Within the band there were reservations about
Lange. Malcolm later said that if they’d known he’d
worked with The Boomtown Rats, “we’d never
have let him through the door”. But as soon as
they got down to business, it was clear to everyone,
Malcolm especially, that this guy knew what he
was doing.
Lange was painstaking in his attention to detail.
In contrast to George and Harry’s relaxed
approach, Lange placed an intense focus on tuning
and rhythm. According to Tony Platt, who worked
on the album as engineer: “One of Mutt’s things
that he brought to AC/DC was how to really work
a groove.” And with the vocals, Lange raised the
bar even higher, coaxing the best out of Bon and
also, as a strong singer himself, adding backing
vocals to pump up the choruses.
All of this was evident in the first number
recorded for Highway To Hell, the album’s title track.
Essentially, this was AC/DC as they always were.
As Malcolm put it: “Just loud rock’n’roll, wham,
bam, thank you, ma’am!” But with Lange working
his magic it became something altogether bigger- a rock anthem to raise the dead. And once that
was in the can, the other nine tracks came fast,
with the whole album recorded in just three weeks.
A handful of tracks were all about working
a groove – Girls Got Rhythm, Shot Down In Flames and
Get It Hot, the latter featuring a sneering aside from
Bon at the expense of the big-nosed king of
schmaltz, Barry Manilow. The more aggressive
stuff was as hard and mean as anything on Let There
Be Rock: Walk All Over You brutally effective in its
slow-fast-slow dynamics, Beating Around The Bush
was a white-knuckle ride like Fleetwood Mac’s Oh
Wel l played at double speed, If You Want Blood (You’ve
Got It) all piss and vinegar, its lyrics and title, same
as the band’s live album, inspired by jokes made by
Bon and Angus at the Day On The Green festival.
As Angus recalled: “This guy from a film crew got
hold of me and Bon and asked what kind of show
it was gonna be. Bon said: ‘You remember when
the Christians went to the lions? Well, we’re the
Christians!’ Then the guy asked me and I said:
‘If they want blood, they’re gonna get it!’”
It was on Love Hungry Man and Touch Too Much
that Lange’s influence was most prominent, his
vocals pushed high in the mix, his pop smarts in
play. Malcolm and Angus never much cared for
Love Hungry Man, with its measured, almost laid-
back feel. They also had doubts about To u c h To o
Much, which was first demoed in 1977. But thattrack had everything that was great about AC/DC:
the hard-punching rock’n’roll, and a lyric that was
vintage Bon, as he eulogised a woman with a body
like Michelangelo’s Venus, but with arms. And
what Lange did with it was quite brilliant, gearing
the sound for radio with clever vocal hooks and
getting the band to ease back a little to make the
funky riff really swing.
There was, however, a sting in the tail. For all the
rowdiness on the album, it ended on a dark note
with Night Prowler, a tense, creepy blues song for
which Bon adopted the persona of a murderous
villain. Musically it was as powerful as the lyrics
were grisly, and at the climax, as if to break the
spell, Bon threw out something funny, quoting
mock alien language from 70s sci-fi sitcom Mork
& Mindy: “Shazbot! Nanu nanu!”
Years later, Night Prowler would come back to
haunt the band, when the song was linked to
Richard Ramirez, the American serial killer
known as The Night Stalker. Allegations
made by Ramirez following his arrest
in 1985 were cited in lurid newspaper
headlines, one of which read: ‘AC/DC
MUSIC MADE ME KILL 16’. Malcolm
Young later voiced his contempt for
Ramirez and for the media stories
implicating AC/DC. “Your answer to
that is: ‘Did you search his stomach for
a McDonald’s?’” he said. “If you’re
a wacko, you’re a wacko.”
But in the spring of ’79, when the
Highway To Hell album was completed, it
was the title track, not Night Prowler, that
had Atlantic Records rattled.
“As soon as we called the album
Highway To Hell, the American record
company immediately went into
a panic,” Angus said. “With religious
things, I thought everywhere was
like Australia. There they call them
bible-thumpers, and it’s a limited
species. Very limited. Christianity
was never a popular movement.
It’s that convict background!”GET
TY“I went to see The Who, and I came away an
AC/DC fan. AC/DC kicked the shit out of them.”
Danny Bowes on a Wembley show
Angus joins^ the^ audience^
at Wembley^ Stadium,^
August^18 ,^1979.