Ac dc shop australia: AC/DC – Official AU/NZ Store

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90,000 Not Just AC / DC: 5 Australian Rock Bands You Haven’t Heard Of

Australia traditionally holds one of the leading positions in the world in terms of the number of world famous musicians of various genres. Rock stands apart among them – developing on British ideas and traditions, it was popular several decades ago.Of course, AC / DC are known all over the world even now, but a lot of promising young performers have appeared in Australia. Why did we come up with the idea of ​​just such a collection? Why not.

1. The Amity Affliction

Group from Brisbane, founded in 2004. Performed mainly by metalcore. For the first time, the musicians gathered back in 2003, at the Gympie High School in Queensland, but they switched to full-time work the following year, having moved to Brisbane. The name (literal translation – “unhappy friendship”) is a tribute to the memory of the friend of the founder of the group, Aren Stringer, who died in a car accident. One of the reasons for the popularity of the group is the lyrics of songs, often dedicated to serious personal problems: depression, anxiety, suicide.

2. Parkway Drive

A group from the small town of Byron Bay in New South Wales. The name is taken from the place name, namely, the street on which the house is located, where the group held their first rehearsals.The original genre in their work was hardcore punk, but later the group moved on to more melodic metalcore and post-hardcore. An interesting fact – the current bassist of the group Jaya O’Connor, before joining the group, worked in the Parkway Drive merch store and did not think about a musical career.

3. Hands Like Houses

A group formed in 2008 in the capital of Australia – Canberra. Since then, the line-up of the group has remained practically unchanged, and the albums have consistently entered the Australian charts. The group also received recognition abroad: the albums Unimagine and Dissonants even reached high positions in the American Billboard Top 100.

4. Northlane

A metalcore band from Sydney. Formed in 2009, their first full-length album Hollow Existence was released in January 2010. The name of the group is a reference to one of the songs of another famous metalcore band, British Architects. Popularity came to Northlane after the album Node, which in 2015 hit the US and UK charts.

5. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard

The group was formed in 2010 and creates in the genre of progressive and psychedelic rock. The long and very sonorous name is the result of a difficult choice between two alternatives: “Lizard King” and “Gizzard Gizzard”. As a result, they decided to cross these two options with each other.

The group has a lot of chips – long psychedelic tracks, some of which last more than 10 minutes, a variety of instruments used (there are even sitar, zurna and mellotron) and amazing productivity – in 2017 alone, the group released 5 full-length albums.

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90,000 3. AC / DC “It’s A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘N’ Roll)” (1975). AC / DC: Young Brothers [liters]

AC / DC, who have been relentlessly forging their own signature rock throughout the years, have experienced surprisingly many influences since their inception in 1973. Among them are Free, ZZ Top, Buddy Guy, Billy Thorpe, The Colored Balls, Cactus, T. Rex, Ike Turner, The Rolling Stones and – you can clearly hear this strange echo in “Shake A Leg” from the album Back In Black – Eddie Van Halen (although Angus played tapping before Van Halen started recording; tapping is on the 1976 album Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap ).So, who are they, if not the product of the influence of many external forces, even if you do not often hear from the Young confessions about who influenced them – well, except perhaps understandable bows towards Chuck Berry and Little Richard.

You also rarely hear them talk about their Australian roots. The young people were raised and raised in the western districts of Sydney, but somehow they all the time play down the role of this city, preferring to extol the Scottish origin. All three brothers lived outside Australia for a long time – they have homes in England and Europe.The days in Burwood are in the distant past in every sense. AC / DC is no longer a pub band. They are now, as Derek Schulman put it, “the quintessential rock / punk band of the 20th and 21st centuries.”

But there was a time when the Yangs turned to their past.

In 1983, on French television, a presenter asked Malcolm if AC / DC could be considered to have opened the door or built a bridge to the international success of other Australian groups such as INXS and Men At Work.

“It’s not really us, but rather Bee Gees or whatever,” he said, and whinnied wildly.- Our group originated in Australia, and you can’t get rid of that. But we are proud of the fact that we are meeting in Australia. ”

And then Angus told an Australian TV presenter in 2008, “Everyone knows we started in Australia. have gathered here and probably would not have sprung up in any other country. The reason is the music of that time, the right climate, the right time, the right people. There is some roughness in Australia. Well, of course, we also have it in us ”.

Or was .When Wanda and Young were replaced by Matt Lange, he smoothed out all those burrs. What was light, light, indifferent and rebellious gradually became dark, lethal, commercial. The success that Angus and Malcolm desperately wished for came not only in the absence of their older brother at the mixing console, but primarily due to something elusive, intangible, which made their group unique.

Namely, the sound brought AC / DC to the top, the sound that developed before Highway To Hell and Back In Black , washed by Lange with soap.

AC / DC, no matter how hard they tried, they could not shake off their origins, because the music of that period does not lie: it sounds in Australian. And more than any other band – more than Daddy Cool and Billy Thorpe – they make Aussie feel like Aussie with songs from 1974-78.

In 1976, the British music newspaper Record Mirror listed Australia’s top export items: Canned peaches, cute koalas, kangaroo figurines, sheep, stuffed platypus (sic!) Platypuses, toy boomerangs, cold light beer, river landscapes by Rolf Harris and AC / DC “.

Australia – in the sound of the best works of AC / DC: lack of decoration, primitivism, contempt for authorities – qualities that are attractive in themselves. The sound that George Young, Harry Wanda and – to a lesser extent – Bon Scott pulled out of Angus and Malcolm with sheer obstinacy, narrow-mindedness, and a complete lack of interest in what critics would find in it.

“Bon was the single strongest influence on the band,” Malcolm once admitted. – When he joined us, everything worked out.He had such a real attitude in the spirit of “put everyone in.” It also lived in us, but it took Bon to come out. ”

Mike Fraser, current AC / DC engineer, says: “I know their roots are in Scotland, but they always sounded Australian to me. Or is it because Australia is where they defined it? This heavy beat. American and British rock – it is very processed, finished, more about the landscape than about sincerity. ”

Sincerity .Speaking of the Yangs, the word is inevitable. And in their history there is no song more sincere than “It’s A Long Way To The Top”.

Her theme is like grain for the mill of any rock group. But AC / DC winds up miles the most. Sometimes – three concerts a day, more than a hundred concerts a year is the minimum. The only break is to go home on Burley Street, take a shower, have a snack and – back, all over again.

“It was a way of life for them,” explains John Swan. – Not just work. They wrote about what it was like to be in a rock and roll band. If you think it’s easy – every night with a different one – then try playing in a rock ‘n’ roll band. Listen to this chatter. Like some kind of football fans, damn it. ”

“It’s A Long Way To The Top”, the first international release of AC / DC – still one of the best songs of the younger Young, with significant contributions from older brother and Bon Scott – breathes so much Melbourne, from where the group began its ascent to the heights, where a video was filmed and a street was named after them, which is turned on before the matches of the Australian Football League, the largest sports organization in Australia.

Touring shows, books and documentaries were named after her. It was recently listed on the Australian National Recording Repository for “recordings of historical, cultural and aesthetic importance and significance” that “tells or reflects life in Australia.”

And it’s also Fraser’s favorite AC / DC song.

“Her melody. The shape is cool. Especially when the bagpipes come in – every time I get goosebumps. ”

He and millions of others, including Jack Black, Motorhead, Nantucket, W. A.S.P., Dropkick Murphys, John Farnham, Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins and former Pantera vocalist Phil Anselmo (who recorded it in a spoken genre, just a poem, no music).

Why is that? Because not only a bouncy opening riff – but it’s on the level of “Jumpin ‘Jack Flas” or “You Really Got Me” – or bagpipes, or Scott’s piercing voice with a rapier, or a hurricane of bass-drums-guitar, growing in the last verse, but more that – the way the song rushes, like a car drives along the highway to unfamiliar places.This is the real power that lifts the spirit.

As the bassist who played the song, Mark Evans, says, what you don’t hear here is just as important as Malcolm’s rhythm guitar, making the song so memorable.

“Precisely the guitar intro, precisely the form and structure, precisely Malcolm, plus the feeling of the song.”

“It’s A Long Way To The Top” is one of the rarest pieces of music, after which you ask yourself a question: what do you want, how much do you want it and how hard are you ready to work hard for it?

The Young brothers answered this question for themselves 40 years ago.

Holger Brockmann claims to be the first DJ in the world to broadcast the song “It’s A Long Way To The Top”. In 1975, he was definitely the first to say anything on 2JJ, the youth radio station of the Australian national broadcaster ABC, so it stands up to scrutiny. He is now almost 70 years old and still works in radio. He spends most of his time on a farm in the Upper Valley of Hunter NSW with his wife Marianne and sometimes to relax – he cuts in the AC / DC cow pen.

“Oooooo!” He shouts, throwing his hands up. – Until 11! ”

Brockmann first saw AC / DC at the Hornsby Police Boys in Sydney.

“It was at the end of 1974. I was dragged into the Police Boys. I didn’t really know anything, but the first record must have been out, and there were about 12 people in the club. Well, maybe more. In 75, I switched from night shifts to breakfast time, and I remember someone brought “It’s A Long Way To The Top” and said, listen. So I turned it on – it turned out to be so damn great that I began to listen incessantly. Five times in a row. ”

Did people call the station in protest?

“Yes,” he laughs, “they called and said: more come on!”

Why five times in a row?

“Wouldn’t you have done that the first time you heard it? Can you imagine? The most first times? Christmas trees. These bagpipes captivated me. Suddenly the bagpipes are like – boo! Bagpipes ! Fatal fucking band, and the song is full of bagpipes and it sounds great. Now you turn it on – it’s still great. “

This commentary captures exactly the essence of why AC / DC is so good: their song can be played five times in a row, even a hundred times, and it will still sound fresh, like the first time you listen. In “It’s A Long Way To The Top,” it’s not the bagpipes that turn you on, although they are the genius idea of ​​George Young, who recorded just one take in the studio and made a loop out of the tape. No, rather, the main attraction is the second in which Malcolm’s guitar breaks through a single speaker. That’s it, you’re on the hook.His riff accelerates the whole song.

“George and Harry are really cool, really,” says Rob Riley. – They have an innate flair for good songs, for how to write and arrange them. George is a master at this, definitely. Skillful, creepy, and creepy smart. George was a direct studio guru. I kept my finger on the pulse. In the early days of AC / DC, their sound came from George – the way they made the songs.

But the boys were smart too. They knew what they wanted. George would have helped them overcome all the obstacles with his knowledge of what a song is, but Malcolm’s contribution to the AC / DC sound is enormous.His guitar is fucking everything. He creates such a beautiful, powerful foundation for Angus to run over him and do what he usually does. Malcolm is a serious part of it all. ”

Terry Manning, engineer for the third Led Zeppelin album and Eliminator by ZZ Top maintains: “Malcolm has the perfect, perfect ability to pull out the simplest and most powerful rhythm guitar pieces I’ve ever heard. He doesn’t have unnecessary notes. For me, Malcolm is the cornerstone of songs.Then Angus, playing on what Malcolm laid down during the vocals, can add the necessary rhythmic embellishments. And by the time of the solo, he already has a base on which he explodes. He doesn’t need to play as masterly as Jeff Beck or as fast as Eric Johnson. He brings in his piece, always as much as needed, never too much, but always passionately. ”

But Derek Schulman explains best of all: “Usually the drive of a rock band is the rhythm section, bass and drums. But at AC / DC the song is driven by Malcolm’s rhythm guitar.The bass and drums are spare parts, they play four quarters without any stuff. Hence the space in which Angus shines with his wild solos.

Other bands can copy the AC / DC sound, but only AC / DC themselves can actually reproduce it – with ease and brilliance. This way of creating the drive of the group from top to bottom , rather than building it up, is completely unique. There is not a single missing chord, drum (fill) or note. The difficulty is that no other group can reproduce this simplicity. “

But no one can be stopped, everyone is trying. This in itself is a tribute.

***

“It’s A Long Way To The Top” was released in Australia in December 1975. Three months later, director Paul Drane filmed a video that, either unconsciously or shamelessly, copies a promo video for The Rolling Stones’ Brown Sugar, which appeared in early 1975. There, a group in New York is driving a truck without boards – an idea from Charlie Watts. As the voice of Mick Jagger explains in the video: “In the old days, jazz in Harlem advertised their concerts like that, playing on trucks without boards.”

At least the original idea was to invite the Tobruk Pipe Band. Those in charge of the band’s future American record company, Atlantic, had never heard of anything like it. They were as stunned as Holger Brockmann in his 2JJ.

When Coral Browning showed the tape to Phil Carson of the Atlantic UK, he signed an international contract with the group. And he had no misgivings.

“The moment I saw the recording, I realized that I could promote these in Europe.This was my original goal, ”he says. In those days, there was no video yet, and Coral brought with her an audiovisual suitcase – an invention of Fairchild. You open it – there is a screen, and on it I watched AC / DC playing their “It’s A Long Way To The Top” in what I think is a nightclub. It was very powerful and the band bought me with that. ”

The video was actually “High Voltage”, recorded at Melbourne’s Festival Hall and directed by Larry Larstead, a man in the advertising industry and a friend of Chris Gilby.He himself “just ended up in Melbourne with the team filming for Coke,” and they called him and asked if he was interested in filming AC / DC.

He was interested. He invited four cameramen (not five, as in some flashbacks): Guy Furner, Ron Johanson, Paul Williams and Peter Willsi, the latter two are gone. They shot three music videos that evening: “High Voltage” for AC / DC, “Black Eyed Bruiser” by Stevie Wright, and “Yesterday’s Hero” to John Paul Young.

“The brief, the assignment, was simple,” says Larstead.“Although our cameras did not record sound, we had to shoot as many crazy shots as possible. The headliners were AC / DC, and when the band hit the stage, the crowd was already jumping. They came to have fun, and nothing would prevent this night from becoming something special. ”

But even with four cameras, not everything worked out as planned.

“Larry didn’t get good close-ups on Bon Scott, so he had to shoot in the studio,” says Gilby. “It was inexpensive, so we filmed, providing the right lighting and making sure that the beads of sweat on his face are perfect and that he sings as powerfully as he can – so that the muscles in his throat tighten.”

Larstead laughs, “We had a lot of fun filming all these big things. Everything turned into a real competition between the guys from the group – who surpasses whom in “rage”. Angus threw his hat into the crowd at the height of the concert – this episode did not get into the camera, so I had to solve a dilemma: whether to mount it with a hat or not. It was not easy as I tried to use all the cool shots.

But Angus and I decided he’d be bareheaded in the finals, and filmed the moment he plays that particular piece of the game and throws a hat into an imaginary crowd with this great AC / DC attitude that you can see in the final clip.On that day, we hired a make-up woman who was responsible for keeping everyone sweaty. Hard work: as soon as she splashed water in Bon’s face, the whole group started yelling and asking for more. ”

And then there were special effects.

“We needed crowd noise,” says Gilby. – And George Young wanted to keep track of how the track was made with the noise of the audience. He came to the studio to try to mix it all. Larry didn’t really fit, so he asked if I would mind if he used some audio that would fit better there.I told him to make the video as exciting as possible. ”

Larry obeyed: the noise of the crowd stole the Concert For Bangladesh from George Harrison’s live album.

“A friend gave me this disc. It turned out that the noise there was exactly what I needed, I only needed to make small loops and overlays. I’m sure Chris and I were the only ones who knew about this editorial cheating at the time, so please don’t blame the group for anything. And to George Harrison – my big thanks, albeit very late. “

***

Atlantic’s head of A&R says he has received copies of the first two Australian AC / DC albums – High Voltage and T.N.T. – From Coral Browning when she returned to his office a year after shoving Stevie Wright’s Hard Road .

“The groove started pumping me right away – like the best rhythm sections of Stax and Muscle Shoals,” he says. – Phil Rudd with his hi-hat quarters is like Al Jackson Jr., and Angus Young’s blues power is reduced to the simplest.I made a deal and decided that now would be the best time to do a compilation for Atco, so their second LP was the best and most up-to-date material of that time. ”

Tracklisting compiled by Phil Carson.

“I put“ It’s A Long Way To The Top ”at the beginning simply because I thought it was more likely to catch the attention of an international audience. I just had to start the compilation with “It’s A Long Way To The Top”. ”

In May 1976, High Voltage , a mixture of the Australian album of the same name and T.N.T. , hit the shelves of British stores. In September – for the American ones. By November, “It’s A Long Way To The Top” was released as a single.

“Since I was spending a lot of time in America at the time, I was confident that with the right pitch the band could hit American radio,” says Carson. Unfortunately, the guys at Atlantic A&R did not share my opinion at the time, so they made almost no effort to help High Voltage . He got nothing, maybe a couple of reviews.However, I remember a review published somewhere in Philadelphia that gave me tremendous hope. Her last line was: AC / DC don’t play rock and roll. AC / DC – yourself rock and roll! ”

Bill Bartlett, programming director of WPDQ (later WAIV) radio station in Jacksonville, Florida, who rightly claims that he was the first to install AC / DC on American radio, testifies in Carson’s favor: “When Atlantic released the American version High Voltage , the label was more interested in getting a band called Fotomaker to hit the radio.So how did it work? ”

Contrary to AC / DC biography Murray Engelgart, which states that “the only one in the States who pounced on the band” was Jacksonville-based concert organizer Sidney Drachin, and Joe Bonomo’s claim that DJ Peter Cavanaugh of WTAC was the first to play them on radio. Flint, Michigan, Bill Bartlett was AC / DC’s first chief assistant in the States.

He has a letter from Perry Cooper dated September 25, 1979 as evidence.

“We are currently melting gold bars as rewards for AC / DC for the number of albums sold,” Cooper writes.- I hope (and it seems quite normal) that we can even pledge for a few platinum awards. This is just to show you that some of us … remember that you were the first in the country to draw my attention to AC / DC with their first record. And at the right time, the people at Atlantic will remember that too. ”

This time, apparently, will come – Bartlett is still waiting.

Moreover, the assumptions that AC / DC sounded on American radio waves only towards the end of 1976 with the song “It’s A Long Way To The Top” are fundamentally wrong.In fact, Bartlett played their music for a while. And not only the American edition High Voltage . He aired the Australian version of the album, which does not have this song at all, and also directed T.N.T. . and that album Atlantic put on the shelf for five years – Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap .

Bartlett’s contributions to AC / DC history have never been adequately reflected in any book written about them. As far as the group and its biographers imagine it, it might not exist at all, although Engelgart at least briefly mentions him and Clinton Walker in the section of the book about Jacksonville – Michael Browning there talks about the “guy from the radio station” who “probably , got some AC / DC record and really listened to it. “Once the manager of AC / DC, recalls that the same unnamed character persuades Atlantic to join the band, and also gives AC / DC such support that when they played their first gig in the city, it served as “living proof that < AC / DC> it will work out. ” Susan Masino belittles this factor in her book: “One radio station in Jacksonville put four or five of their songs on the playlist.”

Such a clear lack of recognition is a common thing for people who directly or indirectly entered the life of the Young.

“When I moved from Jacksonville to Seattle in 1977, I hit AC / DC in Seattle,” says Bartlett.

The statement is extremely intriguing, given that the local radio station KISW boasts on its website that “Steve Slayton rocked the radio waves at night, and he was the first in America to put AC / DC on the radio!”

Bartlett explains everything: “Steve didn’t know AC / DC until I came .KISW General Manager Bob Bingham initially scolded me for broadcasting AC / DC. I appointed Steve as Music Director. ”

Bartlett retired from radio and now lives in Costa Rica.

“The owners of WPDQ / WAIV in Jacksonville did not understand AC / DC. And I just told them: “AC / DC will be the most successful band in the history of rock music, believe me in that.” The funny thing is that no one has ever asked me to promote AC / DC. I did everything myself, alone, and I think that information about me simply did not reach the right people in the group.Atlantic Records never acknowledged my work. But I know for sure that in America Australian music in general and AC / DC in particular was the first to be presented by my radio station. ”

Even Sidney Drashin confirms that he also learned about AC / DC from Bartlett.

“Bill got so excited that he talked me into going into the business and scheduling dates for AC / DC. I was glad to do it. Great group. The guys are great. I loved the band. It was a pleasure doing business with the Yangami. Dude, I wish they were on the radio.I remember calling Doug Thaler’s agency American Talent International and telling the president, Jeff Franklin, how cool AC / DC is — money in the bank for decades — called on Monday, after concerts on the weekend . The audience there was simply stunned. ”

So how did an obscure DJ in Jacksonville figured out that these would be the most successful bands in the world before their American record company knew it?

“Back when I was programming WPDQ / WAIVM, I got the Australian version High Voltage in the mail,” says Bartlett.- They sent me because there was some talk in Australia that in America a program director plays Australian music on the radio. Alberts sent me the record. Probably Jeff Reynolds from EMI told all the labels about me. I spoke with him in Melbourne back in 1972, and with Ron Tudor in Sydney. And both put me on the mailing list to send in what I can deliver. ”

It is curious that in 1968 Tudor signed The Valentines to his June Productions label – Bon Scott’s group with Vince Lovegrave.

Bartlett, in turn, returned to Florida and put on the air one of the Tudor artists, namely the Mississippi group, the backbone of which later achieved much in the United States under the name of the Little River Band. Bartlett would later recommend Beatles producer George Martin to work with them, an offer passed from EMI to LRB manager Glenn Wheatley. Martin produced Little River Band – Time Exposure in 1981.

“While in Australia in 1972, I even appeared on the TV show Happening’72 from Melbourne.They interviewed me mainly because I was an American program director whose mission is to bring Australian music to America. ”

In general, how did he get to Australia?

“As an exchange student, I ended up at Macquarie University of Sydney. On the radio, I took a leave of absence to check everything. In Melbourne I went to concerts, saw Spectrum, Captain Matchbox and other Ossi bands of the early 70’s, but on the radio I never heard them. That year, 1972, was the beginning of this “album-oriented rock” phase in America.And I needed to find a niche that competitors would not get into. I chose Ossi music – because it was real and suited to the AOR format, which I helped develop. It also helped me make the station a brand, and again I had a valuable product that I knew the competitors would not encroach on.

There, in Australia, I decided to go to some labels, tell them who I am on the radio and what I do, and get some promotional material. And I did call, walk, talk to the management.Wow concept, right? Well, I also visited Macquarie, but decided that I would rather pursue a career in radio.

And I started getting new singles and albums directly from Australian record companies. When I received this import, I immediately listened to it and installed it. AC / DC fit perfectly into my station’s signature style: simple three-chord rock with riot on top. There was an immediate positive reaction to this music, and besides, nothing like AC / DC sounded like anything other than a band called Silverhead with frontman Michael Des Barres. “

Whatever Bartlett did, it worked out. The late Ron Moss, station 2JJ coordinator and boss of Holger Brockmann, when he first directed It’s A Long Way To The Top in 1975, soon visited Jacksonville to discuss the FM format he wanted to switch to (2JJ at the end eventually became 2JJJ and switched to FM in 1980), and Bartlett helped Moss develop a broadcast schedule.

AC / DC never visited this radio station.

“I only got to know AC / DC in the 90s.They barely remembered me. I met them at the stadium in Worcester, Massachusetts, I knew a big shot from the record company. I talked to them behind the scenes for about two minutes, in general. I explained to them who I was, but they acted as if there was nothing special about it. What saddened me. ”

But there is something special in this, and not a small one. Jacksonville became one of the key cities in the United States, where the band performed for the first time with great success.

“The fans listened to the band on the radio before the concerts,” says Drashin.- The radio broadcasts helped sell the show, but the fans liked what they heard or they wouldn’t have bought it. AC / DC became headliners in record time. I thought it happened around the middle of the first song of the concert.

What set AC / DC apart was the lyrics, the show and the stage behavior and the timing in general. Young people raved about concerts and records. But I think the southeast has become a mainstay for AC / DC thanks to promoters who jumped in on them like me. There weren’t many of us, and we had to develop our own game plan.In those years, radio worked differently due to federal regulation “forbidding the company to have more than a certain number of radio stations.”

And I had access to some DJs, because I hired them as MCs for concerts. And this encouraged them to play this music. That is, there was a situation in which everyone won: radio stations played music to advertise concerts, and the stations themselves and their employees received recognition at the concerts. ”

But not in history books.

***

Interestingly, there was another unsung hero on American radio who also put a lot of effort into promoting AC / DC.

His name was Tony Berardini and he programmed the air for KTIM, a small rock station in San Rafael, a suburb of San Francisco, California.

“Tony was a fanatic,” says Judy Libow, who had worked in the Atlantic’s promotion department for 16 years and started her career on college radio. “He started out programming the airwaves and eventually rose to the general manager of WBCN in Boston, which for many years was considered one of the elite progressive rock radio stations in the country.This guy was ready to gnaw razor blades for the AC / DC group – he loved them so much. ”

Almost forty years have passed, and he still loves them.

“Their music is absolutely the right thing,” says Berardini, now vice president of CBS Radio. – She really rocked like real hard rock – this is in the era of singer songwriters and disco. They didn’t pretend to be anyone and didn’t apologize for who they were, what they did, but their lyrics had amazing humor. A fig in your pocket is almost everywhere.This is what I really liked about them. ”

He remembers nothing bad about that happy time.

“I was the managing director and DJ at KTIM, and one of my DJs, Wild Bill Scott, brought the band’s album to our music meeting, which we listened to and immediately put“ It’s A Long Way To The Top ”on the air. This is a hard rock song with bagpipes leading the melody. I could not imagine anything like this. Words are great, I can say that as a DJ who made two dollars an hour working the night shifts six days a week.This text perfectly captures the essence of not only the music business, but, in my opinion, life in general. I will include this song at my funeral.

There was no internet or social media back then, so the only way to find out if someone is broadcasting a group is through our industry press. And we were such a small station from the Gulf that we didn’t even send them our reports. All the DJs adored High Voltage and played the disc to the holes. We knew that no one else in the Gulf is putting on this band.And we really didn’t give a damn what they put there. We put it on the air because they were downloading these songs. ”

When he moved to Boston, nothing changed.

“WBCN’s ratings were falling below the floor, and Program Director Charlie Kendall wanted the station to be more cheerful. He and I communicated periodically all these years, and he knew that I prefer rock that rocks. The very first song I played on my first air was “It’s A Long Way To The Top”. I calculated that she would set the tone for the whole program.The next week I added an album to the playlist, which, given WBCN’s experience in heavy music – they had almost nothing heavier than Queen and Aerosmith, championed by Maxen Sartori, the station’s excellent DJ – surprised the music industry, I think.

With the support of Bartlett, Berardini and other unmarked supporters of the group on radio stations from KMAC / KISS in San Antonio to WLQV in Columbus, “It’s A Long Way To The Top” helped a lot in promoting the band.

And it was impossible to miss the opportunity.

***

Today Boston is the territory of the AC / DC group. The New England Patriots include the songs “Thunderstruck,” “For Those About To Rock,” and other AC / DC recordings before, during, and after matches at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro. In South Boston, a working-class Irish Catholic community, the same milieu as Martin Scorsese’s The Departed and Gus van Sant’s Will Hunting, AC / DC songs are widespread not only because they are real , honest and inspiring, but also because they have a memory of who you are and where you are from.There is no other place where you can return – for real or in your soul. You shouldn’t tear yourself away from him, because your country made you you. Whether you were raised in a Young family or on the streets of South Boston, family ties and birthplace are everything to you.

Boston and the neighboring town of Quincy (Quin-zii, as the real locals say) are also the birthplace of the Dropkick Murphys, an Irish-American punk rock stadium band that has succeeded in what many others have failed, namely to make a decent cover of AC / DC song.They turned “It’s A Long Way To The Top” into something completely their own, unique. They also play Dirty Deeds and T.N.T. live.

In January 2013, at McGreevy Bar, Back Bay, Boston, the Dropkicks played a special free concert in honor of the release of an album with a very AC / DC title, Signed And Sealed In Blood . seal”). The owner of this bar is Ken Casey, vocalist and bassist of the band. Arriving there, I found myself in the crowd wearing Red Sox caps and Bruins jerseys.There were probably 200 people crowded in the small hall, and many more stood on the sidewalk in disappointment. When it came to the band’s main anthem, Shipping Up To Boston, immortalized in The Departed, the crowd began to shake so violently that the walls seemed to collapse. It was the same when AC / DC performed in small halls in Australia, England and America from the mid to late 70s.

After the concert, Casey poses for a photo and signs the merch. For all his wealth and newfound fame, he has clearly not lost touch with fans or forgotten his origins.This man’s quote went down in the annals: “I guess our goal is to become the AC / DC of Celtic punk rock.” His face brightens when I notice that I am writing a book about the Young.

“Brilliant songwriters and showmen,” he says. “They are the essence of what it means to be a real rock and roll band. It’s not about how you look. It’s about the music. AC / DC is a boy band, they stick to their roots and don’t stray from their path. You always know what you’re going to get from AC / DC, and that’s what we try to be. We want our fans to know what they are getting, so that they believe that we will always give them what they want.This is exactly what AC / DC has always done. ”

I ask Tony Berardini why it is in Boston that they are so established.

“The response to AC / DC on the East Coast was much stronger than the West Coast,” he replies. – Outside the city of Boston, which is relatively small, there are many blue-collar towns for the working class, and there is a much larger population than in the city itself. I think AC / DC’s heavy rock and song themes are popular with this working class. AC / DC is real, simple, without show off and apologies, naked and straightforward rock.I think this audience smells bullshit a hundred miles away. In AC / DC music and shows, bullshit is completely absent. Think about it: The Dropkicks are generally in the same stream, although their style is traditional / Irish punk, but let’s face it, who else can do a decent cover of It’s A Long Way To The Top, including a solo on bagpipes? ”

Berardini himself hosted the first AC / DC Boston concert.

“In the fall of 1978, I learned that AC / DC would be performing in Boston at a small 500-seat Paradise Theater.I immediately called the label and said that we want to do a live broadcast. And the label was like, “Yeah, right? No problem!” You could do that in those days. It wouldn’t work today. The club was packed to overflowing. I went on stage and made a kind of opening speech, which was broadcast on the air. Unfortunately, I got so turned on that I said a bad three-letter word and a couple more curses. The crowd just went crazy, and the band’s play almost knocked the door down. ”

This Paradise is still on Commonwealth Avenue, half a mile from Fenway Park, but has been renamed Paradise Rock Club.Tiny space: almost everything is occupied by the stage. While there, you don’t believe that AC / DC started in such eateries with hundreds of visitors and entered the arenas in front of hundreds of thousands in Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Toronto and even in front of millions – in Moscow on the airfield (available in mind the famous concert in Tushino in 1991. – Approx. per. ). No other group is able to gather as many people as AC / DC.

“Now AC / DC is playing the same rocking hard rock as on the first albums.They sold TD Garden and Gillette Stadium clean-up on the Black Ice tour – I went to both – and their concerts still rock you through. Tell me, how many bands have done this for so long? ”

***

Not everyone, however, is ready to vouch that AC / DC is a “non-footed” Australian sound in its purest form.

Rob Riley was only 17 when he met the Youngs at South Side 6 in Melbourne and, as he humbly notes, “blew with them on Lansdowne Road.”At 21, he moved to Sydney with the Alberts-signed Dallimore, which released their only single, “We Are The Kids” in 1980. A year later, he joined Rose Tattoo, whose first four albums will be produced by Wanda and Young, after Bon Scott joins them at Alberts, and the marriage was easy and volatile, but extremely creatively productive.

Riley says he was blackmailed into the group. He doesn’t communicate with them anymore – he had an enchanting mess with vocalist Angry Anderson, but his place in the pantheon of rock fame is guaranteed for his song “We Can’t Be Beaten”.The riff of this song is one of the most original, recognizable and beloved in Australian music. If anyone understands the chemistry of a good rock song, it’s Riley.

“There is, of course, a clear ossi sound. Everyone tries to copy him, which is pretty cute. AC / DC have an Australian sound, but they are world band. They left Australia a long time ago and became just a band for the whole world. The whole world finds their music accessible, the formula that they use. ”

Mark Gable has a similar opinion: “I would not say that AC / DC is just the quintessence of Australian rock sound.The fact that Angus and Malcolm are from Scotland made them do something completely new in Australia. If they were born in Australia, they would not have found this sound of theirs, they would have sounded different. These guys were different from everyone else in appearance, thought and perception of Australia. They saw Australia from the side from which the Australians themselves do not see it. They took punk rock and made something out of it that the whole world could understand and appreciate. ”

Even old enemies like Denise Theck (Radio Birdman) have changed their minds about what AC / DC has achieved since “It’s A Long Way To The Top” – which is probably what he had in mind when Engelgart’s book criticized AC / DC as “the lame boogie of the early 70s”.The same boogie as in the songs “High Voltage” and “Rock’n’Roll Damnation”.

But in an interview for this book, there is a note of remorse: “I don’t know where this quote of mine from came from. Of course, it’s entirely possible that either I Rob Younger said something like that. In our youth, in the mid-70s, we were very critical of everything that we thought was in the mainstream or in fashion. Electric boogie rock definitely fell under this definition.And we didn’t spare any group that was accepted by the industry, in large part because we were expelled from there. ”

But this hostility has softened over time.

“As far as AC / DC is concerned, at the time, as far as I remember, I really liked their toughness and energy, but I didn’t think that this group discovered anything new. In general, I adhere to the same opinion , but if I had been asked today, I would not have said the word “lame”.

I believe that their brother helped them a lot and that they had access to the Alberts management and access to the studios.I’ll be surprised if this is not the case. But, in my opinion, this in no way diminishes what they achieved when they got the chance. I would say they became the quintessential 70s Australian rock sound. Maybe they started where Daddy Cool left off. ”

Phil Carson, for his part, does not intervene at all: “AC / DC is a great rock ‘n’ roll band whose sound goes beyond country borders. I myself am firmly convinced that their sound is not specifically Australian. If we talk about the Australian sound, then I would name the groups Australian Crawl, Mondo Rock, Skyhooks, as well as Iva Davis with The Flowers and Icehouse – these are vivid examples of the Australian rock sound.Somewhere halfway from it to a straightforward international rock sound, I would play Cold Chisel, but AC / DC is straight full-blooded rock and roll from start to finish. ”

“In Australian guitar rock, they have their own way,” says Mark Opitz. – There is no doubt about that. Paved the way – what the Bee Gees did in harmonious and melodic music. And the Air Supply group is like that. If there really is a certain Australian rock sound, then AC / DC is a very large part of it, but they are not alone there.As for the guitar sounds, at that time we did not have direct quick access to what was happening in the rest of the world, so we invented something more or less our own, imagining what some other guitarist could do with his amplifier. … Since everybody played a lot in pubs, it was time to experiment with the sound, and AC / DC were not the only owners of the “big” sound. They were probably one of the first to take this path, but many other people did this too. “

It can be explained better, says Anthony O’Grady, confident that this title was staked out by Billy Thorpe long ago. The best way to understand the difference between Australian and American sound is to first listen to Amboy Dukes, Ted Nugent’s old band, play a cover of “Baby, Please Don’t Go”, and then the AC / DC version of the original High Voltage album …

“The difference is how Australians feel the blues and how Americans feel it. The Amboy Dukes version is like a train rolling on the rails, and the AC / DC is a truck rushing uphill.You can directly feel how the gears are shifted, you can feel the clutch pedal, the sound of the pistons. ”

I can’t help but hear a knock as I drive through the American hinterland, from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and “It’s A Long Way To The Top” is playing on the radio. Almost forty years have passed since the song was released in Australia, but it has not lost a drop of energy. The group, which was wary of American radio program directors in 1976, is now constantly on the air – alongside Journey, REO Speedwagon and Boston.

As one playlist compiler who wished to remain anonymous told Billboard magazine in 1981 after the success of Back In Black , “AC / DC is so gross that even their old material, which was out of the box at the time, now also to the cashier. ”

And just when driving on an empty night road, there is nothing better than “It’s A Long Way To The Top”. And this double solid seems to lead you to the life that you can have – if you really want to.When I listen to this song, I immediately start to miss Australia.

Allan Fryer, the Scottish-Australian singer who could have replaced Bon Scott if not for Brian Johnson, called me the next day – he was at home in Fort Worth, Texas – and said he would go to the studio to record his version of the song. ” Back In Black “.

And what does he think of the Australian sound?

“He is from the heart, and I also speak from the heart,” he replies. – About not forgetting about the homeland. When you play hundreds of concerts a year, three a night sometimes, you do what you owe, pay off your debts, rip your ass – and you do everything for the love of what you believe in.AC / DC have never forgotten who they are and where they are from. Never. It seems to me that this is such a feature of the Scots, Australians and, in fact, the British too. Almost none of the people there forget who they are and where they are from. I myself am. And it seems to me that AC / DC is a sound, just killer, and their rhythm section, and rhythm guitar. Sincerity in its purest form.

No bullshit. Make-up. Nothing. Simple – honesty. Accept. Here are jeans, sneakers, a T-shirt – go out and do your own thing. I think the fans understand that this is the truth.It’s straightforward rock and roll. And every song is as if about you. Who are you and where are you from”.

It is.

AC / DC Way – Unofficial site of Anatoly Aleshin

As the heroine of the novel by the English writer John Fowles “The Magician”, Australian Alison Kelly said, “All Australians are dorks, but the English are snobs.” The Scots were not included in the revelation list due to the obviousness.Any Anglo-Saxon knows from childhood that where the Scot passed, there is nothing to catch. When in the 60s there was nothing to do in the closing factories and mines of Her Majesty’s Island, some Scots moved to Australia. One of these “some” was the large Young family, who left their native Glasgow in 1963 for the Sydney suburb of Burwood. Nature, which has already gotten away from rabbits, froze in anticipation of the collision of such bloods turning into a new fraudulent misfortune. And for good reason.

What happened began as a wrongful act and ended as a fairy tale.A fairy tale about how a few gopniks with bad manners, vulgar vocabulary and Scottish roots became idols of generations and respected millionaires

Episode VI: Return of the Jedi

In the first week of sales, 5 million copies of the disc were deposited in the hands of the inhabitants of the Earth. (For memory.) Space figure. Of these, the North American states accounted for about 780 thousand, which allowed “Black Ice” to debut in the global collector of pride and envy, Billboard magazine’s first place immediately.The most worthy people were outstripped and surrounded by the main glory: Madame Pink and the soundtrack to Disney’s “High School Musical 3”, whose currency harvest began at the same time. They stayed on Earth, like Polkan and Zhuchka, to watch the laurels of the first kamikaze in space go to the outbred Laika. The disc, meanwhile, became the first in 28 more countries: Great Britain, Germany, Canada, France, Argentina, Japan, Australia, Belgium, Finland, Italy, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland … in a word, in everything “civilized” the world, assuming under this epithet muscular strength and an internal need to deal with other civilizations.

Further – more. This incredibly fabulous result brought a step, the dividends from which in a looking-glass life are predictable as confidently as the consequences of a kiss with a frog. In the US, the album can only be purchased at Wal-Mart, or ordered from the band’s official website. The record did not go to retail in ordinary music stores. Here it is worth saying a few words about Wal-Mart, for the tragicomicism of this Shakespearean mask is hardly noticeable from the latitudes of the Cherkizovsky market.”Wal-Mart” is an extensive network of department stores with deliberately low prices, the focus of which is that once you get into this network, it can be extremely difficult to get out. The taste of illusory economy leads to the production of the enzyme of greed, in the Russian medical literature referred to as “freebie!” This enzyme causes a deformation of consciousness as well as an opiate causes a change in metabolism. And, like “hard” drugs, it leads to addiction. So we have in the USA another tofet of the human psyche, with the attributes of gambling addiction, Internet addiction, a strip bar and a scam at the same time.Stores were set aside special areas, stalls were built to sell a new disc, DVD No Bull: The Directors Cut with a highly digitized recording of a concert in Madrid in Plaza de Toros in 1996, launched on 9 September, 50 days before the main course was served , and a thousand other pleasant little things, such as: T-shirts, baseball caps and other, other memorable memorabilia pleasing to the eye. The entrepreneurs went even further. On the streets of Los Angeles and New York, Potemkin huts were organized, in which a very intrusive trade in the same articulated goods for especially hurrying citizens was deployed.And for those who did not understand at all – and resolutely refused to understand – special vans, hybrids of auto-general store and Goebbels’ promotional vehicles, with loudspeakers and cash registers, were equipped and started to move. Driving slowly through the streets of the city, they distributed selected songs from the porphyry album through the speakers. And they made stops: to sell the goods and take the cash.

And all this for the sake of selling one single album of one single band! Rock groups! It looks like a phantasmagoria, the Kremlin Christmas tree in the very hardest time.Even keeping in mind the fact that the rock group in question has sold 200 million of its records, one of which, with a circulation of 42 million copies, is one of the first places in the history of the music trade. This is how things happen in reality that could not even be thought of, or, at best, seemed like a pipe dream. This is how people now communicate using portable pocket phones – when even thirty years ago walkie-talkies seemed like a magic fantasy even to KGB officers – passengers fly into space, precocious blondes get a driver’s license at the traffic police, and a boy who dreamed of seeing Santa Claus meets a dream when he gets a job at the Pension Fund.But more irrational than this is the particle-wave knowledge that this group wrote only one song, but at the same time put 15 albums on the market. It is also impossible to understand how to imagine an entity that is a wave and a stream of particles at the same time, you can only relax and enjoy. Which in some inexplicable way millions have done for many years. And then there was a long break. And so, on October 20, 2008, the new AC / DC album Black Ice was released. People have been waiting for this almost unlikely event for eight years.And then they waited.

Prior to that, the last album released by AC / DC was Stiff Upper Lip, released in 2000 and provoked a restrained approval, but no more. On paper, this meant that the album reached number one in 5 countries, and a dozen more second and third places in the neighborhood. For another group, this would mean winning the Great Lottery, and for AC / DC, “a frail love affair,” which we know from the words of Boris Grebenshchikov. Following this, the Australian “boogeymen” left alive in parinirvana.All the possibilities, given the venerable age of rock brawlers (at the time of the release of Black Ice, everyone was respectably over 50, and Brian Johnson was even 61), were equally likely. AC / DC did not record or compose anything and, starting from 2003, did not even undertake concert chases, but money and honors continued to flow – a line of vassals for a planning meeting with Darius from a Persian bas-relief. (This phenomenon is known to modern sociology as the “incident of the Little Land”: when retribution at an unknown hour finds a hero in the labyrinth of years).

In 2002, AC / DC entered into a long-term contract with Columbia Records to live a decent life through non-stop funding. (It would be more correct to highlight this event from the other side: Columbia Records acquired the long-term rights to release products on behalf of the ensemble and, apparently, did not go wrong.) It brought mutually satisfying results. In 2008 alone, about 10 million AC / DC records were sold: 5 million Black Ice and the same number of records from previous years from the group’s catalog, acquired by Columbia, and given a new life in “remastered” form.

In July 2003, along with the Rolling Stones and Rush, AC / DC took part in the Molson Canadian Rocks for Toronto mega-festival in Toronto, which brought together a record crowd of 500 thousand people who paid for admission tickets in the history of mankind. … (The festival was intended to help the city “overcome the bad press” in connection with the outbreak of the atypical ARI epidemic. No one coughed, and the reputation of the free city was saved, which was truthfully reported in the news).

Also in 2003, the Akadaki were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.At the ceremony, the band performed Highway to Hell and You Shook Me All Night Long, with Brian Johnson giving a speech of thanks. Steven Tyler of Aerosmith also pushed the eulogy, full of high rock’n’roll pathos.

In 2004, after heated discussions and confrontations, meeting the decisive will of the public, the Melbourne magistrate decided to rename the Corporation Lane passage, in which the band’s first video was filmed in 75 – for the song It’s A Long Way To The Top. into the ACC Lane passage.With the only proviso that according to fire safety standards and average IQ of citizens, it was forbidden to place a lightning bolt between the letters “C” and “D”. The lightning bolt was placed under the “ACDC Lane” sign.

In 2005, American music merchants estimated that citizens of the United States purchased 69 million records from AC / DC, making them the fifth best-selling artist in the United States of history, leaving Madonna, Mariah Carey and Michael Jackson behind. The Recording Industry Association (RIAA) has calculated that by 2007 the flagship of the acca dacha catalog, Back In Black, had sold 22 million units in the United States, making it a “double diamond” and qualifying it for 5th place among US-respected artists.In 2007 alone, 1.3 million records were sold in the States alone – despite the fact that the group has not released anything new since 2001.

Angus and Malcolm Youngi made their first attempt at composing something new in late 2003. (At the same time, Angus’ confession, made by him in one TV interview, about mastering a new chord – D). The writing act went so far that Brian Johnson was summoned from his new homeland in Florida to the Warehouse studio in British Columbia.Having tried several songs with vocals, the creative duet of the brothers decided to immediately stop and indulge in rethinking, because none of the audience “already understood what they were doing.” Johnson was sent home, while Angus and Malcolm were left to find out what flaw they could chew through three chords.

The years passed.

While the brothers indulged in the most sophisticated perfectionism, Brian Johnson learned to solve crosswords. In what, in the end, according to him, he succeeded. When he could carve out a minute, he also drove retro cars in retro races arranged in the USA for sophisticated people with retro taste and a checkbook; worked on the musical Elena the Beautiful (where he attracted, among others, Dolores O’Riordan and Malcolm McDowell, who sang the part of Zeus) and, finally, together with AC / DC bassist Cliff Williams, wrote three songs for a comedy film about the benefits of marijuana ” Dried in flour (Ganja-mentary) “(” Totally Baked (A Pot-U-Mentary) “) of his old friend Craig Schumacher.Surprisingly, these were the first songs Williams wrote in his entire musical career! And for Johnson, it was his debut as an “executive producer” or, to be honest, simply director of the film, as Johnson learned from the credits. The “directorship” was expressed in the fact that he lent Schumacher money for the production of films when he got into an individual financial crisis caused by divorce.

On August 18, 2008, Columbia announced the “official” release dates for the new AC / DC album – October 18 in Australia and October 20 worldwide.The pleasant shock of this news can only be compared with the only concerts in the 21st century by Pink Floyd with Waters and Led Zeppelin with Bonham Jr. Moving away from the shock, people rushed to the store. After all, on top of that, AC / DC (obviously following the advice of an overly astute gentleman) flatly refused to distribute their music through iTunes and any other digital stall, which in the modern Western world looks not only like an unthinkable business, but almost an act of self-immolation … However, here too, the rock-and-roll millionaires did not lose.Finally, approximately at the same time as the appearance of the new AC / DC disk, dollars began to disappear on Earth, followed by jobs in Moscow offices. However, behind all this grandiose commercial panorama from the view of the world press, and even consumer attention in general, the musical detail itself is somehow lost. Black Ice, meanwhile, captured the band in very good shape. Far from being, however, its “heavy” hypostasis – the boogie component of rock’n’roll AC / DC was brought to the fore and polished there to a shine.Anyone who knows how to distinguish AC / DC songs from each other, out of 15 songs on the album, could single out Rocking All The Way (a radio hit that can be easily imagined by Tina Turner), the most exciting song on the disc – Big Jack (listening to which you understand without knowing English that this squeaky urkagan in a “working” cap is singing about something hooligan), the relatively “heavy” War Machine (the very name of which hardly suggests that it is intended for a barbecue party) and, finally, the flagship success – the opening disc Rock’n’Roll Train (a song with a universal human melody, which, like a hymn to life, spring and hormone may well share the success of Thunderstruck).Rock’n’Roll Train was released in August as the first single. In a shock period, he managed to climb to the 1st place on the Billboard Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks list and before him – on the rock radio stations in the USA and Canada.

The only oddity that a consumer may encounter on this AC / DC album (after all, whatever the AC / DC album is, it looks like nothing other than an AC / DC album) is its title. “Black ice”, according to Johnson, in his native Northumberland was called dangerous December ice, not visible on the pavement.However, hardly a single buyer slipped on it. Buying a new AC / DC album, a citizen knows that he will not be deceived, and he will not hear anything unexpected. People love AC / DC for their honesty.

On October 28, the first AC / DC tour in eight years kicked off in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, aiming to finally finish off the paying population. 18 American concerts were sold out almost instantly. In a matter of minutes, barely going on the Internet, tickets for concerts in Toronto, San Antonio, Chicago, and in the prestigious New York Madison Square Garden ran out.Vancouver became the record holder: empty seats disappeared after 4 minutes. For AC / DC’s Black Ice Tour, a grandiose stage was prepared, which cost $ 4.5 million to produce – another record in rock history. And one could talk about Olympic bliss if, before the start of the tour, Brian Johnson would not admit in the press that it might be his farewell tour – in case the body makes a thumbs down to a brilliant and long career. When that happens – when AC / DC leaves the stage, along with the latest concerts of other dinosaurs: Iron Maiden, Motorhead and Judas Priest – the era of rock and roll will be gone.The last generation of people who made up the time of rock as they know it will disappear as a community: with its seemingly naive now unlimited enthusiasm, long hairs and belief in what the generation of the 2000s, the generation of pets, will never believe, and will not even be able to pretend to be much coveted money. Other spectators will occupy the halls. Philatelists and historians – people who are afraid of tomorrow, will look at rock mysteries on digital films, wondering: “What was the phenomenon?”, And laugh moderately, like a long Rabelaisian joke.I mean: long, boring and without a mat. No one knows what filled the Eleusinian mysteries, not even the dead authors of a thousand scientific studies. The sacrament was not filled with the ritual, but the ritual was filled with the sacrament, and those in whom the sacrament arose would not rise until the trumpet sounded and the Universe scattered over the cracklings of mercy. A real rock band is only a “concert” band. A rock band on tape, vinyl, digital disc is just a scalp of a loved one, reminiscent of how much warmth and passion there was in these embraces.

AC / DC has always been a live band. Episode V: Razor “Aghdam” – Razor’s Edge and the Tushin pandemonium

… A dozen policemen, disguised in huge, globe-like helmets with a visor, were waiting on the ground, holding back their rage, and were definitely not going to climb up. A man of about forty, in a white shirt and tie, climbed onto an awning that served as the roof of one of the sound engineering towers, frantically waving his arms, shaking his head, yelling something in the non-verbalized language of his feelings overwhelming him.The collision of a state of euphoria and intense intoxication led him to a place called the end of the world. The end of the world ended under a loose awning.

Finally the sufferer descended to earth. “Prevention” began immediately, in front of everyone. The militiamen surrounded the body and began to harass the enemy with truncheons. Almost immediately, several empty bottles flew out of the crowd closer to the stage at the riot police. The idea was picked up, and a squall of glassware rushed towards the police. As a result, several militiamen were carried away – hit in the head.The riot police quickly formed a formation and, with a Macedonian phalanx, moved on the offenders. A minute later, the “democratizers” fell on the heads, shoulders, backs of the innocent, the guilty, and everyone who came to hand. If there were no order, some, discouraged by what they saw and not knowing how to act in such an environment, would immediately explain to this patrolled gathering the meaning of the first amendment to the jungle constitution. Others, if they had the opportunity, would get even with the offenders for all the years of sullen-burcheev’s oppression.

And that day began like this.
A young man half-crawled out, half-dropped out of the tent, in order to avoid “if anything,” set up in two days (the guys, as it turned out right there, came from Cherepovets), blue-pale, like Pinocchio’s treponema. Having held out for a short time on his feet, he collapsed to his knees and his right arm. Slowly he raised his left hand up and cried out in the dead: “Metal !!!”. It was ten o’clock in the morning.

By the morning the field was covered with empty containers in excess of any human norm. (By evening, the far and middle rows will begin to drive the bottles into the ground with their neck down – in order to somehow rise above the backs of the heads ahead and see THEM at least somehow.The next morning, crowds of attendants and vultures of a different sex will circle around the airfield in Tushino, collecting empty bottles, badges, jeans, everything that remains from parting with the USSR … This is how Russian capitalism began.). Arriving at the place, they elected a delegate and, having thrown himself off, sent him for wine. The grandiose Moscow promoter returned an hour later with cheesy Turkmen wine, in which scraps of a strange nature floated. Then the search began for a simulacrum of a corkscrew. On that September day, nature breathed in so many “Agdam”, “three axes”, “Slavic”, “Tsinandali” that the copper smell of fumes lasted for another 7 years, until the house of cards of the game of democracy collapsed, crushing the tale of a homing the wizard Adam Smith.

The tipsy Zhan Sagadeev brought this Mongolian sea into ecstasy: “B ..! How many people! ” Swearing from the stage was still something of Mayakovsky – for which, in general, you could have been pecked at your liver. Phil Anselmo, vocalist of the then unknown Pantera, amused the honest audience indescribably with his shaved head. Louder than music could be heard in the air: “Ly-syy! Bold!”. In 1991, in comparison with the shaved skull, the mat from the stage was much less of a curiosity.

The Black Crowes was born, apparently, so that when the Guns N ‘Roses discs were bought with excitement around, people had something else to spend their money on.The Black Crowes appeared in Moscow so that the subjects of the evil empire could rest, take a breath, relieve themselves and drink again.

Already during the Pantera performance it was impossible to get any close to the stage. Most were peering into the distance. Where the scene was supposed to appear … communism. The real, long-awaited communism that Buddha spoke about: it exists objectively. But it is impossible to describe it. In the crowd here and there deliberately desperate gopniks scurried about.Tomorrow’s masters of life were scouring where it would be possible to take away something material, where to temper the spirit of a warrior – to pounce in a flock and beat some straggler with a paralyzed will. Today, however, no one paid attention to them.

Closer to the exit from the airfield to Volokolamskoe highway, in this giant human cauldron, which threatened to explode at any moment into something similar to Khodynka, mothers met with strollers and the look of a predatory toucan, looking out for something else free from the stalls.Since then, their children have grown up, and now you shouldn’t be surprised that the resource of personnel for “House-2” does not run out. One fighter will fall, and, you see, he is already replaced by a dozen. By the evening, THEY finally appeared on the stage. With the release of the Black Album, Metallica reached the zenith of popular admiration. In 1991 there was no word fresher and stronger than the word “Metallica”. And yet another group was the host of the ball. Even though the addictions of this sea of ​​people were divided according to age, and some of the youths left, emotionally devastated after Metallica left the stage, AC / DC were greeted with a wave of popular glee.

AC / DC, one of the heroes of Soviet legends of the 80s, laureates of the highest award of the “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame” – inscriptions on the fences, brought a real grandiose SHOW to Tushino. The show is what the viewer loves so much. That which replaces him with the circus and the army, when both are in the past. Some witnessed Pink Floyd’s grandiose production in 1989 at the Olimpiyskiy, others saw this Greek theater called show for the first time. A huge inflatable, not very dressed, Baba hovered above the stage.Cannons Fired – For Those About To Rock – volley! – We Salute You! – volley! Huge, the size of an Olympic Bear, Angus Young’s head with satyr horns stared from the stage into the crowd with indifferent eyes. And the size of the stage itself was impressive. With all our love for gigantism, nothing like this has ever been seen at festivities. Life-size Angus Young was bouncing back and forth in short pants, shaking his head, goggling, ringing the bell. And at the end there was a salute …
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An 84-minute newsreel from a historic Moscow festival called For Those About To Rock We Salute You was released in 1992. Although the film featured all of the bands performing that day, the film’s patrons were AC / DC.

On September 29, 1991, the rock festival in Tushino brought together over 300 thousand people – a figure that for some time remained a record.

The Monsters Of Rock brand has been a hugely successful enterprise at the turn of the decades.The current sellers of emo clothes and emo shoes – signs of the world’s cruelty – simply do not understand anything about commerce, put on the same scales as the business athletes of the past. Annual festivals in Donnington, England, the main world sabbaths of the end of the second millennium, were held under this sign. Visiting masses were also arranged. The most “hot” performers of the devil’s music took part in them at the current moment – in the heat of the heat, right from the frying pan, like your grandmother’s pancakes. In 1991, AC / DC wrapped up their tour of The Razor’s Edge with a series of 20 European bands under the banner of Monsters of Rock, which included performances at festivals in Donnington and Moscow.Riding the “razor blade” AC / DC returned to the game, the “big game” they fell out of somewhat in the midst of the 1980s.

Following the resounding success of Back In Black and For Those About To Rock We Salute You, the albums that made AC / DC some of the biggest artists in modern history, if you measure the number of copies sold, Australia’s Nouveau riches in pantaloons faced a relative decline. …

Albums Flick Of The Switch (1983, # 4 UK, # 15 US, RIAA platinum winner), Fly On The Wall (1985, # 7 UK, # 32 in the USA, a million copies sold after the release) and Who Made Who, one song written for the Stephen King film “Maximum Overwork”, which grew into an entire album: three new songs and several old ones (1986, 11th place in Great Britain, 33rd – in the USA) were ostracized by the press.Cumulative public opinion concluded that the group was losing ground and ground, in addition to having difficulty finding fresh ideas. Flick Of The Switch was ranked 8th on Kerrang! Magazine’s “Disappointments of the Year” list. The situation with the following works, with the exception of a couple of singles, which almost reached the level of For Those About To Rock …, was not fundamentally different. Just as alcoholic intoxication aggravates responsibility, the separation from the eternal drummer Phil Rudd in ’83 had a huge negative effect.Drug addiction led Phil to where the heroes of Crowley’s “Diary of a Drug Addict” summoned the devil. Phil saw unknown people entering the dressing room, invisible to a healthy eye. Devils visited him at concerts. Worst of all, his relationship with Malcolm Young had fallen into disrepair. It ended in a fight at the famous Compass Point studio in Nassau. Two hours later, Phil was on the plane heading home. A replacement was found in the person of 20-year-old Londoner Simon Wright, who stayed in the group until 1989, when he somehow smoothly flowed into Dio, who were recording their last publicly and critically acclaimed album, Lock Up The Wolves.He was replaced by Chris Slade, with his colorful shiny bald head almost overshadowing the “duck walk” of Angus Young. Seriously afraid for their reputation, the group decided to renew their relationship with Rudd. The rehabilitated Rudd returned to AC / DC in 1994, where he remains to this day.

The 80s ended for AC / DC with Blow Up Your Video, which brought the group closer to the lost Eden behind the clouds of popularity (2nd place in the United Kingdom, 12th place in the USA), and for Malcolm Young – long treatment at the Melbourne drug dispensary …Where Phil Rudd was taken by his friend Morphine, Malcolm was brought by the demon Alcohol. AC / DC’s real new life began with the end of the Blow Up Your Video tour, in which Malcolm was replaced by his nephew, Steve Young, and the completion of rehab for the eldest of the brothers.

The Young brothers began composing new material in the first months of 1989, first at Malcolm’s house in London, and then moved home to Angus in Holland. Having the basic riffs of the future album, the band rented a warehouse near Brighton, where the material was roughly prepared.The assembly took place in the Irish studio Windmill Road under the direction of the Canadian producer with the noble English name Bruce Fairbairn. Perhaps Fairbairn’s invitation played a decisive role: all AC / DC albums that are not classified as “classics” (read: released from 1983 to 1988) were recorded almost on their own, without the pilotage of a talented professional producer. The situation was completely different on The Razor’s Edge. Here, from each caesura, there was an understanding of what they wanted to achieve and by what means.And, most importantly, what they wanted to achieve was obtained. The Razor’s Edge, in contrast to the raw primitivism of the 70s and the same Flick Of The Switch, was executed in a thoughtful major key. The songs recorded on it, as groovy and at the same time not traumatizing the psyche of the average taxpayer, were quite suitable for playing at hockey or baseball games, and even in supermarkets. Which is exactly what happened.

The first single, Thunderstruck, rammed the UK charts at # 13. (Which doesn’t really reflect the song’s subsequent prominence.) Released in September 1990, the new disc The Razor’s Edge reached the 4th place in the UK and the 2nd place in the States. With this album, AC / DC’s worldwide sales exceeded 60 million copies.

With such albums as The Razor’s Edge, Highway to Hell, Back In Black, For Those About To Rock… in the bank account, the missionaries of rock ‘n’ roll could consider their mission fulfilled and confidently look into their noble old age.

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Episode IV: Hell’s Bells and the Divine Gesheft

Back In Black began for peace, and ended for health.It all started with the funeral ringing of bells and the oppressive pre-storm situation. The listener could have expected a new Black Sabbath, but that was not the case. Already closer to the middle of the first song, now known to the whole world as Hells Bells, it became clear that this is another hymn to sybarism from AC / DC. If the ill-fated “language of music” was talking about some kind of limbo, then only in the sense that there is a serious drinking bout in hell. Anything that comes to mind from AC / DC music: booze, brawl, debauchery, always good mood, rock and roll – everything was in place on this album, which, according to the columnist for Sounds, Classic Rock and Kerrang !, Jeff Barton, “from the first to the last did not contain a single weak song.”Songs of adulterous alcoholic content, such as You Shook Me All Night Long and Have A Drink On Me, could not allow the slightest discrepancy. The point, almost like the charter of the guard service, was set by the last song-rebuke – Rock’n’Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution. Truly so! Rock and roll is not harmful to the ear. Rock and roll is dangerous for the liver and kidneys. Yes, and it will not be superfluous to check it more often.

Back In Black has not surpassed “daring expectations”. Because bold expectations of what actually happened next is called either bluff or insanity.Immediately after its release on July 31, 1980, it became immensely, unnaturally popular. By the beginning of the 90s, its circulation amounted to 10 million copies and already indicated above 42 million to the present day. This made it the best-selling heavy metal album of all time. Two weeks after the release, Back In Black reached # 1 in the UK charts, and held on for another half month. In the United States, his descendant, the 81st album For Those About To Rock We Salute You, will reach the top. Back In Black stopped at “4”.The group’s popularity around the world skyrocketed, resulting in an insane demand for their live performances. AC / DC have become one of the biggest bands in the world of rock. It was a fait accompli. The line under this fait accompli was summed up by the performance as headliners at the second-ever festival in Donnington, England on August 22, 1981, which attracted eighty thousand spectators instead of the expected fifty.

Back In Black was a very, very good album, although hardly the best album in rock history.It just sold really well. Back In Black’s success was not a quickie. This was the cumulative effect of all the previous seven discs, with each of which the AC / DC astral body became more and more overgrown with polyps of the attention of others. But he was doubly, ten times unpredictable due to the fact that the charismatic, inimitable and unique vocalist, frontman, chieftain did not sing on the eighth album of the group. A new man sang on Back In Black.

Brian Johnson, a native of the city of Gateshead, which is located on the right bank of the River Tyne in the north-east of England, was to the roots of his hair, hidden under a canvas cap – the uniform of the commoners of his small homeland, a man flesh from the flesh of the earth on which he grew up.It was this circumstance, most likely, that allowed him to get a job in AC / DC, without five minutes to a rich group of ordinary guys. Just as one cannot stop being an Odessa citizen, so one cannot stop being a Jordi. Geordie is the name given to the natives of Tyneside: an area on Tyne, consisting of Newcastle on the north bank and Gateshead on the south. Geordie was the name of a moderately successful glam-rock band in which Johnson sang throughout the 70s. However, the fashion for glam soon faded away, and together with the entire tribe, by the end of the 70s, Geordie was put on the ice.And when Johnson was busy trying to rebuild the band in the early 1980s, he received an offer to audition for AC / DC, then based in London. He arrived. Not finding the right room, he quickly spat on the search and went to play billiards with the technicians on the floor below. Malcolm Young found him doing this. AC / DC were simple guys. The audition took place. The band and Johnson played two songs: Whole Lotta Rosie (a song inextricably linked with Bon Scott, and by the way, in June 1981, took the place of “the main metal song of all time” in the list of 100 titles of the then very young magazine Kerrang!) And Nutbush City Limits from the Ike & Tina Turner repertoire.The following Saturday, Brian received a call from Malcolm, the gray cardinal of AC / DC, and said he was accepted. And the point, probably, was not at all that besides him there was only one single candidate in sight, a guy named Tony Schlesher … According to Johnson, he thought to himself: “In the end, I can talk in a pub for beer that spent a couple of weeks at AC / DC. ” And I believed in what happened somewhere half a pile. As it turned out, in vain. Exactly one month later (Johnson’s “interview” took place on March 29, 1980) the band was in the Bahamas, in Nassau, where a new album was being created in an accelerated time due to concert commitments.Sometimes Johnson had to write lyrics for a song while recording it. By the end of May, the recording was completed. Back In Black was two months away.

Episode III: Young, Forever Young

Among the reasons why they decided to continue AC / DC, brothers Angus and Malcolm Young, solo and rhythm guitarists, called this: “We knew that Bon would not want us to disband the band.” Of course, I did not want to ruin the work of my life. But this thought in the back of the head inevitably breathed the understanding that there can be no substitute on stage and in life for such a person as Bon Scott.Among all the heroes of rock music, if we take the year of commercials 1968 as a starting point, there are only a few people who enjoyed the indisputable respect and admiration of colleagues and fans. Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Pete Townsend, Bon Scott, Lemmy Kilmister, Steve Harris. Three of them are still alive. In the language of Christians of the first two centuries, this was called “charisma”, the degree of the content of a spiritual gift, the acquisition of divine fire. There were three charisma: the first included the apostles, the second – the prophets, and the third – the spiritual teachers.Bon Scott was the apostle of the god of rock and roll. He not only rewound the divine command from bell to bell during his lifetime, but also parted with this world as a sacrifice to this new Dionysus.

Bon Scott died as he lived, and died from hedonism. Ronald Belford Scott, 33 years old, was found on the morning of February 19, 1980 in an empty car parked at 67 Overhill Road in East Dulwich, south London. He was found by a certain Alistair Kinnear, who allegedly left his unbreakable body a few hours earlier to sleep in the car.The name-name Alistair Kinnear no longer surfaced in any story or rock meeting, and most reasonably believe that one of Bon’s very close companions in the divine bottle considered it a blessing to hide under this name. The police and an ambulance were called to the scene. Scott was immediately taken to King’s College Hospital, where it was stated that the patient had been delivered dead. The official epicrisis diagnosed “severe alcohol poisoning”, although rock rebels who were more knowledgeable in these matters claimed that the singer choked on vomit.Or there was an overdose. Or both, to fidelity. Anyway, on February 18, 1980, the rock’n’roll sardanapalus and the lovable ladies’ man went to the Music Machine club for his last drinking bout.

Bon Scott was born on July 9, 1946 in the Scottish town of Kirimur. In 1952, his family emigrated to Australia, where they settled in a suburb of Melbourne, with the most serious name for a suburb in the world: Sunshine (Sunshine, literally: “sunshine” or “source of joy”). It was in Sunshine Elementary School that Scott acquired his pseudonym: Bon.There was already one Ronald in the class, so the native of Bonnie Scotland (literally: “sweet Scotland”, an ironic name owing to Bonnie Prince Charles, “Handsome Prince Charlie”, Karl Stewart) was awarded the short-barreled name Bon. In 56, the Scots moved to the city of Fremantle on the west coast of Australia, where Bon’s youth passed, and where his ashes now lie in the city cemetery. After graduating from school, Bon tried many specialties (with the prospect of career growth to old age and unconditional social guarantees): postman, loader, driver, etc.In 1964 he formed his first group, The Spektors, where he played drums and occasionally performed the functions of a singer. Then there were The Valentines, Fraternity and Mount Lofty Rangers. In 74, a driver and handyman in the city of Adelaide, Ronald Scott met the Young brothers, whom he was several years older. The acquaintance turned out to be close, and he became a driver in their group, AC / DC. The Youngs soon calculated their former vocalist, Dave Evans, and asked Scott to take his place. Scott, however, wanted to play drums.But the place behind the drums was taken at that moment …

Bon Scott burned a candle at both ends. I drank 24/7, smoked, caught the unbearable lightness of being for myself, and for those guys in production, and personified this gypsy rock and roll dream on stage. Having left the stage, he continued to personify, without changing his jeans. And, of course, Bon Scott trailed after the women. He was the most lustful songwriter in rock music. Anyway, until the day Blackie Lawless announced that he was “… like a beast.”

The last album to be recorded by Bon Scott was a CD created by AC / DC in collaboration with remote control genius and intuition, produced by John “Matt” Lang, and catapulted Australians from the heroes of the suburb into world celebrities. And not least thanks to the scandalous fame that followed its name in a train. It was frighteningly comprehensive. The album was called Highway To Hell.

Episode II: Along the Trail of Good Intentions

In its fourth year on stage, the potential of the cheeky people from the hole known as the sixth continent has become apparent to the powers that be in the world of show business.AC / DC signed a contract with a large firm Atlantic. Those, in turn, took the group seriously. A new governor was sent, in other words, a manager. His name was Peter Mensch (later the manager of Def Leppard at the height of their take-off). Peter worked for Leber & Krebs, an invincible dollar-denominated firm that lodged in the wing of a New York synagogue. In addition, Atlantic commanded the next album to have a commendable husband in the producers and worthy in front of the boss’s eye. After some perturbations, it turned out to be South American John “Mutt” Lang.

Lang worked long and hard. A very long time. And very hard. The group, which had not spent more than three weeks on the production of an album (which devoted most of its time to “comparative analysis of wine”), had to spend six months on the creation of the disc. The recording was on for six months at London’s Roundhouse Studios. In addition, the band recorded outside of Australia for the first time. But the result justified the agony. Lang gave the AC / DC sound clarity, roundness and directionality without destroying its raw, brutal power.

Highway To Hell went on sale on July 29, 1979 and there, in this sale, won laurels in the first kid in pounds sterling and twenty in dollars. The band spent the second half of the year touring the US and England intensively, mostly opening evenings for the likes of Sammy Hagar, Ted Nugent, UFO and Cheap Trick. The touring schedule also included the most ambitious (until then) performance in England – at Wembley in London (in front of The Who).

Highway To Hell has received the best press in the music industry of all AC / DC’s work – even though the era of punk has not yet come to an end – and has met with the strongest response among “community” organizations.Hearing such a name, the adherents of morality (first of all, in the USA, of course) had something in their heads. For a long time, AC / DC was branded as a “satanic” group, although the song Highway To Hell was dedicated only to the hardships of the touring life. But for those who want to see the devil, he is always there. In fact, the “witch hunt” turned out to be just another great advertisement for another rock band.

Highway To Hell became the anthem to which the generation of the 80s marched: “Mom, look, I’m on my way to the promised land! I’m going down the road to hell! “This chorus was already distinguished in the distance as AC / DC entered the new decade. Something was definitely waiting for them ahead, and this “ahead” was already around the bend.

Episode I: September 1

Margaret and William Young had five children: four sons – Angus, Malcolm, Alex, George and the beautiful daughter Margaret. From where these children were born, two roads lead – to a factory or to a prison. But fate decreed otherwise.

The older brother, George, was the first to learn to play a musical instrument and in the 60s was a member of The Easybeats, the most famous local band in Australia at that time.Needless to say how, or more precisely, how exactly, the younger ones prayed for him? Angus, the youngest of the brothers, began strumming the guitar at the age of five. Subsequently, a banjo was found at home, which Angus reconfigured for a guitar. When the two brothers, Angus and Malcolm, were 18 and 20 respectively, they came up with one of two life decisions that can occur at this age: drink a beer or start a group. They formed a group. The group was formed in 1973. The first album, High Voltage, appeared in front of faces so far away from grateful compatriots two years later.The third, invisible, but as a holy spirit, present in everything connected in consciousness with AC / DC, was the elder sister Margaret. It was she who suggested dressing Angus in a school uniform after his attempts to pick up a stage costume ended in laughter. (Angus has previously tried the outfits of Zorro, Spiderman, Godzilla, and the Australian mini-superman Super Ang.)

Margaret in some indirect way was involved in the birth of the name of the group. On the back of her sewing machine, a strange marking that looked cool and incomprehensible was accidentally discovered: AC DC.After some time, ordinary working guys, Malcolm and Angus Young, learned about the existence of AC and DC sockets. Well, God bless him …

… Once the young hairy were in a taxi. Like all people of his subspecies, the driver turned out to be a talkative guy. He asked what the hair was for. “We have our own group!” – followed by a proud answer.
– And what are you called?
– AC / DC.
– What are you … Are you … These, or what?
– ???
– So you don’t know?
– No …
– Guys! “AC / DC” refers to those who sleep not only with girls, but also with boys!
– No, no, no! – protested the cool rockers, who instantly realized what a puddle they were in.- We, like … Just a rock band!
And they blushed.

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