AC/DC, pt. 1: Anthony's Album Guide

My handy dandy, profoundly subjective, numerical rating scheme is decoded here.

High Voltage (1976) 8
Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (1976) 8
Let There Be Rock (1977) 8
Powerage (1978) 9
If You Want Blood… (1978) 8
Highway To Hell (1979) 8
Back In Black (1980) 7
For Those About To Rock We Salute You (1981) 5
Flick Of The Switch (1983) 8
’74 Jailbreak EP (1984) 6

Today’s Yanks may not be aware, but Donald Trump didn’t invent racist immigration policy. Australia's government actively sought to make the country whiter after World War II through European migration schemes, promising employment and hostel housing to people looking for a fresh start. A lot of Australian pop and rock stars come from families that took advantage, including the brothers Gibb, the parents of Kylie Minogue, Colin “we come from a land down under” Hay and about fifteen Youngs, a large clan of Scottish goblins looking to escape the cold up north. Teenage George Young met Dutchman Harry Vanda at a hostel, teaming up with Welshman Stevie Wright to form the Easybeats, scoring their first Australian Top 5 within two years of the Youngs’ arrival. To be fair, they reached Australia in 1963, a good time to be young, shaggy-haired men willing to wear suits and play rock & roll. 

The Easybeats moved to the UK before recording their biggest hit (1966’s “Friday On My Mind“), but Vanda & George Young were back in Sydney by 1973, working as a songwriting team. George had used his little brothers Malcolm & Angus for studio work as guitarists, but the pair also started their own band, AC/DC. With the entire Young family fond of music and George having achieved major success, Malcolm and Angus had all the encouragement and inspiration necessary to become damn good guitarists. Not prodigies, so much as well-practiced autodidacts using homeland tricks like open-string drone and pull-offs to gussy up and add weight to their beloved rock & roll.

AC/DC got their name after sister Margaret saw the term on her sewing machine AC adapter, knowing the brothers wanted their band to be “electric” (hence the lightning bolt in their logo). All swear they had no idea AC/DC was slang for bisexuality, and that the band’s initial glam leanings were completely coincidental. Margaret also came up with Angus’ school uniform, the brothers having split rhythm & lead duties to allow for the younger’s relative exhibitionism. Though he’d turned 18, his five-foot-two stature had clubgoers (and some in the press) believing he hadn’t a chance to change after class.

Vanda & Young, working as producers, helped AC/DC record demos and weather line-up changes, while a new manager convinced them to ditch glam for a rowdier, more macho vibe (Angus’ cap and short pants remaining). To fit the new image, George Young suggested replacing the Essex-esque singer Dave Evans with Bon Scott, another Scottish emigrant then working as their chauffeur. Almost a decade older than Angus, Scott already had plenty of experience in Australian rock bands, most notably the prog act Fraternity. Though Scott looked like an unhinged bouncer, the brothers looked like delinquent trolls, and the trio bonded over a love of Chuck Berry and Little Richard, the latter’s influence on Scott coming out in yelps, shrieks and lyrics that suggested a sexual enthusiasm beyond rock’s usual parameters. This guy definitely knew AC/DC’s multiple meanings.

The Australian version of High Voltage, released in 1975, opens with a frenzied version of the blues standard “Baby Please Don’t Go,” equitable to Van Halen’s “You Really Got Me” as a display of sacrilegious hard-rock authority. Then comes “She’s Got Balls,” basically the Kinks’ “Lola” if the narrator wasn’t fazed for a millisecond. Though Bon is just as confident courting the inexperienced on “Little Lover,” the rest of the album is more tentative. Bon pretends he can’t keep a girlfriend around on a song that peaks with “c’mon, baby, sit on this!” “Soul Stripper” fantasizes about being beautifully victimized, and “Love Song”…well, the name even suggests they’d only try it once. The closer writes it all off as “Show Business,” and they’d get better at it. 

The international version of High Voltage is basically their Australian sophomore release, TNT, with a Chuck Berry cover and a Little Richard homage replaced by “Little Lover” and “She’s Got Balls” (I’d love to know who demanded that inclusion). I’m not sure why a band’s second album would begin with two songs dreaming of stardom, but it’s a perfect opener for their global launch. “It’s A Long Way To The Top (If You Want To Rock’n’Roll)” is the only Bon Scott-era AC/DC song with an instrument other than guitar, bass or drums, and it’s Bon on bagpipes. I’m still frustrated the movie School Of Rock used the song but didn’t incorporate that element. Couldn’t there have been a proud Scot in the class who insisted on their inclusion?

“Rock’n’Roll Singer,” an immediate reaffirmation of intent, makes up in manifesto what it lacks in blown drone: “Well, you can stick your nine-to-five livin’/ and your collar and your tie/ you can stick your moral standards/ cuz it’s all a dirty lie/ you can stick your golden handshake/ and you can stick your silly rules/ and all the other shit that you teach to kids at school/ cuz I ain’t no fool.” Behind Bon, the Youngs, bassist Mark Evans and drummer Phil Rudd establish the mix of near-disco whomp, heavy crunch and guitar flash they’d eventually deliver to stadiums around the world.

After taking it down a notch for the tender, sex-as-poker-game VD metaphor “The Jack,” the High Voltage you could buy in every hemisphere spends three songs reaffirming their dangerous dynamism (“High Voltage,” “Live Wire,” “TNT”) and three confirming they make love, as well as war (“Can I Sit Next To You, Girl,” “She’s Got Balls,” “Little Lover”). With the caveat this was workshopped down under, High Voltage can still startle in its wanton bombast. No band has ever sounded more like the parade riot in Animal House, or Slim Pickens’ riding the a-bomb in Dr. Strangelove: a perfect nightmare of unnerving power and unbelievably good humor. But how do you follow “lock up your daughter, lock up your wife, lock up your back door, and run for your life” (and guess who just noticed the double-meaning of “back door” while typing this)? In the case of AC/DC, the answer was: as often as they’ll let you.

The Australian label was pumped for a third album, and the UK label accepted it as their second once the single “Jailbreak” was removed (that word already Thin Lizzy’s in 1976) and the low-rent cartoon cover was replaced by one from Hipgnosis (as was the style at the time). But Atlantic in America passed on Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, almost dropping the band entirely. We wouldn’t get it until after Back In Black, and it’s almost impossible to imagine what the issue was now. But in 1976, the employees of Ahmet Ertegun just didn’t see the need for more gargling about screwing fans (“Squealer”), trying to make money (“Ain’t No Fun Waitin’ Round To Be A Millionaire”) and the multiple meanings for “balls” (“Big Balls”). So Americans had to wait to hear “Ride On,” AC/DC’s first plausible expression of heartbreak, and the snarling title track. Some swear Scott is offering to kill your teacher, boyfriend or wife on “Deeds,” but - with that list of weapons at the end a misdirect - I think the lyrics make a lot more sense if he’s offering to stand in sexually for your teacher, boyfriend or wife. Though Bon’s ghost might well respond to the debate with “why not both?”

Though in America Deeds’ “Problem Child” replaced…ahem…”Crabsody In Blue,” all of AC/DC’s labels were down to release 1977’s Let There Be Rock. It’s my least favorite album of the Bon Scott era, with the songwriting streamlined almost to a fault on tracks like “Go Down” and “Bad Boy Boogie.” But it’s still got showstoppers like the more-is-more carnal rapture of “Whole Lotta Rosie,” the situationship stress of “Hell Ain’t A Bad Place To Be,” and the title track, where Scott sums up the birth of rock as well as anyone has: “the white man had the schmaltz/ the black man had the blues/ no one knew what they was gonna do/ but Tchaikovsky had the news.”

Long dismissed by dilettantes due to a lack of hits and a generic cover, Powerage is AC/DC’s finest album not just musically (new bassist Cliff Williams buttressing Malcolm’s backing vocals), but conceptually. And that concept is “what if Rosie left you?” (Bon not coincidentally got divorced in 1977). The opening “Rock’n’Roll Damnation” writes off a lover’s frustration with a wry “well…thanks a lot” before telling her to lighten up and accept cunnilingus as an apology (“I’ve been waiting all night for a bite of what you got!”). But Bon can’t deny the “Down Payment Blues,” and “Gimme A Bullet” finds his tongue abandoned.

The boys do their best to cheer him up on “Riff Raff” (featuring the most violent guitar abuse of Angus’ life) and “Sin City,” but eventually Bon’s left blaming it on drugs (“Gone Shootin’”), indulging in murder fantasies (“What’s Next To The Moon”) and losing himself in rebound sex (“Up To My Neck In You”). Finally sighing “sometimes you lose and sometimes you win,” our antihero accepts the new normal. Intentionally or not, as the band never forgets they’re AC/DC, Powerage captures the romantic chaos that precedes finding the zen adage you’ll someday share with a newly heartbroken person at a bar. “(It’s A Long Way To) It Is What It Is.”

Underscoring the straightforward sense of mission that makes Powerage easy to underrate, the band’s live LP - If You Want Blood, You’ve Got It - abjured the era’s double live cliche, cropping and removing songs from a ’78 set in Scotland to fit the album on one disc. I used to claim it could replace Let There Be Rock on the shelf, and technically it does put half of Rock’s tracks in a stronger, rougher context. But today I’m down to have both. With just enough variety in the arrangements, solos and lyrics (you didn’t expect Bon to remember all of “The Jack,” did you?), Blood is a righteous run through of the story so far without being totally redundant. Where else are you going to hear a horny Gollum bark “GIMME A CHANT”?

Now an established live act, everyone profiting off AC/DC knew the next step was radio. Vanda & Young, having produced everything to date, were pushed aside by Atlantic and replaced by Eddie Kramer of Kiss and Brownsville Station fame. The band was pissed, but not averse to getting bigger, signing with an American manager and - after blowing off Kramer - agreeing to make their next album with a pub-rock producer who just got the Boomtown Rats a #1 in England. This producer was named…ROBERT “MUTT” LANGE.

While Lange wasn’t the maestro of megawatt multi-platinum yet, he was Lange, convincing the band to spend months working on what would become Highway To Hell. The result is a remarkable feat of not sounding too different from their past feats, until you notice the polished swing of “Girls Got Rhythm,” the melodic (all things relative) confidence of “Love Hungry Man,” or the professional punch of “If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It)” (the second time AC/DC gave a new song the title of their last album, “High Voltage” appearing on the Australian T.N.T.). AC/DC was already a powerful machine before he showed up. Lange just oiled it well and made it shine all the way to the US Top 20, the title track just missing the Top 40.

Though Angus’ horns on the cover and the closing creep of “Night Prowler” had AC/DC filed under “evil” during the Satanic panic, the final words on Highway To Hell are “shazbuzz…nanu nanu,” Bon Scott paying tribute to Mork & Mindy instead of Mephistopheles. They also wound up the last words he’d sing on wax, dead of alcohol poisoning in February 1980. Scott hadn’t been on a downward spiral. He simply passed out alone and in the wrong position after partying. But “death by misadventure” is still death, and the band was clueless how to continue.

I’ve already gone long on Brian Johnston’s arrival in AC/DC and the miracle of ironic mourning that is the title track of 1980’s super-humongo Back In Black. Just as legendary a single is “You Shook Me All Night Long,” expressing sexual gratitude with a melodic humility that wouldn’t have occurred to Bon Scott (though he probably did write some of the album's lyrics). Where Scott is truly missed on Back In Black is the deep cuts, where Johnston’s simpler persona makes for more sodden bravado than on previous albums. 

Once AC/DC expressed their desire to continue laughing and having orgasms in the face of death, it was soon clear they had nothing more to say. This would explain why For Those About To Rock We Salute You shows Mutt Lange’s sensibility more than the Youngs, and to an often embarrassing extreme. The producer’s penchant for corny exuberance found its perfect home girding Shania Twain’s confident, feminist country, and even Def Leppard’s techno-glam. But it’s weird to roll out the pop-rock red carpet just to let us know Brian Johnston is erect. Side 2 of For Those About To Rock adds some cliche devil imagery (as was the style at the time), off-brand but less cringe than the vapid cocksmanship on side 1.

Though a strong seller initially, some blamed About To Rock’s quick US drop-off on Atlantic’s belated release of Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap a few months earlier. But the commercial failure of Flick Of The Switch in 1983 suggested the issue was weak singles, rather than too much material (the release of '74 Jailbreak, featuring the title track, "Baby Please Don't Go" and some other Aussie-only oldies, reaffirmed it). Ironically, though devoid of potential smashes, Flick might be their most enjoyable full-length following Bon’s death, self-produced and recommitted to a raw wallop. Johnston’s struggles as a lyricist are suggested by two titular puns involving the word “shake,” neither as worthwhile as the 1985 single “Shake Your Foundations.” But it takes effort to tell what he’s shrieking anyway. Play “Bedlam In Belgium” for someone who doesn’t know the title, and see if they can correctly guess what AC/DC is shouting. It rules, anyway.

More solid songs would follow in the decades since, as suggested by my AC/DC: 21st Century Masters playlist. But the only new trick unveiled since Mutt Lange’s salutary cannons is Angus looping hammer-ons at light speed, until he sounds like a sequencer. It was first heard on “Who Made Who,” the love theme from 1986’s Maximum Overdrive, but rendered immortal on 1990’s aptly titled “Thunderstruck.” Otherwise, their shows overwhelmingly stick to set pieces from 1981 and earlier. So I wouldn’t expect a pt. 2 to this guide anytime soon. But then I didn’t expect Flick Of The Switch would age so well either. 

Powerage is at 32 on My Top 400 Albums Of All Time. I'm telling you this because I've found people are more inclined to discuss and share reviews if there's a quantitative element at the top or bottom they can easily debate. Prove me right! I know it's a lot to assume AC/DC fans want to read and write (the back cover of the High Voltage LP to the contrary). But if doing the former inspires the latter, send your missives to anthonyisright at gmail dot com.