Australian bassist Paul Matters, an early member of AC/DC, has died

An early AC/DC bassist, Paul Matters, has died.

Emerging in Newcastle in 1968 in hard rock bands like Armageddon, he was an AC/DC member for a short period after they recorded their first album High Voltage in 1975.

This was during a turbulent period for the band as they settled on a permanent lineup after forming in November 1973.

Players came and left as Malcolm and Angus Young looked for the right combination of rock attack and strong work ethic to take the band to world domination.

In Matters’ case, he sometimes questioned the Young brothers’ decisions, and admitted to Jesse Fink in the book Bon: The Last Highway, he was “a bit lazy” and “a bit cranky” not helped by the fact the band was always suffering hunger pangs on the road.

“I didn’t have any food in my stomach. They [management] didn’t give us any money to buy food or anything,” he was quoted as saying.

Matters later withdrew from music.

A Facebook post by long time friend Rod Wescombe relayed, “From all reports, he lived a reclusive life in his later years and his early rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle led to ailing health.”

AC/DC’s first bassist was US-born Larry Van Kriedt, son of a distinguished jazz player and composer, who hung out with the Youngs after his family moved to Sydney when he was 15.

Van Kriedt‘s heart was always in jazz, and he was replaced during the making of High Voltage.

Malcolm and older brother George (an AC/DC co-producer) played bass on the album, and Matters was brought in for live shows.

Matters would recall of the day he was sacked: “Bon got out of the back of the truck and told me I wasn’t going back to Melbourne with them.

‘We were up in Sydney doing a concert for school kids. So I didn’t play that day. I just turned around and didn’t say a word to him. I turned around and walked out.”

He was hastily replaced on a more permanent basis by Mark Evans. Urban legend has it that Bon was being thrown out of a pub and landed on Evans, and they chummed up.

The real story was that Evans, then a pay clerk in the postal department, knew an AC/DC roadie who suggested him for an audition.