success in the UK and France was not matched in
the US, where it stalled at No.113. And it was in the
wake of this disappointment that tensions between
AC/DC and Atlantic Records came to a head.
In the first days of 1979, the company’s Vice
President, Michael Klenfner, travelled from New
York to Sydney to meet the band and hear the new
material they’d been working on at Albert Studios
with Harry Vanda and George Young. Klenfner’s
position was clearly stated. Klenfner wanted to
hear songs that could get on the radio in America,
and there was nothing of that in the demos that
George played to him.George and Harry knew how to make a hit.
They’d done so in the past with The Easybeats,
and in early ’79 they had a worldwide smash with
Australian singer John Paul Young’s disco-pop
number Love Is In The Air. But with AC/DC it was
different. They saw the band as Malcolm and Angus
saw it: raw rock’n’roll, plain and simple. As George
said: “It was always more important whether it had
the balls. So if we had to choose a take where it was
buzzing and all that, we’d go for that.”
Klenfner wasn’t buying that. To get AC/DC to
the next level, he believed that a new producer wasneeded. Eventually, after consultation with George,
the decision was agreed, albeit grudgingly, by
Malcolm and Angus.
No time was wasted. In February, the band set to
work at Criteria Studios in Miami, Florida, with
Eddie Kramer, a producer with a big reputation and
a proven track record. Born in South Africa,
Kramer had served as recording engineer on some
of the classic albums of the 60s and 70s, including
the first three by the Jimi Hendrix Experience and
Led Zeppelin’s Houses Of The Holy and Physical
Graffiti. More recently he’d produced three albums
for Kiss. But within a few days of working together,
it became apparent that Kramer and AC/DC
were not a good fit. After he suggested that the
band record a version of the Spencer Davis
Group 60s hit Gimme Some Lovin’, Malcolm
promptly called an end to the sessions.P
erhaps it was fate. At that time, AC/DC’s
manager, Michael Browning, was
sharing an apartment in New York City
with ‘Mutt’ Lange. A South African expat like
Kramer, Lange had recently scored his first UK
No.1 as a producer with the Boomtown Rats’ Rat
Tra p. Browning presented Lange to Atlantic as the
perfect candidate for the AC/DC job – a guy with
a feel for rock music and a shrewd pop sensibility.
Atlantic gave the green light, and in March Lange
and the band got together in London.
First, they rehearsed and fine-tuned the songs
in a low-rent practice space with a dirt floor, and
a paraffin heater to take some of the bite out of the
winter chill. For the recording of the album they
moved to Roundhouse Studios in Chalk Farm.In 1978, AC/DC toured with another leading
American band, Aerosmith. At the Los Angeles
Forum, a 15-year-old kid named James Hetfield
was in the audience. Three years before Hetfield
formed Metallica, he was witnessing his first rock
concert. “I was a big Aerosmith fan,” he said. “But
I had no idea that AC/DC was that cool. I went with
my older brother, and I remember him pointing at
Angus and saying: ‘That little guy running around
was annoying!’ But I wanted to be that guy!”
AC/DC’s live power was also noted by their
peers. When the band opened 1978’s Day On The
Green festival at the 80,000-capacity Oakland
Coliseum in California, headlined by Aerosmith
and also featuring Foreigner, Pat Travers and
rising stars Van Halen, the latter’s guitarist
Eddie Van Halen felt a jolt of fear as he watched
AC/DC tearing it up. As he put it: “I was
standing on the side of the stage thinking: ‘We
have to follow these motherfuckers?’” Thin
Lizzy guitarist Gary Moore had a similar
experience when AC/DC opened for Lizzy later
that year. “In Cleveland, they blew us off the
stage,” Moore confessed. “Fucking killed us.”
For AC/DC, following Powerage with a live album
was a no-brainer. For Atlantic it had the potential
to be a breakthrough hit, as Kiss had done in 1975
with Alive!
AC/DC’s live album, If You Want Blood You’ve Got
It, was recorded on April 30, 1978 at Glasgow
Apollo, in the city where Malcolm and Angus
Young were born and a two-hour ride from Bon’s
home town, Kirriemuir. The album was explosive,
from the first, frenzied notes of Riff Raff through to
GET the hell-for-leather rampage of Rocker. But its
TY
“One of Mutt’s things that he
brought to AC/DC was how
to really work a groove.”
HTH engineer Tony Platt
Angus Young flooring it
with his trademark guitar
solo at Oakland Coliseum,
September 1978.CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 33