PERFORMERS

By BradTofinski

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OME SAY THAT ROCK & ROLL IS DIRTY, THAT IT’S THE The band’s success must also be attributed to at devil’s music. The members of AC/DC might least two other factors: its eighteen devilishly craft­ add, “only if it’s done right.” For close to thir­ ed, crunchy, hook-filled albums - including the ty years, these Australian hard-rock hooli­ forty-one-million-selling Back in Black - w h ich gansS have been spreading their gospel of cigarette have sold an astonishing 140 million-plus units smoke, drunken debauchery and power chords with worldwide, and its live shows, among the most such skill and exuberance that one enraptured critic electrifying in rock. was moved to proclaim them “the Coleridges of cock With leather-lunged Brian Johnson on vocals, rock, the Tennysons of testosterone, brothers Angus and Malcolm the Shakespeares of salacious, Young on lead and rhythm guitar, schoolboy smut.” While AC/DC respectively, and the hard-hitting might be surprised to find them­ rhythm section Q fjfjff Williams selves in such rarefied company, the on bass and Phillip Rudd on drums, composers of “Big Balls,” “Hard as a AC/DC are tighter than a pair of Rock” and “Let Me Put My Love Into teenage girl’s knickers, At each You” clearly understand as well' as show, the band achieves the seem­ anyone the primal truths that lie at ingly impossible: sounding heav­ the heart of great poetry. ier than a Union Pacific Big Boy “People c;jin go out and hear steam locomotive while maintain­ R.E.M. if they w ant ‘deep’ lyrics,” ing the sense of space and swing says Malcolm Young, one of essential to all good rock & roll. AC/DC’s guitarists. “But at the end of the night, they But think of AC/DC in concert and the first thing want to go home and get fucked. And that’s where that comes to mind is the Suit - the navy blue school­ AC/DC come into it. People want more fucking— f boy ensemble Angus has worn at every one of the think that’s what’s kept us around so long.” band’s shows for the past three decades. Although Malcolm’s explanation for AC/d J § | “My sister came up with that idea back in 1973, longevity rings true; there’s more to it than sex. when I was fifteen,” says Angus. “As a kid, I’d come

AC/DC shortly after vocalist Bon Scott’s death: Cliff Williams, Malcolm Young, Brian Johnson, Angus Young, Phillip Rudd (from left) Original vocalist/wildman Bon Scott howls at the moon, while Angus Young checks out his package and a bemused Cliff Williams watches the proceedings. right home from school and pick up my guitar without chang­ “W hen people ask me to describe AC/DC, I often say, ‘It’s five ing out of my school uniform. At dinnertime I’d still be in the musicians and a gimmick,’ ” Angus says of the Suit. “You don’t suit, playing away. She thought it was cute - it would give peo­ think much about these things when you first start out. But ple something to look at.” then, after a while, you’re playing in front of people and they That it did. But little did Angus realize way back then, the want to see that. It’s like Yosemite Sam says in the Bugs Bunny “cute” suit would become the band’s univer­ cartoon: ‘I paid to see the high-diving act sally recognized trademark and his personal and I’m gonna see the high-diving act!’ ” mojo. More than a stage costume, it has come Although Angus wears his suit to please to embody the sniggering, rebellious, sex- I They spread 1 his audience, he shrewdly sees its value in obsessed essence of AC/DC. i the gospel of I terms of a personal safety net. Clad in his blazer, white shirt, tie and short cigarette “The great thing about the school suit is, pants, the forty-four-year-old guitarist it you can take it. off and leave it all behind nightly transformed into a stomping, leering smoke and when you leave the stage,” admits the gui­ feral child, who whips his audience into a ¡1 debauchery | tarist. “If you mess up, you can think, ‘Oh, it blessed state of frenzy with his head banging wasn’t me, it was the guy in the Suit.’ ” Til 1111111111111111111111111111111111F and spastic jitterbugging. His performance AC/DC were formed in rcjj|r§ in «Sydney by reaches a climax when he trashes his uniform, pulls down his Malcolm Young after his band the Velvet Underground - no rela­ pants and, to thunderous applause, moons his audience. The fans tion to the seminal New York group - collapsed. The band approve not because he has bared his bottom but because he has enjoyed some immediate local success, partly due to the sting­ succeeded in becoming what every adult and teen longs to fees ing, vibrato-drenched lead guitar and emerging schoolboy per­ eternally young and free, forever riding on the highway to hell. sona of his brother Angus. While still in Sydney, the original lineup (which featured singer Dave Evans) cut a single called “Can I fit Next to You,” which was produced by two veterans of the Sixties hitmaking group the Easybeats, Harry Vanda and George Young, Mal­ colm and Angus’s elder brother, But the band didn’t really catch fire until it moved its operation to Melbourne later that year .after replacing Evans with the streetwise and volatile vocalist Bon Scott. Bon’s high, gritty howl, suggestive double entendres and gen­ erally rotten reputation added a previously missing air of palpa­ ble danger to the young rock & roll band. With several minor criminal convictions under his belt and a rejection from the Aus­ tralian army for being “socially maladjusted,” Bon was unques­ tionably gangsta. “Accepting dares was Bon’s favorite party trick,” says Angus. “I remember a time when somebody said to him, ‘I’ll give you ten bucks if you leap out the window into that pool downstairs.’ Mind you, this was in an apartment building... and he did it.” With wildman Bon in the fold, AC/DC released two albums in Australia: High Voltage, in 1975, followed by T.N.T. The best of both albums was combined and repackaged in the United States in 1976 as High Voltage, a highly concentrated blast of stripped- down blues rock. Unleashed during the early days of Sex Pistols

mania, the group’s raw, uncluttered music was categorized by Unbelievably, Brian Johnson managed to replace the inimitable Bon Scott. many critics as “punk rock” or “heavy metal.” AC/DC strenuous­ ly rejected both tags, aligning themselves with the forces of pure, solo. It’s a formula, yeah, but on adrenalized party classics like good old-fashioned rock & roll. “Girls Got Rhythm” and “Problem Child,” it never felt like one. ‘W e weren’t a punk band, but they’d put us on the same bill as After painstakingly building their reputation for the better a punk band,” says Angus. “And the audiences sure got a shock part of the Seventies, AC/DC were poised on the brink of rock when they started spitting at us and we spat back. The heavy- stardom. Then disaster struck. On February 19, T980, the seem­ metal thing? I immediately think of men in armor. We started as ingly indestructible Bon áéütt.died after a night of hard party­ a rock & roll band. That’s what we play - what we do best.” ing and serious alcohol consumption. The coroner recorded a To prove its point, the band recorded four albums that sound­ verdict of “death by misadventure” - that Bon had “drunk him­ ed like Chuck Berry on anabolic steroids. Let There Be R ock(i 9 7 f t self to death.” Powerage( 1978), I f You Want Blood You’ve Got It (197 8) and its first The loss of a frontman, let alone one as uniquely talented as million-filer, Highway to Hell (1979), perfected the AC/DC Bon, would have meant the end of most bands. But Highway to recipe: Start w ith an instantly memorable guitar riff, add a hard­ H ell had been AC/DC’s most successful album yet, and thanVg hitting rhythmic groove, throw in a couple of ribald jokes and a to John “Mutt” Lange’s radio-friendly production, it broke the raucous chorus, and then top it ail off with an orgasmic guitar group in the all-important American market. Additionally, the

At left: Angus Young setting a bad example for schoolboys everywhere. Above: For Those Still Rockin’, We Salute You: AC/DC going strong thirty years on.

music for the band’s crucial followup, the album that was to For all their success, AC/DC have never taken themselves seri­ become Back in Black, was nearly written when Bon met his ously. Brian Johnson likens the band to the Three Stooges, end. Undaunted, AC/DC soldiered on. Recalls Angus, “Mal­ “except there are five of us.” Stooges they may be, but these colm called me and said, ‘Me and you will keep working on the Aussies have delighted and entertained at least three generations vfj|ngs that we had been writing. It’ll take of music fans, who have made them the fifth- our minds off all this.’ ” highest-ranking group in terms of album Three months later, AC/DC announced sales. Not too shabby for a band of ruffians they had hired Brian Johnson, the former lead I AC/DC have I from Down Under that, remarkably enough, singer of the British hard-rock hand Geordie. B entertained 1 has never had a Top Twenty single in the Brian, it turned out, was the perfect replace­ three kfnited States or Great Britain. ment for Bon. With the brim of his hounds- For his part, Angus Young sees AC/DC as tooth Kangol cap yanked firmly over his eyes, B generations 1 part of the great rock continuum. “This music and his boxer’s nose, the new singer appeared of fans has been around since the days when Chuck every inch the menacing ne’er-do-well that Berry put it all together,” he says. “He com­ Bon had celebrated in songs like “Dirty Deeds i i i i i i i i i B i i h bined the blues and country and rockabilly Done Dirt Cheap.” But while he looked like a small-time Cock­ and put his own poetry on top, and that became rock & roll. Our ney thug, Brian’s affable personality and down-to-earth style per­ whole career has been playing rock & roll, and some of the peo­ fectly prepared him for the hard work and endless tours the band ple tuning in to us will be musicians who will take it into the would endure in the years ahead. next realm. It w ill just keep going... and so will we.” “Brian got the gig because when he came to audition he didn’t have any airs about him,” says Angus. “He sat around and played pool with a couple of friends - we didn’t even know he was there to sing. Finally, Malcolm said, ‘What are you doing here?’ And he said, T came down to audition for a gig.’ He came, sang a couple of our songs and had a damn good crack at them.” With Brian’s pile-driving, gravel-throated shriek in the fore­ front, Back in Black, nojw a tribute to Bon, was successfully com­ pleted. The album that would become a true rock classic yielded at least a half-dozen songs that quickly entered the hard-rock, canon, including “You Shook Me All Night Long,” “Have a Drink On Me,” “Hells Bells” and the thunderous title track. Thie album has sold forty-one million copies worldwide. For the next two decades, AC/DC would embark on numerous international arena tours and record explosive multiplatinum albums like For Those A bou t to Rock W e Salute You (1981)/ The Razors Edge (1990) and Ballbreaker (1995), which was produced by rebel visionary Rick Rubin. Still a major force, the band recently signed a multialbum deal with Epic, the first fruits of which will be refurbished reissues of classic albums like Back in Black, Highway to Hell and Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. A new stu­ dio album is expected later this year. Angus Young throttles his axe while riding piggyback through the crowd.