In America, where Christian morality was more
entrenched, Highway To Hell was a controversy
waiting to happen.
Before the band headed back there in May for
a tour with high-flying British rockers UFO, Angus
and Bon met with Sounds writer Phil Sutcliffe at
a London hotel. And it was during an interview,
conducted in the early afternoon, that Sutcliffe first
sensed that Bon’s drinking was becoming a serious
problem. Sutcliffe had met the band many times
before, and he, like so many others, was
immediately drawn to Bon. As he recalled: “Bon
was so eccentric and yet so down-to-earth. On
stage he was like a pirate, sort of leathery and
macho. And wherever he was, he made people feel
good.” This day it was different. According to
Sutcliffe, Bon “didn’t know where he was”, so drunk
he could barely string together a coherent sentence.
When Sutcliffe asked him about the new album
and the role of Mutt Lange, Bon replied, laughing:
“Well, bottom line, cobber, to answer your
question, he was instrumental in getting me to
project myself... in a different area to that in which
I’d been projecting myself before. Like.” How
Sutcliffe described this exchange in his Sounds
feature was telling: “Bon teetered along these
grammatical circumlocutions like a drunk
choosing to test himself on a white line.” And in
one observation there was a chilling prescience:
“Oddly enough,” Sutcliffe wrote, “there does seem
to be some truth in Angus, and perhaps the whole
band, having taken Bon in hand in almost fatherly
fashion although he’s much the oldest of them at
thirty-three. Bon remains the one they feel they
have to keep an eye on.”B
y the time Highway To Hell was released, on
July 27, another member of AC/DC’s inner
circle was gone, Michael Browning having
been dismissed as their manager and replaced by
Peter Mensch of the Leber-Krebs organisation,
whose clients included high rollers such as
Aerosmith and Ted Nugent.
Everything was moving fast. The band jumped
from the UFO tour straight into another withCheap Trick. In the UK, Highway To Hell was an
instant hit, blasting to No.8. In America, where so
much was riding on it, the breakthrough at radio
finally came when the album’s title track was
released as the first single.
Just as Atlantic had anticipated, Highway To Hell
incited outrage from America’s so-called ‘moral
majority’, not only for its title but also for its cover
image, a group shot in which a sneering Angus
sported devil horns and,
for added effect, a forked
tail. Angus laughingly
recalled: “In America you
had guys in bed sheets and
placards with prayers on
picketing the gigs. I said:
‘Who are they here for?’
And they said: ‘You!’ We
heard all that stuff about
Highway To Hell – that if
you play it backwards you
get these satanic messages.
Fucking hell, why play it
backwards? It says it right
up front: Highway To Hell!”
What Gene Simmons
heard in Highway To Hell
was a band reaching its
peak. “I loved the songs,”
he says. “I loved the vibe.”
While the album was
connecting with a mass
audience in America,
AC/DC’s profile in the UK
rose further with a show-stealing performance
opening for The Who at Wembley Stadium on
August 18. Among the 60,000-strong audience
was Danny Bowes – then a 19-year-old carpet fitter
who sang in a London-based rock band called
Nuthin’ Fancy, now the singer in Thunder. “I went
to see The Who,” Bowes says, “and I came away an
AC/DC fan. Bon Scott’s approach to the audience
was very direct – your ass is mine! And really, The
Who didn’t stand a chance. AC/DC kicked the shit
out of them.”Another victory soon followed. On September
5, while AC/DC were back on the road in America,
a significant milestone was reached. Highway To
Hell became the band’s first gold record in the US,
with half a million sales. “It was the first sniff that
things were really going to happen for us,” Cliff
Williams said.
On October 26, just five days after the last US
date, they began a UK tour at Newcastle Mayfair.
The support act was
a young British band that
Peter Mensch was soon
to be co-managing – Def
Leppard. For Leppard
singer Joe Elliott, who had
just turned 20, this tour
was an experience he
would never forget.
On the second night, at
Glasgow Apollo, the place
where If You Want Blood
You’ve Got It was recorded,
Elliott went up to the
balcony to get a good view
of AC/DC. What he got
instead was a near-death
experience. “When they
opened up with Live Wire,
the bass pumping, I swear
that fucking balcony was
moving twelve inches,”
he recalls. “It was like an
earthquake. The people
were going so nuts
I thought the balcony would collapse.”
On every other night of that tour, Elliott and
the other members of Def Leppard watched
AC/DC’s performances from the side of the stage.
“We learned so much from them,” he says.
“The presentation, the high energy and the
communication with the crowd. Bon was a master
at it. Shirt off after three songs, lots of sweat,
controlled aggression in the voice. He didn’t look
like he was trying. He was like a tap – you just turn
ERI him on. He was born to do it.”
C^ M
IST
LER
/DA
LLE
/ICO
NIC
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x^5
“Highway To Hell was
the album that broke
us in America.”
Angus Young
CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 35