BON  IN  BLACK

This piece was written for Rolling Stone to celebrate the 25th anniversary of AC/DC’s Back in Black, and published in January 2006. I’ve always felt that anniversaries are the lamest of pegs on which to hang a story, but when an editor comes a’knocking with cash in hand it’s impossible to resist. Naturally the story had to become about the death of Bon Scott as an integral part of the resurrection of AC/DC. And I was keen to write it because after several global editions of my Bon biography Highway to Hell, there had surfaced some new information about his death.

​In a way this story was a partial dry-run for an updated new edition of the book that came out in 2007. The point of contention always was Alistair Kinnear, the man reputed to have spent Bon’s last night on earth with him, who went to ground virtually as soon as Bon’s death was announced. Even in the face of numerous outrageous conspiracy theories, I never doubted that Kinnear existed, and I put it that way from the very first edition of Highway to Hell in 1994. But in February 2005, on the 25th anniversary of Bon’s death, when the Guardian in London ran the testimonial that’s referred to in the piece following and it misconstrued me by claiming, “Walker believes Kinnear was a name adopted by one of Scott’s associates who did not want to be identified” – a very different thing to me saying, as I was directly quoted, “He just doesn’t seem to exist” – and that was enough to prompt Kinnear’s son Daniel Kinnear to come out and confirm that his father was in fact a very real person, it was breaking news I was delighted to feed into this piece. It also set some dominoes tumbling. When Geoff Barton then wrote a major feature for Classic Rock magazine and it again misconstrued my words to the same end – certainly didn’t refer back to the incontrovertible root source, my book – and it gave more credence to the conspiracy theory that Bon actually died of a heroin overdose, that was enough to flush out Kinnear himself, who finally released a statement that confirmed and fleshed out the tack I’d always taken. And which fed into the revamped 2007 edition of Highway to Hell, which I thought would finally put paid to all the old conspiracy theories. But no. In 2017, a book was published – Bon: The Last Highway, by Jesse Fink – that dedicated itself to the great grand conspiracy theory. And perhaps it’s no surprise it’s caught on in the Trumpian age of paranoia and hysteria in which we currently live. But The Last Highway is all speculation, conjecture and hearsay. I mean, if Jesse Fink believes, as he certainly seems to, or seems determined to, that I don’t believe Alistair Kinnear was a real person, which is clearly not the case – but a piece of fake news that’s now spread to become generally accepted, when all you have to do to know it’s false is read Highway to Hell, or the article below – how much more wrong could he have gotten it?