MARY RENSHAW, GABBY D’ARCY, JOHN D’ARCY PerthNow

A NEW memoir by three of Bon Scott’s closest friends sheds new light on the rock legend.

Co-author Mary Renshaw tells of the Bon she knew:

I HAD always wanted to work in fashion, and when I was 16 I left school to work at Norma Tullo, one of the biggest fashion houses in Melbourne.

It was a sociable workplace with many girls my age and we’d often go to 10th Ave, a venue in Bourke St that held lunchtime rock shows.

During our lunch hour, we’d see bands such as The Easybeats, The Wild Cherries, The Purple Hearts and The Loved Ones.

A scene was developing in Melbourne, involving music and fashion, and I loved being a part of it. It was a fun, happy atmosphere.

When Norma Tullo moved to Richmond, I stayed in the city and got a job as a designer at Kenneth Pirrie, where we designed knitwear, evening wear, daywear and lingerie.

It was 1968; I’d just turned 18 and I was a fashion designer. Life was good. Then I went to see a band called The Valentines at 10th Ave.

A friend had seen them and she was a fan.

After the show, one of the singers came up to me and started chatting. He was admiring the beads I was wearing, or at least, that’s what he claimed.

As he stared at my beads, he asked if I could make him some.

“Sure,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“Bon,” he smiled. “Bon Scott.”

And that was it; we were friends from that day on.

As well as the hippie beads, I made Bon a velvet bolero. With jewels and gold braid, it was very Jimi Hendrix.

I became a regular at The Valentines’ gigs. They were singing mostly covers, but they had a great dynamic on stage and their shows were always fun.

I remember at one show Bon was struggling to sing because he had a dry throat.

“Can someone get me a Coca-Cola?” he requested, but no one did. T

hen, gasping for air, he added, “I really need a Coca-Cola!” so I rushed off to get him a drink. After the show, Bon revealed that he suffered from asthma, though it never seemed to affect his singing career.

I also started visiting the band at their house, an old double-storey place in Dalgety St, St Kilda. A lot of musicians lived in the area because it was cheap. St Kilda in the late ’60s was also quite edgy; there were a lot of boarding houses and working girls in the area.

Bon’s co-lead singer, Vince Lovegrove, had the front room, while Bon had the room upstairs, which was like an attic. He’d painted the room red, and in it he had a little bed and table.

I did a Beardsley-inspired drawing for him and he stuck it to the wall. It was the only thing he had that resembled decoration in his room.

Bon was really open and friendly and easy to talk to. I soon discovered that he never judged anyone. He was always up for meeting new people and having a chat.

During the AC/DC days, Bon did an interview with Melbourne journalist Lawrie Masterson, in which he confessed that he’d spent 11 months in jail when he was 17. Bon claimed it was for assaulting police.

“I was singing a couple of songs with a band at a dance in Fremantle and a couple of guys started giving me a hard time,” Bon told The Herald .

“I got off the stage and got stuck into them. The cops tried to break it up and I finished up on a charge of assaulting the police.”

Bon told me he’d done time in jail, but he refused to elaborate, saying only that he’d broken his mum’s heart.

It was only when I read Clinton Walker’s Bon biography 26 years later that I found out what had really happened.

At a dance, a 16-year-old Bon had sex with an underage girl. A couple of other guys at the dance then tried to force themselves on to the girl and Bon took on both of them.

When the police broke up the fight, Bon gave them a false name and address and took off in a mate’s car.

He ended up in the Fremantle Children’s Court, pleading guilty to charges of unlawful carnal knowledge, giving a false name and address to police and having stolen 12 gallons (54 litres) of petrol. He was sent to a boys’ home.

Bon was obviously ashamed of what he’d done, and throughout his life he was driven to succeed, partly to say sorry to his mum and dad.

There would always be plenty of girls at that Dalgety St house. The guys were starving — if they had some money, they’d wander down to Greasy Joe’s for a burger — but there would always be girls at The Valentines’ house, cooking and cleaning. And they always had great parties.

At one party, I remember Bon running downstairs and grabbing my arm. “There’s a girl in my room,” he whispered. “Can you get her out of there?”

Bon was concerned that the girl was a little out of it. The next morning, she was sheepish. “I’m so embarrassed, Mary,” she confided.

“When he got up out of the bed he had one of my false nails stuck on his bum!”