AC/DC: SATAN'S PIGEONS?

AC/DC: SATAN'S PIGEONS?

"I don't drink blood. I may wear block underwear now and again... -Angus Young"

Sylvie Simmons

They got their name off the back of an Australian vacuum cleaner—you know the type; big pouch—Angus saw the letters and thought it sounded electrified and powerful. Others reckoned it sounded re-volting. Well not all others. There’s a tale I recall of the head of a big British publishing company who thought it meant, well you know. Followed then-vocalist Bon Scott into the boys’ room, made a proposition and got peed on. No one made the same mistake again.

Despite their damp beginning, these five Australians (with a couple of changes along the way; one voluntary, one not) went on to become Big Stars, Supreme Rock ’n’ Roll Beings, amongst the most celebrated, most hard-working hard-rocking heavy metal band in the Whole Wide World (you guessed 1 like them). The great AC/DC!

How great? This is how great:

•In the past two years, Americans have spent over $75 million on AC/DC records.

•A couple of hundred dollars worth of the things were buried in Topeka, Kansas this year when a bunch of possessed teenagers were driven to bare their behinds and babble in strange (Australian) tongues.

•The Rolling Stone Record Guide wrote all their albums off as “worthlessshould have never been created.”

•The new wave of heavy metal bands have good things to say about them. •Even David Lee Roth has nothing bad to say about them.

•A California congressman wants the government to put warning stickers on AC/DC’s albums.

“AC/DC is an Australian hard rock band whose purpose on earth apparently is to offend anyone within sight or earshot. They succeed on both counts.” (Rolling Stone)

“Most anxious parents are unsettled by what they perceive as corrupting influences. Why so many satanic lyrics? Why the bisexual implications in the name? Why the bloody images on the album cover? And didn’t the lead singer drink himself to death? What kind of heroes are these?”

(Los Angeles Times)

“1 think there is a lot of feeling in our music.” (Angus Young)

☆ ☆ ☆

AC/DC was formed in ’73, but Angus and Malcolm Young go much further back than that. Ever since the Young family moved down under from Scotland when Angus was a wee seven years old, the two suffered from terminal boredom and an overdose of Australian folkie James Taylor pop. They both got guitars and started cranking out Yardbirds covers, they grew their hair, they discovered rock ’n’ roll. Admittedly their big brothers had discovered it first. George Young was in the Easybeats (the group that brought you the magnificent “Friday On My Mind” and not much else). Alex Young was in Grapefruit (famed only as the first band to sign to the Beatles’ Apple label). But Angus and Malcolm took it further. They moved out from home and into a big house in Melbourne filled with various subspecies of musicians who would come and go and eventually stuck around to become AC/DC: then Angus and Malcolm, drummer Phil Rudd, bassist Mark Evans and a singer who was a Gary Glitter freak. He refused to go on one night without his sequins. They didn’t have time to get a replacement.

" The big idae with us isn't Satanic messages... it's to get one line to rhyme with the next.Brian Johnson

Bon Scott volunteered for the job. Better than the ones he had at the time: housepainter, driver and AC/DC roadie. Bon lived in the same house with the rest of them though he was 10 years older than Angus.

“He downed two bottles of bourbon with dope and speed and coke and says ‘Right I’m ready’ and he was too,” said Angus. “There was this immediate transformation. He was running around with his wife’s knickers on and yelling at the audience.”

And so it continued, playing the bars, getting hassled by the local constabulary for having long hair and generally behaving like young degenerates, and living the life that most of these denim-clad kids in their audiences dream of, sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll, the stuff that heavy metal songs are made of. Hey, I remember Bon telling the tale of how the romantic “She’s Got The Jack” came to be. Minor league groupies coming over to the Melbourne house, taking mandies and getting “passed around.” At least they got a group rate from the doctor.

Getting tired of the good life at the Chequers club in Australia, in ’76 they headed for the Red Lion in London, broke the bar sales record and landed a residency at the famous Marquee. Their shows were notorious—people spilling out onto the pavement with their ears bleeding and stupefied smiles on their faces. One or two of them actually thought to buy the album afterwards. AC/DC were stars.

The next year they tried the States. Not quite the instant success. Still they kept on slogging, partly because someone had pulled down their old house in Melbourne so they couldn’t go home, partly because 100% of their audience in England—unlike the States—was of the male variety, and partly, according to Bon, because booze was cheaper over here. Finally “Highway To Hell” screamed into the top twenty. STARDOM. It’s nice that Bon got a taste of it before he died. Probably the thing that killed him, though. 1 remember when they were playing the clubs in England and the dives in the States and Bon was still swaggering around with a well-filled groupie in one hand and a wellfilled bourbon bottle in the other, cavorting around cheap hotels like he was Keith Richards incarnate, grinning like a guru. A Whole Lotta Rose.

Early 1980 they found him in a car in London, bottle on the seat, dead.

Now, the rest of the band, that’s another matter. The most you’ll catch them with is a pint of beer now and again, and in Angus’s case the strongest thing he drinks is a cup of tea. Backstage nowadays it’s like the vicar’s tea-party. Even the groupies are left for the crew. (“They’re the ones with the passes, not us!”)

“I’m not like that off-stage,” says Angus. “I couldn’t afford to be. I just get up there and it’s this psychic thing. You pull your cap down and craannnng! You’re off! It’s when you stop that it gets hard. You have to keep moving or you get nervous.”

In the schoolboy outfit the drummer once suggested he wore as a joke and no one bothered to do away with, Angus rockets across the stage, head down, falling to his knees, shaking sweat and snot over the first ten rows, mounting the speakers, dropping on his back, kicking the air like a brat and then dropping hopping onto a bouncer’s shoulders for the customary trek through the crowd. He used to do the same thing on Bon’s shoulders. Never got round to it with his replacement because the crowds had become too big and too wild. *

The follow-up to Highway To Hell, a • salute to Bon called Back In Black released ^ over much debate among the band over i whether they wanted to come back at all, ° was an amazing success, spending over 1 seven months in the top ten and selling by : the millions. So enormous that the record company shoved out a five-year-old album of theirs and it hit the top ten as well.

Back In Black was the first album featuring new singer Brian Johnson, the son of a sergeant-major, whose only claim to fame had been as belter in a Northern England '70s band called Geordie. Like Bon he was in his mid-30’s, older than the rest. Like Bon he liked the odd drink and had similarly abused-sounding vocal chords.

“I was a bit scared,” says Brian, “because I didn’t know what to expect. I was more scared of the crew than I was of the lads, because the crew were reeling off names like Yes and Rick Wakeman, these fucking huge bands they’d worked for. But the lads made me feel dead comfortable. This band’s the fucking best! The biggest bonus about being in this band is the fact that 1 can get into their gigs without paying for a fucking ticket, and I’ve got the best seat in the fucking house. Honestly! I could just sit up there and watch that band because I think they’re fucking great. A great band and a great bunch of lads. I know what they were going through when Bon went, wondering about going on and all that—it’s only natural. But they never made me feel left out. Luckily these guys are so much like a fucking family.”

If they’re so much like a family, how come parents tear their hair out when their kids buy their records? How come people hand out pamphlets at their gigs warning that you’re on the long, hard road to Hell?

“Their main beef,” says Angus, “is songs like ‘Highway To Hell.’ But they’re just titles. It’s only a song. We’re not black magic Satanists or whatever you call it. I don’t drink blood. I may wear black underwear now and again but that’s about it.”

“Those fucking God-botherers,” says Brian, “mention the Devil more than we do. They’re just trying to scare people. At least ours is all in good fun. When I’m singing it and the lads are playing it, you know that it’s just rock ’n’ roll. It’s just a way to put rock ’n’ roll across. I mean, you’ve got to go right over the fucking top, no need to tread carefully. I mean the big idea with us isn’t Satanic messages. It’s to get one line to rhyme with the fucking next.”

But what about their degeneracy? Don’t they worry about corrupting the nation’s youth?

“It’s just like being naughty,” says Angus. “It’s like peeking through the keyhole looking at somebody change their knickers or something. Nothing bad. We’re just pranksters more than anything. You’re having fun and that’s all it is, regardless of what you’re singing about. If a kid thinks he’s being naughty by singing ‘Highway To Hell,’ great. Because all he is doing is singing or chanting or putting his arms up in the air. It’s not meant to harm anyone.”

Then what exactly is it that makes these millions of fans so loyal to this band?

“When the kids come to see us,” says Angus, “they want to rock. That’s it. To be part of this big mass thing with the band. You watch: I’ll hit a chord on the guitar, and right down there at the front there’ll be a hundred kids hitting it right along with you, going through the motions like they were up onstage with you. Which I guess is where they would be if they could.

“They’re really no different to us. Really. The only difference is that we made it up to the stage and they’re still trying to get there, or at least dreaming and fantasizing about it. We haven’t forgotten what it’s like. We’re definitely on the kids’ side.”

“The thing is,” says Brian, “this fucking band is as honest as the day it fucking started. And that’s coming from me and I’ve only been in the fucking band a year.”

“I honestly don’t think,” says Angus, “I could walk on that stage and do what I do or any of the lads do if we couldn’t do it honest. I couldn’t rip anyone off in any shape or form. If it all went bad, we’d be the ones to feel it first, believe me, and then you might as well give the fuck up.”

“AC/DC are good in our field. We just out-and-out don’t give a fuck. We play what we play and that’s it. And the good thing is, no-one else can do it as good as this band. This band’s the fucking best.” (Brian Johnson).