JESSE Fink, the author of Bon Scott biography Last Highway, has described a new documentary on the singer as a “disgraceful whitewash”.
“Shame on the ABC,” Fink Tweeted after watching the Australian Story episode Bon Scott’s High Voltage Life.
The show, which includes a rare interview with Scott’s brother Derek, does not examine evidence that heroin played a part in his death in London on February 18, 1980.
Several key figures such as girlfriend Silver Smith and UFO bassist Pete Way, who was with Scott the night he died, aren’t even mentioned – and nor is the word “heroin”.
“A lot of the stories that have been written in the books are bullshit,” brother Derek Scott told the ABC.
“A lot of what was written early upset my mother greatly.”
Fink continues: “No mention of Silver Smith. No mention of his drug use or overdoses. No mention of Zena Kakoulli. No mention of Way or Chapman. No mention of the Back in Black lyrics or royalties.”
Paul Chapman was a guitarist in UFO. Kakoulli was the manager of the band playing at the Music Machine in Camden the night Scott died. She believed he had taken heroin.
Fink’s book addressed suggestions that Scott actually wrote many of the lyrics for the band’s first album without him, Back In Black.
The author claimed the television show was an attempt by the band and Scott’s family to take control of the narrative around his life.
“It appears various parties are circling their wagons around the Bon brand and wanting to reclaim the narrative around Bon’s death,” he wrote in another Tweet.
“In recent years it has been told in an honest way and many people aren’t happy about it.”
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