great party, and Bon and I both drank far too much . . . however, I did not see him take any drugs that evening. At the end of the party I offered to drive him home. As we approached his flat, I realized that Bon had drifted into unconsciousness. I left him in my car and rang his doorbell, but his current live-in girlfriend didn’t answer. I took Bon’s keys and let myself into the flat, but no-one was at home.”

  Even if Kinnear had entertained the idea of carrying Bon inside, somehow in the process—he was drunk, after all—he managed to lock himself out of the building. As Anna Baba has already said, the front door was “heavy, hard to unlock always”; this is corroborated by a note the caretaker at Ashley Court left for Bon and Anna the following day, which Anna picked up later. It read: “On morning duties on arrival on 4th floor found door of Flat 15 open, all lights and radios on. Also found one set of keys to flat, on mat inside of front door. Awaited someone to come, and having heard nothing, reported matter to managing agents. [Signed] Mr. Burke.”