AC/DC, re-appraised
The Aussie rockers have never been a band I liked, but was I wrong to dismiss them in the way that I have? Let's find out.
If you were to have asked me up until about a year ago, I would have told you I did not like AC/DC, and I would have called them wildly over-rated.
Yet, I find myself reflecting on my opinion of AC/DC of late. Have I been unfair on the band? Have I rushed to judgement based on a few arbitrary measures I came up with on my own? Have I committed some sort of recency bias?
In the first instalment of a new ongoing series I’m loosely titling Re-Appraised, I take a look back at the Aussie rockers and wonder: am I wrong about AC/DC?
Who Made Who?
I’m going to spend a bit of time on their early years here because this was mostly new information for me, being younger and discovering them later.
AC/DC formed in Sydney way back in 1973: brothers Angus and Malcolm Young formed the group, taking the name from the power adapter of their sisters’ sewing machine, and recruiting vocalist Dave Evans, bassist Larry Van Kriedt and drummer Colin Burgess to play their first gig on New Years Eve 1973, and record a demo in early 1974. They were more glam rock in those days.
By mid-1974, the group had undergone line-up changes aplenty - they went through ten different drummers and bassists in those early days - and were invited to tour Australia opening for Lou Reed in August. Iconic original vocalist Bon Scott replaced Evans in October and was on board to record their debut album High Voltage in November. It hit the Australian Top 20 in February 1975.
By the mid-1970s, the group had settled on a line-up, with Phil Rudd joining on drums in 1975, and Cliff Williams joining on bass in 1977. The mid-late 1970s produced some of their most loved songs: “T.N.T” and “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap in 1976, “Let There Be Rock” in 1977, and “Highway To Hell” in 1979, the latter’s album considered their international commercial breakthrough, peaking at #8 in the UK and #17 in the United States.
And then Bon Scott died in February 1980. Acute alcohol poisoning, officially.
By then, the group were starting to workshop tracks for their next album, and were faced with an existential crisis - but it was Bon Scott’s own parents who convinced them that he would want them to continue. After auditioning a number of singers, former Geordie singer Brian Johnson stood out, and was named Scott’s replacement in April. The group immediately went into the studio to finish their next album: Back In Black.
As of writing, Back In Black is the second-highest selling album of all time, peaking at #1 in the UK, Canada, France and Australia, and #4 in the US, where it spent 612 weeks in the Top 200 Albums chart. That’s almost 12 years.
The band line-up has been fairly steady since then (Phil Rudd dropped out for a while but came back in the 1990s) so I’ll kind of hand-wave a lot of the time since: the group went through a short period of decline in the 1980s, partly due to the rise of heavy metal and new wave, but hit the big time again in 1990 with The Razor’s Edge and its single “Thunderstruck”, which peaked at #1 in the Canada, #2 in the US and NZ, #3 in Australia and #4 in the UK.
The Razor’s Edge was the first AC/DC album I heard and I wasn’t really a fan, initially because I was young and listening to pop music, and later because I had embraced ‘real’ metal and grunge. It felt a bit naff, honestly. As did every subsequent album and single - simple 4-4 beats, self-indulgent guitar lead lengths, the same sound on every track. I always felt they were just releasing whatever shit they could throw together as an excuse to go on tour.
That’s The Way I Wanna Rock & Roll
By the late 1990s/early 2000s, I was starting to play in covers bands for money, playing bass guitar and doing gigs in bars and clubs and private events. And I can’t adequately tell you how positively crowds would react when we would bust out an AC/DC song or two.
And not the new stuff. Nobody wanted us to play 2008’s “Rock N Roll Train” or 2000’s “Stiff Upper Lip”. Instead, the songs that went best were the oldies; in one band, we played no fewer than 8 different AC/DC songs over our time, and the newest was from 1988’s Blow Up Your Video. Even more surprising than that, some of the songs that went best were songs that were album cuts: songs like “Ride On” and “There’s Gonna Be Some Rocking” that weren’t singles.
Exploring the early days of AC/DC through my covers band gave me a new appreciation of the early days group - and trying to sing the songs gave me a huge amount of respect for both Scott and Johnson. But it didn’t change my opinion of the group in any meaningful way.
That said:
I have found myself a bit more tolerant of the group’s music as I get older, and as I’ve started doing this 'album-a-day’ malarky. Heck, I would say I even like some of their songs quite a lot. “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” slaps.
It’s A Long Way To The Top
Fast forward a solid two decades to this past weekend, and why I feel compelled to write about this now (beyond simply feeding the SubStack algo).
Last Friday, myself and the other five members of my Dungeons & Dragons group descended on a bach in Whitianga for an away weekend - this is the second time we’ve done this, arriving Friday and departing Sunday, and fitting in the equivalent of five regular sessions of our D&D campaign.
As you can imagine, there is a lot of joking around and playful teasing around the table. We’ve been playing together for a couple of years now and we’re all friends. And it is a ton of fun. Maybe I’ll write about it one day.
Anyway, the group knows that I’m a music fan so often try to bait me with ridiculous statements, one of which on Saturday was that Queen’s Brian May is a bad guitarist - a statement which is objectively not true, and which the person saying it doesn’t believe. But they got me; I went on a small tirade (which drew laughs around the table) and went to May’s Wikipedia page and found, to my surprise, that he ranked #33 on Rolling Stone’s 2023 list of the Greatest Guitarists.
The list is baffling. Somehow The Police’s Andy Summers is at #250, Brittany Howard is at #249, Gary Clark Jr is at #209, and the Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde is at #172. Steve Vai doesn’t crack the Top 100. Nor does Pantera’s Dimebag Darrell or Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham or Guns N’ Roses’ Slash.
I could write about this list for days. (Joe Satriani at #94? Joan Jett at #76? Get the fuck out of here please.) But the point is that AC/DC’s Angus and Malcolm Young get a single combined entry at #38, in between Chet Atkins at #39 and The Who’s Pete Townshend at #37.
I was legitimately surprised. #38 seems to low for the Youngs, right? I would have thought Angus Young - self-indulgent as he is when it comes to the length of his leads - should be in the Top 10. Top 20 at worst.
For the record, Jimi Hendrix was #1. I can live with that.
Let There Be Rock
With this in the back of my mind, I suddenly remembered on the drive home that I had created a playlist of the Top 25 AC/DC Songs specifically for the drive to Whitianga this weekend; a couple of the group that I carpooled with were talking about how AC/DC is perfect road trip music, so I offered to make a list.
I’ve embedded the list here:
As we drove back from Whitianga on Sunday, as the playlist went on, I realised that I was tapping along with the songs, singing at times, and generally enjoying myself as I listened to these songs. Sure, they were the best (don’t fact check). But it was a really fun drive home with friends.
And I was struck again by the question that spurred this piece: am I wrong about AC/DC? Was I wrong to called them under-rated? And as I researched this piece and thought about what I wanted to say, I’d say I was - partly due to arriving to their music late in their career, partly due to a lack of thought and knowledge, and partly due to my own musical snobbery.
I think the truth is that AC/DC are one of the most successful and popular bands to come out of the 1970s, fronted by two of the greatest rock singers and one of the greatest rock guitarists of all time. And if their music is samey, its only because of their own longevity. I’ll be kinder to AC/DC in future.
(I probably won’t listen to them more though.)
What are your thoughts on AC/DC - are they one of the greats? And what is your favourite AC/DC song? Post in the comments below!
Thanks for reading e te whanau!
I’ll be back Friday with My Week In Music.
Chris xo