Dave Evans was only a member of AC/DC for a short amount of time, but the original singer was there at the beginning. During a recent interview, Evans recalled how the band got its name.

Evans, along with guitarists Malcolm and Angus Young, drummer Colin Burgess and bassist Larry Van Kriedt, were making music together in an unnamed band. A man named Alan Kissackstold, who was involved in forming the band, told the guys that he got them a New Year's Eve gig at Australia’s Chequers nightclub.

“We had to get a name because it was only in a few weeks. So we started tossing names around between us, but no one could agree,” Evans remembered. “I had some really great names, but they didn’t like them.”

“What we said was that, [in time for] the next rehearsal, we’d all come with three names each, put them in a hat and we’d pick one out. And whatever it was, that was what we were gonna call ourselves,” he added, but it never came to that.

“When we all arrived together, Malcolm Young said to us, ‘Look, my sister-in-law’ [wife of his older brother, George] has suggested a name… AC/DC’. And I thought it’s an easy name to remember and it was on the side of a lot of electrical appliances,” Evans explained. “AC/DC means alternate current and direct current [and] a lot of appliances were AC/DC. I thought: ‘Free advertising… free advertising on the side of all these appliances, and it’s easy to say, and it means power.’ It all went through my head very quickly. And I said yes.”

“Malcolm looked at us and said, ‘Well, shall we call ourselves AC/DC?’ And we all put our hands up," he concluded. "It was unanimous. We all shook hands and we were AC/DC… those three names [I came up with], I went home and threw them away.”

Evans sang on AC/DC's first official single "Can I Sit Next To You, Girl" and its B-side "Rocking in the Parlour" before being replaced by the late Bon Scott in 1974. Scott led the band until his tragic passing in 1980, and Brian Johnson has been the frontman ever since.

In other AC/DC news, the house where the Young brothers grew up—and the band formed—was accidentally demolished by developers who claimed they were unaware of its cultural significance.

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