exercise in overkill, recorded pretty much live in
the studio, complete with wailing feedback and
guitars wavering out of tune. It was much the same
with 1978’s Powerage, its visceral rock’n’roll and
gritty authenticity, in songs about heroin addiction
and the dole queue, famously admired by Keith
Richards. “The whole band means it,” he said, “and
you can hear it.”
AC/DC albums were selling well in other
territories. In the UK, Let There Be Rock and Powerage
had made the Top 30. In America, while Powerage
sold 200,000 copies, double the figures for Let There
Be Rock, it still only made No.133 on the Billboard
chart. This was nowhere near enough to satisfy a
record company that had Led Zeppelin on their
books. But as a band that thrived on the road, AC/
DC had put in some hard miles all across the
States, and from that, momentum was building.
The years had honed them into an electrifying
live act: Bon with the swagger of a gunslinger,
Angus the lightning rod for the band’s high-voltage
attack, and behind them the other three working
away like a well-oiled machine. Their first shows in
US arenas had come in late 1977, opening for Kiss
at the invitation of bassist Gene Simmons after he
saw AC/DC play in an LA club earlier that year.
“There were lots of bands who played good
rock’n’roll,” Simmons recalls now. “What struck
me was this little lead guitarist who kept moving
on stage like a wild man from Borneo, even
between the blackouts. I was awestruck.” After this
show, the giant Simmons took the little guitarist
for a late-night meal at Ben Frank’s diner on Sunset
Boulevard. “Angus ordered a hotdog and beans,”
Simmons says. “And I remember he picked up the
hotdog in his hand, minus the bun, and put it in his
mouth sideways, because he had missing teeth.”
After AC/DC’s four shows with Kiss, Simmons
concluded: “Here was a band to be reckoned with.”
And he saw something unique in Bon Scott.
“Maybe because he came from a hard background,
he was the antithesis of the pretty-boy lead singers
of the time. Shirtless. Hard singing. Hard drinking.
The voice was undeniable.”going. The other three had an edge to them: Bon
with his jailbird tattoos, drummer Phil Rudd a
surly hard nut, Malcolm the guy who ran the band
with a rod of iron. It was in reference to these three
that Angus once said: “If I saw them walking down
the street, I’d run, you know? Probably liable to kill
you.” He had his tongue in cheek, but the inference
was clear: this was not a band to be messed with.
The power of Atlantic Records was the
irresistible force to AC/DC’s immovable object, and
the friction between the two began long before
Highway To Hell. “When we first came to England in1976, the record company wanted to market us as
a punk band,” Malcolm said. “We told them to fuck
off!” In America it was worse. At a time when FM
radio was dominated by soft-rock stars such as
Fleetwood Mac and Peter Frampton, and the
breakout hard rock act, Boston, had an
immaculately crafted sound, AC/DC’s album of
that year, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, was so rough
and sleazy that Atlantic considered it commercially
unviable and refused to release it in the US.
The band’s response was to double down with
GET the following album, 1977’s Let There Be Rock, an
TY
“When we first came to
England in 1976, the
record company
wanted to market us
as a punk band.”
Malcolm Young
Rhythm machine:^
Malcolm^ Young^ with^
AC/DC at Buffalo^
Memorial^ Auditorium,^
September^1978.CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 31