June 1980
With
Back in Black, AC/DC have just cemented their legacy as one of the greatest hard rock acts ever. The context for this masterpiece is sure to go down in rock ’n roll folklore: four months ago, iconic singer Bon Scott died of alcohol poisoning, which would be the end for most bands. However the Australian scrappers soldiered on, recruiting Geordie singer Brian Johnson. While Johnson lacks Scott’s range and lyrical wit, he is arguably the more unrelentingly intense of the two. His gritty howls fit perfectly on
Back in Black, well supported by the powerhouse riff performances from Angus and Malcolm Young, the brothers who form the heart of the band. The album is receiving glowing reviews internationally and it looks like AC/DC are going to be heavyweights for a long time!
June 1990
We’ve reached the end of the decade that promised so much for AC/DC. What they delivered was a series of albums that are a chore to listen to. At best.
When I listen to
Back in Black now, I still hear an against-the-odds masterpiece. However, the bad seeds of AC/DC’s subsequent work are there too: Johnson’s aggressive sexism on ‘Givin’ The Dog A Bone’ and ‘Let Me Put My Love Into You’ and the pretentious teenage delinquency of ‘Shake A Leg’ are, on a bad day, cringe worthy. Johnson’s writing has jettisoned Bon Scott’s authentic, wickedly clever sleaze with in-your-face misogyny and masculine posturing. The Youngs’ decision to disregard the importance of producer ‘Mutt’ Lange by self-producing
For Those About To Rock,
Fly On The Wall and
Flick Of The Switch was just foolhardy.
June 2000
If we learnt anything from AC/DC’s last decade, it’s that their biggest problems may be external.
On the revitalising
The Razors Edge, the band found a way to adjust to the fact that they couldn’t seriously play songs of adolescent lust anymore. ‘Moneytalks’ – Johnson’s rocks-off piece sung from the perspective of a sugardaddy - is a smart update from his previous efforts. But on 1995’s weak follow-up
Ballbreaker it was standard ‘80s fare.
What happened?
AC/DC’s rabid image happened. Was the band willing to risk the fury of its diehard fan base by shaking things up even a little? Seemingly not. Hot blooded hard rock – that’s the quota. End of story.
June 2010
AC/DC’s one album from the last decade
Black Ice did unprecedentedly well, going #1 in 29 countries.
So surely that would have been time to call it a day? With a castle-storming album and an obscenely successful world tour?
Sadly, no. The band walks on.
You have to wonder what the Youngs would do without the band. It’s been their life for forty years. Do they have anything else? They don’t strike you as the types of guys who could retire and play Thursday afternoon bingo. So they soldier on, despite the fact that their band has been living off seven years of greatness for the past thirty years.
November 2014
And so we reach AC/DC’s fifeenth studio album,
Rock or Bust. Its working title was
Man Down, in tribute to Malcolm Young, who Father Time finally caught up to before recording. Malcolm has dementia so badly that he can hardly remember his own family, let alone play guitar.
His retirement was anticipated to be the end of AC/DC. The brain of the outfit is gone. He is also Angus’ brother and comrade-in-arms. Something irreplaceable is lost.
But drummer Phil Rudd brazenly declared, “We’ll probably all have to be dead before it stops.”
To much dismay, he seems right. Malcolm’s nephew Steve replaced him and the show rolls on.
For the most part,
Rock or Bust sounds like a band playing Pin-The-Tail-On-The-Donkey with its past greatness.
They get close every now and then – ‘Hard Times’, ‘Baptism of Fire’ and ‘Emission Control’ are groovy slices of R ‘n B with simple yet slick rhythms between bassist Cliff Williams and Angus Young while ‘Miss Adventure’ strikes the right sound of laddish menace.
However the same can’t be said for much of the rest of the album – ‘Rock or Bust’, ‘Got Some Rock & Roll Thunder’ and ‘Rock the Blues Away’ are as self-imitative as their titles.
Whatsmore, none boast a great riff or exciting performances – Phil Rudd’s assertions that he is in career best form stand at direct odds to his constantly plodding four-to-the-floor time keeping. Had he gone for a more dramatic mood on the dull walk-through ‘Dogs of War’, he may have saved the song. Instead, his weary, metronomic performance renders a thin song even thinner.
Steven Young, despite his best efforts, can’t replace Malcolm’s gritty rhythm playing. For the most part, he carefully stays with Rudd and Williams. The sense of urgency that made
Let There Be Rock,
Powerage,
Back in Black and even
The Razors Edge such excellent albums is simply missing (with the notable exception of the otherwise forgettable ‘Rock the House’, on which Steven steals the show from his bandmates). Steven doesn’t bring anything exciting to the table, but he’s hardly alone there.
Which brings me to Brian Johnson – his husky keen has never been so monotonous. Without great backing performances, we actually pay attention to all of his tepid clichés – “We be a guitar band/We play across the land,” “Pick me up/Fill my cup,” “Pickin’ up my girl tonight/Everything is gonna be alright,” “Gonna kick up her heels, make me scream/Rock all night, baby, make you scream.” After resisting it for eight songs, he wallows into stripper worship on ‘Rock the House’ and ‘Sweet Candy’ and his importance to the album is as good as over.
About the nicest thing I could say about
Rock or Bust is that it sounds like a band with nothing left to prove. About the worst thing I could say is that it’s the first AC/DC album that my mother – a woman who at times finds Powderfinger “a bit loud” - sat through without any qualms.
