AC/DC - Classic Album Under Review: Back In Black | Amplified

so [Music] [Music] in america at the end of the 1970s they began a very big move towards adult orientated rock bands such as reo speedwagon journey and foreigner were dominating the airwaves dominating the charts and dominating the live arenas these were the new generation of hard rock heroes the old favorites such as led zeppelin free and bad company were still around but music was moving into a new era where american rock was starting to become far more pop rock orientated the beauty of acdc was that they never really fitted into anything particularly they could actually appeal to punks to metal heads to hard rock fans even to pop fans to some extent because they transcended all those genres iron maiden def leppard and saxon were starting to get major attention on the uk rock circuit whilst the old favorites were still very popular and because of maiden saxon and leopard the likes of judas priests and lizzie and ac dc were picking up a new audience we honestly thought that the the punk and the new wave thing would might sort of spoil a bit for us but it hasn't at all you know it was a big fad like it's just like anything else big fat for a while and those that are still hanging onto it but uh the main thing about it is that you give rock music a real kick in the guts you know they're a great light band fronted by one of the all-time masters of working an audience and they quickly built a following in the uk which augmented what has already happened locally in australia for them in melbourne much of the band's success particularly in their live persona was due to their charismatic front man and lyricist bob scott you got to keep your eyes and ears open for lines and words and all your own ideas and just pictures you know and and so and kangaroos kangaroos yeah and you're right around now the great thing about bon scott was not only was he a charismatic front man a very talented lyricist and a unique vocalist he was a a great guy he loved nothing better than hanging out at a bar like the music machine and chatting to fans [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] with new producer matt lang on board 1979 saw the band release their greatest album yet highway to hell with its more sophisticated sound the record propelled ac dc into the world-class rock arena highway to hell was uh an absolute landmark for acdc and for rock music generally uh with mutt lang on board they've kind of turned the corner from being sort of snotty punk kids to actually create some classic rock but sort of imbibing it with the rock and roll elements that they all loved um it's a terrific album there's more concentration on how they were writing their songs definitely there's more sort of a different slightly different approach to the way they're putting those songs together on record in the studio they were no longer just a pogba or club band they were jeff very much a theater band in the uk headlining band and in america was starting to get severely and seriously noticed they had stepped their game up and we're ready yeah there's no need to change i mean we're what we are yeah and uh we ain't gonna change for nobody but the band were about to change in february 1980 with the world seemingly at his feet ac dc front man bon scott tragically died through a combination of heavy drinking and hypothermia bonscott's death just stopped them dead in their tracks here they were at their at the peak of their game as more popular than they've ever been selling more records than they've ever sold they can see the rewards coming through all the really hard work they put in with mutt lang on highway to hell and suddenly bang the band members weren't even around so they they kind of none of them knew exactly whether at first whether it was even true there's loads of rock singers that die before their time but he's up there with hendricks and morrison and joplin as someone who you know was he walked it like he talked it he was the real deal well you could say in theatrical terms his exit was perfect because you know he he never had such a command of his audience that he had then it's like exit and what malcolm said was that you know he's just become used to bond disappearing and not you know not being around and then suddenly turning up and and he depended on bond turning up and the thing that was most difficult to get used to was that he wasn't going to turn up anymore and i just thought it was a really poignant way of of putting it and it's something that kind of stayed with me and i think that sort of sums up you know the these are not guys that are given to sort of great displays of affected um emotion they truly felt a loss for a while the band were in meltdown but it was to be bond's mother isa scott who would provide the catalyst for ac dc to continue insisting that bond would have wanted it that way it was actually malcolm he rang isis scott bond's mother and broke the news to her that was kind of the stepping stone that they needed to be able to get back to work because um his mother said to him bomb would want you to carry on with angus and malcolm working together in the studio they would definitely have been working on ideas that would have formed the basis for in black some of those ideas would have been floating around um out of old sessions perhaps from highway to hell some would have been new ideas that have been generated on the road the way ac dc worked it really would have been angus and malcolm who would have built the song up to a certain point they wouldn't have needed anyone else around them so i mean a lot of work a lot of ground work would have been done for back in black in in the weeks after bomb's death possibly with some ideas that have been around when bomb was alive at first the band toyed with the idea of malcolm singing but these plans were soon shelved but no one at the time could have imagined ac dc ending up with ex geordie frontman brian johnson [Music] any successful band who've ever replaced the singer and moved on has done it with someone who's not like his predecessor when aussie was fired by black sabbath sabbath didn't look for an aussie claim they got ronnie james deal in for heaven and hell when david lee roth quit van halen they didn't look for another david lee roth they got sammy hagar in when brian johnson was asked to audition for ac dc he was in fact working for british leyland as a roof fitter a fan actually sent the tape into the libra krebs management of brian johnson according to the band it had been bond's fault some years before he'd actually toured in his old band fraternity with brian johnson and jordi fraternity came to england to try their luck um with the uk scene and at that point geordi the glam rock band from newcastle that brian johnson fronted uh would have been at their peak and the two of them ended up playing at least one show together so when bond died this same fan got back in touch with ac dc and pointed out bond's enthusiasm for brian um they probably didn't know what the hell they were going to do so any idea however i mean however odd it might seem now you know maybe it was just that the you know i will let's do it i mean if if they'd have been thinking perhaps a little more level-headedly they might said ah forget it we're not gonna do anything like you know we don't listen to what a fan suggests geordie in the early 70s were regarded as part of the glam rock scene the cena gave us slade sweet and perhaps more pertinently for geordie mud they had a couple of hits but unlike slayed and sweet they never really or even mud they never really had a career that continued on a certain level they had a huge hit with a song called all because of you they didn't really crack it so the band kind of imploded um brian thinking he had a big chance at fame [Music] because they they had to wear huge trousers and big platform boots and it just looked pretty ridiculous on the kind of guys from the northeast really they looked very uncomfortable with it you know brian wasn't the only name thrown into the hat i mean obviously it was a lot of press speculation at the time um one of the names uh that was being um banding around in australia was steve wright who'd sung with the easy beats um with george young and harry vander but he was a drugs counsellor at the time so it seems kind of unlikely that he would want to throw his hand his hat back into sort of like the rock and roll ring and get involved in that rock and roll lifestyle again gary holton of the heavy metal kids and jimmy barnes of cold chisel also appeared on the shortlist but their performance style was so similar to bombs that they would have been overshadowed by their predecessor uh a a lad called alan fryer from an aussie band called fatlip was reported to have been offered the job in fact it appeared in the press in australia the rumor has it that george young actually offered him the gig what terry vander and george young had done they'd gone us to so far as to take five songs from the highway to hell album white bombs vocals from them record them with alan fryer singing them and they'd in a roundabout way sort of said we we think you're good enough to do the job and he probably thought he was going to be the next lead singer of acdc uh when he a friend got in touch with him and said a mutual friend between ac dc and said there's a band that would like you to audition he said look i owe it to the guys to play the gig they'll lose money if i'm you know get a club gig they'll lose money i can't do it not certainly if i don't know who the band are and the blokes i can't tell you the band's name but i can tell you their initials uh down he came um and uh you know a typical affable geordie you know as uh immensely friendly chat um you know as friendly today you know after all the millions he's over with ac dc as he was back when he joined the band and he didn't have a pot to piss in um you know stardom hasn't changed him in any way he's he's a really nice bloke in fact um when he was supposed to be down for the audition the band was waiting for him went looking and found him playing pool with the roadies brian was the man not just because of his voice but because he fitted in so well with the rest of the band i think with the audition it probably settled him down a lot because they were very down to earth he wasn't given a full list of expectations and uh a manner of behaving they just accepted him as he was he he got the best gig a singer could have you know certainly at that time and um he knew he had a lot to live up to and it's so it's a kind of i think it was about a 12-hour flight out to nassau because you have to stop off in bermuda on the way and we played cards and brian is just one of the best comedians i mean it was just a continual stream of jokes and we had a fantastic time you might imagine that as we neared nassau that brian may be getting more and more nervous in fact as we neared nassar i think brian was getting more and more relaxed in a number of ways it is the best opening track of any album ever so it's such an ominous bell and it says it it says so much for many people the opening song on back in black with its ominous tolling bell was a big surprise now there's another song which i always relate to that and it's black sabbath by black sabbath except there's a more mournful tone about hell's bells by cdc as compared to the ominous tone of the black sabbath now and most people believe that it has a certain connection with bond scars i think they may be right in terms of spiritual connection i don't think they set out as a band ac dc to write a tribute song to their late singer but somehow there's a connection they also started the album with a song that would not have suited bond's singing style be it because of mutlang's production or just the band direction they were making stadium rock in a sense and that album really kicked that off for them but it's got one of those great openings not just the bell but the ref which slowly comes in and never really drives forward it maintains a certain stately stature which actually makes it if anything even more remarkable most fans of the band would not have known what brian johnson sounded like there was no internet to download any stuff off so unless anyone had any old singles from 1973 you know all remembered um then all they had to go on was sort of what would have been reported in the press as to vaguely what he sounded like and i remember this vividly because i was i was at school and i just come over to this country uh from australia and a huge ac dc fan and me and all my schoolmates just so eager to hear what this new guy sounded like a morning that album was released raced home on my bike and i can remember putting that album on putting the needle down and waiting and they teased you for a couple of minutes yeah with the health benefit there's this there's note hanging underneath all the way through like almost like a drone so you've got the first note down and then the other notes carry on over that but you've got to keep that low note hanging if your hand touches the guitar and you cut it out it loses all its effect it's got to be played properly whereas when you're playing a chord riff it's much easier to to bash it out but there's then you've got a root note in there you have to keep returning to the root note but then when the riff kicks in everyone's playing along and the new riff kicks in so they've gone to a second riff which they don't always do and in fact they hardly ever do change the theme you know so the new lift comes in it all settles down and then the vocals come in beautiful especially with the way malcolm plays he really does pull back sometimes it's and it might not it might just be mind you what he does but really if you listen to the whole song of the way it's played for instance hell's bells like he really does sit back malcolm's very disciplined in the way he plays he's very tight very pull back and all that and lets anglers take control it's not as though he comes in on fort leonard highway hell needs is straight in it's such a long ominous almost mystical feel to it as it builds because the first there's the bell that in itself is like you know one wow two okay i understand tribute to bomb you know and then anger starts that slow teasing sort of guitar build up and it keeps on going and it builds and the band come in and it builds but you still don't know what this guy sounds like and it's like please god let him be good you know and suddenly bang he's in and you're like thank [ __ ] for that [Music] nobody's [Music] [Applause] a lot of singers will be like well i really want to go in you know warmth high as hard as i possibly can and what he did was nicely build it and hit various notes along the way rather than blowing all the cookies one of the main problems with recalling the bell was that the key that we wanted the bell to build the octave rather that we wanted the bell to be in would have necessitated a bell twice the size of the one that we actually had we thought about using recordings of other bells but it was generally considered that we really should have a specific recording of a bell because we could control that best of all so towards the end of the period in nassau there were a couple of backing vocals that needed to be done and i then flew back to england to record the bell or to record a bell because the bell that had been commissioned wasn't ready so they arranged for us to record a bell in a in a church tower in in loughborough near where the bell foundry was so i pitched up with the uh what was then the mana mobile on the appointed morning to record this and we set microphones up in the bell tower and we very quickly found it was a huge problem bell towers also have birds living in them and every time we hit the bell the first sound you heard was the fluttering of 250 birds flying off into the leicestershire skies so we had to scrap that particular way of doing it i then talked to the people at the bell foundry and they reckoned that within the next two days they could get the actual bell ready for us so we suspended the bell in the bell foundry and i thought it'd be really cool to have the guy who made the bell hit the bell we then had to take this multi-track we chose the best hit of the bell we then did a mix of that using all of the microphone sources that we felt were best and we then slowed that down to half speed which naturally takes it down exactly one octave and that was the recording that we used ac dc were one of the first rock bands to employ the use of large props and gimmicks as part of their live shows and the bell was to become one of their most enduring icons i think of all the songs on back in black hell spells is the one that ac dc fans have readily identified with over the years it's not to say that the others don't have their moment and don't have their place but somehow there's a special relationship between hells bells and the audience because it's slightly different it was the opening song of the album and again i think that played an important part in making it part of acdc folklore but there is somehow a connection with with the past there's somehow a connection and a deferential statement towards bond scott while moving forward it opened the shows and that was that was fantastic in itself because the lights dimmed and there was at the tolling of the bell this bell was descending from the gods and then brian johnson runs on the stage and he's got a mallet with wires coming off it in one hand and i remember vividly the first time i saw him with brian he just ran on stage looked at the crown and went like that took his hat off lobbed it into the audience and then started hammering this bell the specially crafted bell cost the band six thousand pounds and now hangs over the doorway of malcolm's english mansion everybody knew that what song was coming and they also knew by that point virtually everyone that was watching the van life had the album and already knew the songs inside and out and that again was a good way of kind of bringing the crowd into the brian era already by beginning with that and kind of place an emphasis on the fact that they weren't attempting to come out and just play their hits they had a new album that they felt very proud of i mean in a way it kind of took the heat off brian you know perhaps made him feel less nervous because gave me something to do the minute he came on stage and he was obviously very nervous at that point because it's like my god you know another set of fans who haven't seen me sort of thing you know just talking about it sending shivers down the spine that's how good you know hell's bells is that's the kind of effect it actually had on you at that point and it's still a brilliant way to open an album [Music] [Applause] [Music] i think shoot to thrill has been unfairly overlooked across the years it's a fabulous song and after howl's bells you suddenly see ac dc right putting their pedal to the battle i think it's got a great groove and so forth i don't understand why it's been overlooked over the years i i think part of the reason is it never really got a shot as a single and got lost with you shook me all night long especially if someone's to say oh can you uh can you give me a sample of acdc that would be it the first the first uh two minutes of that song brilliant [Music] too many things [Music] because you've got such a you got hell's bells ominous dark hells bells the bell ring shoot the thrills that left her and clyde in the in the feel of of the album it's also one of those things where they were building it up a lot there's a lot of different things going on left and right if you turn one speaker down listen to the other you can hear all sorts of different things going on and it kind of proves that it's not as simple as it seems to be it's testament to the band that you don't notice the rhythm section it just drives them on cliff williams and phil rudd drive the band relentlessly onwards you know on a song like shoot to thrill because it's a pace your song the only overdubs recorded on the album were vocal patch ups and small parts of the league guitar and and i had a completely different setup to record angus guitar i set up amplifiers in two different rooms and we used his radio system to broadcast the sound out to those different amplifiers and his radio system gave an extra little kick to the sound so it's interesting on shoot to thrill we when we got to the mixing stage we decided that we wanted to redo some of the solo on that but we didn't have the radios with us they'd already gone off to uh to be packed up ready to go out on tour so we had to use a conventional cable and we were in a different studio so i still to this day when i listen to shoot the thrill i can hear where the guitar the lead guitar sound changes malcolm uses just basic open chords whereas angus might use a string or or a half a chord or something like that but because of what he plays the humbucker you know he he needs to come back a bit where and that's where you've got that you know the rhythm comes forward and the lead goes back and that's sort of interchanging between the two that gives it that balance it's got such a that gets and the drums haven't even kicked in yet you've got a groove coming out of the guitar so we've got a rhythm instrument playing a drummer's part and then the drummer comes in and all hell breaks loose fired on always by brilliant rhythm guitar playing from um malcolm young over the top of which angus will solo frenetically very much in a bluesy kind of vein [Music] what angus does starts her off with a couple of notes and a chord and you hear the rhythm that uh malcolm plays which is a g and a d with a little little flick in there that's just basic open chords and it's just played really tight really tight lovely lovely the riff starts out a key in a way that's perhaps one of the secrets of it when the singing comes in again like with hell's bells there's a new lift but with this riff it's not it doesn't come in before the vocal it comes in with the vocals and it's a rift that starts in a in another chord that's not the key you see what i mean so it's waiting it's kind of an anticipation thing i find ac dc is full of anticipation vocally it's very difficult you know there's a lot of breathing to be done in a very short space of time in that one i don't know if brian finds it difficult but i [ __ ] will do it it really takes out you that song because you're swooping and diving all over the shop you just do not stop it's an incessant song i think it's one of those things where brian probably looked back and he probably would have thought i wish i hadn't done that line like that because he's a real [ __ ] to do live shooter through his one even you know he has pretty had trouble with on the 1981 and 82 tours so you know brian johnson's vocals are so perfect for what they did i can't imagine bon scott singing that song the lyrics are very very much from the bond school i know i'm not saying that bond wrote them what i'm saying is that you know this is this is what ac dc do best they always have done best it's you know this is why you know girls like them but they're very much a bloke band bon songs are somewhat more cheeky to sing because they are almost autobiographical in their lyrical content i find i have to phrase words with meaning when i'm singing it i have to mean it a bit more whereas with brian i have to it's you gotta hit harder songs like shoot the thrill very difficult song to sing the line in too many women too many pills which most people regard as being an allusion to hdc and life on the road and quite understandably they they covered that sort of thing before many many occasions sex drugs rock and roll brown himself subsequently claimed it was more a statement on the fact that we were living in a society that was too dependent on pills and that women especially were stacking up on pills to try and make their lives better i'm not convinced that state was actually true i suspect it became a subsequent analogy he put forward in order to defuse a certain controversy it's kind of not really what we would see from brian in the future or you know even during that album the songs that were obviously his don't tally with that and it would seem quite a strange thing to bring to the table for a new singer i think really had those words not already existed angus and malcolm might well have said no i don't think we should go there [Music] after power age failed to take off in the u.s has hoped it was atlantic records who insisted on a change of producer for their next album highway to hell yeah i think atlantic records in in new york um felt that they had something with ac dc but it wasn't quite right for their market um then ac dc it's interesting to know ac dc when they left australia they decided to come to the to england first not to try and crank the american market and i think that's because they wouldn't they're aware that they they're sort of abrasive very energetic sort of style of rock and roll would suit much more to to uk is up until this point ac dc had always been produced by angus and malcolm's older brother george young they pretty much dictate what happens in ac dc they always have done they always will do and everyone else is kind of on the periphery of that even if they're great mates that's the core of acdc there was a little bit of irritation opening up between born on the one hand and the young brothers angus and malcolm on the other bone felt a little bit like there was a young clan angus and malcolm and george young the co-producer that the young family controlled the band who didn't really accept or acknowledge the input that the rest of the band could give to have been told that their older brother and his best friend are no longer required to produce wouldn't have gone down very well now rumor has it that george took the in public took the news incredibly well but behind the scenes was furious but what you also should know is that ac dc themselves acknowledged that yes the suggestion that they should get someone outside in to play around with their sound slightly um was required because they obviously you know saw it was a perfectly reasonable argument by atlantic the introduction of matt langers as a producer for highway to hell i feel was backed heavily by bond more than any other member of the band not only because of what mutland could bring to the table as a producer but because he wasn't george young he specifically wanted to conjure up the the type of sound that free and and those sort of rock bands had and because of my pedigree working at ireland studios and having worked with some of those artists adam thought i was a good person to introduce to mutt um we met at roundhouse studios during the recording of highway to hell and um the the the economics of the making highway to hell enabled them to employ somebody externally to either record or mix the album and they decided that mix the mix end of it was the more important that's the process that happens after the recording when you then position the music in the stereo image and you make the final layoff that becomes the album so i went down to roundhouse studios and met up with everybody and was hired to to do that mix of highway to hell now here we are in 2006 and matlan has a reputation of spending months years sometimes on any album and mutlang has a reputation for having a huge input a disproportionate input into the record when you compare him to most producers ac dc at that point um recorded very much as a garage rock band the band would often record as a live unit um mutt lang stopped all that in those days there was very little technological equipment beyond the recording console a pair of speakers and a microphone and a tape machine to record on a lot of the high-tech equipment that is available now just didn't exist at all so recording well in those days was all about the expertise about knowing the equipment that you had to work with i think what happened was that he said i want to make you more accessible but without taking away what makes acdca cdc because you know with a lot of bands they take away what makes them successful and that's the problem it's not because it's commercial or anything it's just the fact is they've taken away the real guts of what acd's are about so that's what matt lang did he gave them a little spit shine he got he gave the songs good structure clarity in the guitars clarity with the backing vocals everything on highway to hell sounded really good matt langer knew what acdc were capable of and i think he knew how far he could take that sound without taking the rawness away without taking their character away from it but how far he could take it what he could do with it they were using these 50 watt combos marshall little combos little lamps and great great sound great sounding amps you know there's no there's not a lot of bottom end coming out of them but then with mutt lane you can hear that they've brought in these quad boxes um the big closed cabs and muttling what he did was he separated a lot of the signals it's all separated everything is perfectly he takes the song for what it is he takes it apart and he puts it back together and then he'll say but we can take it apart we can do it this way he shows he shows many different ways of being able to do the same song later in matt's career def leppard would give an insight into the producer's painstaking recording process where every note on every song was recorded separately [Music] and if it takes months or years to do it properly he'll do it to his satisfaction but when dc started to work with him on first highway to hell then back in black he hadn't reached that level so they got him at almost the perfect time for matt lang the producer i mean bomb was taught breathing exercises by matt lang so um he and learned to to sort of develop his singing style instead of um just going in and belting out live is what he had done i mean he was learning all these new processes and you know i mean everyone always says with ac dc and matt lang it was just zeitgeist it was right time it was right place he didn't so much change ac dc has slightly refined certain key elements so the guitars maybe weren't slightly as harsh so that the arrangements were not always in your face but had a certain balance and so it was that ac dc found themselves back in the studio again with mat lang for the recording of back in black given that as well as the fact they had the material mutt's input was just kind of let's get it down let's get it done and the band were that good by then that musically they could lay the tracks down almost in one the reason why it was done quickly two months is what it took to record was because anything longer and the momentum would have been lost and i think that's part of the problem with for those about to rock which came later is i had too long to produce it and a lot of that live feel and momentum came out of the mix he knew that with them he couldn't turn them into death leopard they weren't gonna sort of soften up too much for radio but what he did do with back in black was he changed the sound to fit brian it was a bit ahead of its time in terms of sound quality and much like his other work he'd kind of brought them a few years in front already which is one reason why it lasts so well it still sounds good now because he did a good job sort of 30 years ago with money honey i think you'd see the fundamental difference between bonscott and brown johnson bonds lyrics clever based on foreplay to some extent as much as the actual sexual congress itself bran goes straight to the point absolutely no messing about you know they weren't they obviously acdc were no strangers to you know to women of the oldest profession um and bond used to relish in you know detailing his exploits with ladies of the night um and it was just something that again you know it carried on it carried on that tradition of what bond did and they did it was still doing it very well it's interesting because you can always sort of compare i think ac dc songs from one album to another money honey is always the beating around the bush you know beating around the bush on highway to hell money honey on back in black yeah it's the kind of thing he was thinking of in the bahamas he was eyeing up american women and i think he he probably got his fill when he could and uh a song that's kind of referencing prostitution was um i think more in line with his kind of mentality and the sorts of things he would sing about in future and there are a couple of occasions on back in black where they just they go straight for the jugular as far as you know their lyrical wordplay um instead of you know beating around the bush as it were and then and then hitting um what they did and it's you know it's a perfect perfect example of the kind of the lowbrow is is how critics would have turned it but you know it's like affable blokishness [Music] i wonder [Applause] [Music] [Applause] brian double-tracked his vocal and that's to say that what they do is they brian would have gone into the studio and he'd laid down on the on the chorus he would have laid down him singing at once then matalanga and tony platt would have set up another vocal channel and he would have seen exactly the same thing again in those days and then they would have raised them up together to give a bigger vocal the way that comes in you can't replicate that power it's only four chords what is it that makes that so powerful when they steam into that little ac dc classic riff that they do it's only simple chords but it's the way they play it over that bass and drums which is guaranteed to get you going every song on the album and this is true with with you know with what do you do for money honey it's got a swing phil rudd what a fantastic drummer i mean you could set a watch to that man almost every song on back in black is about sex that's the way they were that's the way to dc almost have been all the way down the years that's the way they write but i think this album more than any other the lyrics tend to stick out because they're so much more obvious than was the case with with bon scots here bon scott may have written about a prostitute but wouldn't have done it in that way bon scott samantha wrote about the clap in a card game scenario brown johnson writes about prostitutes since pretty much you can see yeah right standing on the street corner you can actually see in your mind probably another song that people might suggest there was perhaps some input from you know work they might have done with bomb um but you know all the credits uh young young johnson um and brian johnson has proved you know since that he's more than adept at matching bond for dublin tundra and for you know for schoolboy smart and rippledry [Music] giving the dog a bone again is a great song in terms of the riff and and the rhythm and so forth and you hear the chorus in your mind with obviously the group shout given the dog a bone given the dog a bone you actually hear that in your head um again i think it comes down to the way brian johnson approached lyrics but the title itself leaves nothing at all open for doubt what he's talking about basically is readily available girls groupies i think more than anything else and that's where brian johnson honed down his style in terms of well if i'm going to write about groupies i'm going to call them dogs and i'm going to talk about boning dogs or giving the dog a bone a lovely story about giving a dog a bone was that brian was supposed to have written that song because he liked canines and and cats and he was very big into animals that's what his mum told everybody anyway um giving a dog a bone it's it's a it's a it's a great lyric she takes you down easy going down to her knees going down to the devil down down at 90 degrees what are we on about guys [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] they're on a roll here aren't they i mean from if hell's bells itself was about the storm that you know that they were confronted with whilst recording the album they've quickly forgotten that and they're in their stride shoot to thrill what do you do for money honey give them the dog a bone um three giving the dog a bone another so real jack have a rock and roll song you know it's sort of them at full pelt it's possibly slightly clever in some of the lyrics he came up with but again it's very straightforward very obvious and i think in his way he was actually looking forward to getting out on the road hey this is what we can do and also i think there was actually an input from the rest of the band here especially from the young's because that's the way they perceived and treated groupies they're there to be no it's it's a two-way street they want to shag us we want to shag them we'll move on they'll move on who cares he has given a dog a bang like what do you do for money honey i mean the lyrics leave nothing to the imagination and it's like i'm giving the dog a bone you know and that might be an illusion but we certainly know what it's alluding to you're left in absolutely no doubt you know it's another song about [ __ ] which is what acdc obviously enjoyed doing and what they do best there has always been a lot of controversy over who exactly wrote what on back in black certainly in brian's geordie days he was not responsible for many of the lyrics these lyrics whether they've come from brian malcolm angus or matt langer they've come from somewhere and they've got a nice they roll well in this song she's using her head again and then you've got a nice call and response with the backing vocals later in the song she's using a hat again using her hair again very gospel type thing that call and response thing the the the backing vocal context on ac dc is is is really to just encourage people to sing along um and uh giving the dog a bone is a classic one of that because it is very much a sing-along uh song and it's just everybody around the microphone just belting it out interestingly enough i think musically is probably the most no messing straight to the point riff they had in the album they do go straight in there no messing around at all let's just get into the act and get out again and move on [Music] compass point studios is located on the island of nassau in the bahamas very much cut off from the rest of the world this idyllic location offers artists a uniquely relaxing environment to work from the choice of compass point studios was the result of a whole basket of different reasons um i think most importantly it was a an opportunity for us all to go off and make the album somewhere um together and out of the gate as it were according to angus uh the reason the band went to compass point in the bahamas to record uh was a mixture of tax reasons and available studios and obviously there were studios all around the world but um it kind of seemed to marry the two together well that they could get out the country and um forfeit the tax kind of situation and um just get on with it in a fairly low-key environment uh where there wasn't any outside kind of pressure or interest because people in the bahamas weren't interested in acdc it's a one-story one-stroke two-story building that is just the other side of the road from the beach as you as you head out of nassau town it's thankfully about two and a half to three minutes walk from an extremely nice pub called the travelers rest that does fantastic food and great beer and amazing banana daiquiris it was owned by chris blackwell of ireland records fame it was cut off in a way from being in an urban location where the band come into the studio record and then go home or go back to their apartment because there's not a huge amount to do with that island yes there's a pub yes there's various other activities but because you almost are locked into this situation where you're living the album 24 hours a day i believe matlank felt it was the right thing for the band to do to get away from all the pressure of constantly being badgered by the media or badgered by the fans and to get into an environment with the only thing that mattered was the music some of the accommodation was actually in the same building as the studio and then there are several houses that um that the studio has access to that are in the immediate vicinity and the band was staying in one of those houses i was staying in a flat above the studio living over the shop as it were and mutt was staying in a house somewhere else at the time nassau had been going through some political unrest and there had been a number of tourists mugged and even murdered on the island but when they did arrive the locals gave them six foot spears to guard themselves with which they thought was a joke at first but it they soon found out it was entirely serious and uh the place where they were the lady that looked after the place there um came around with a machete and said if anyone sticks their head through the door that you don't know chop the head off in some respects the only difficult thing about recording somewhere like nassau is to get people to come in to the room with no windows um you know out of the the blue sky and the sunshine and the uh the pleasant sea breezes but there again there's only so much sunbathing you can do so and of course brian never took his hat off so a strange place to say the least but then if you speak to acdc about the process they'll tell you they were working so hard they didn't really pay much attention to what was what's been speculated was going on around them while they were recording and certainly didn't have enough time to enjoy you know what would seem to be very relaxing surroundings and they were pretty well consistently on the road all the way through the albums prior to highway to hell all through highway to hell and then into back in black so for them to have a a period of time i guess you know somewhere nice it was a way of combining the two things and it was obvious that the schedule as soon as that album was made was going to be fairly tough too this hard-working ethic meant they were able to finish recording the album in what seems like an amazing six weeks ac dc have never been one of those bands that spend a long time in the studio we aren't talking seven years like def leppard you know and six weeks in recording studio with mutt lang is a lifetime to ac dc having a target to making an album is a very good thing because it focuses the mind and making a rock album over too long a period of time i think could be counterproductive this particular back in black was an album that needed to be made it needed a focus of attention it needed to be made in a a defined period of time it's a testament to the quality of musicianship and songwriting that they could go into a studio and knock an album out very quickly that would be of the quality of let it be rock or power rage for example um and when when forced to dissect their music in the way mutt lang would have forced them to dissect their music they still i mean they would have probably hit a sort of a a happy medium with him they had a new singer in it was a new start for the band a fresh opportunity and i'm convinced the reason why and i'm sure it was matt lang who suggested compass point i'm sure he suggested it because he felt it would create an unreality bubble so that they wouldn't have to deal with the reality still are coming to terms with bong's death they could concentrate fully and solely on making the best album possible let me put my love into you babe uh is interesting because i mean we are talking obviously way back in black was recorded we're talking about vinyl so we're talking about two sides and this inside one so they've built up side one on a musical level with hell's bells then they are full pelt rocking out with shoot to thrill what do you do for money honey giving the dog a bone and then they drop it down a touch because it's the end of the side let me put my love into you i always felt was actually connected perhaps with the way brian johnson grew up in terms of the fact let me put my love into eubaid let me make my love on the line which was almost that the old age old teenage thing that meatloaf tackles a little bit as well at some point about um telling a girl anything she wants to hear if you can get laid it's nice and laid back but it still rocks you know there's some bands that think you have to go 200 miles an hour to rock and it's this proves there's power within holding it back a little it's it's it's a that's a good song for um putting on if you've got a new woman because she thinks she thinks it's a it's a nice bluesy little number but by the end you're really rooting her from behind there's absolutely no question what the song's about it's a bloke asking a woman if he can [ __ ] her um but done in actually quite a nice way this time not quite as bold and brass has given the dog a bone let me put my love into you babe um perhaps the nicest question ac dc ever posed [Music] it's kind of their concession to commercialism really kind of very radio sounding not that it ever got on the radio but it was it was more their softer side coming out i think that became a single as a result of the success of the album picking singles is always a very difficult thing for a rock band the important thing from the perspective of back in black was that it got the band on to american rock radio and american rock radio that particular point in time was really starting to take off when you're producing any recording in any case and you know this is another one of mutt's fortes is spotting the songs that should be contextualized so that they can be radio friendly so they can actually be used as a single and and in those days of course because it's in the days of vinyl it also required you thinking about how can that be edited down to three and a half minutes long because that's basically all the people would play you can look into all reasons why a song is commercial and often it's deliberately commercial whether the writers or the producer laid the harmonies on the chorus often it's just the way it's been written let me put my love into you baby a commercial song it's the way the chorus starts on a new chord a new key where we're in the same key but it goes to a new chord which gives it a little lift [Music] [Applause] and the backing vocals which is another langer touch with brian johnson singing underneath himself the chorus has been double tracked brian taking two takes of the same vocal performance let me put my love into you babe it's almost satchmo it's down there within satchmo and what matt lang has done is layer the the backing vocals around it almost like feather in a nest so you've got brian in here and he feathers the backing vocals around it quite frankly if you're going to go and make a record just so that three people in scunthorpe can listen to it you shouldn't be making records if you're going to make a record you make a record for the widest possible audience to listen to it the widest possible audience for rock music at that particular time was america let me put my love into you gave angus an ideal opportunity to showcase his skills as a genius blues guitarist angus is a very very good blues guitar player it's often overlooked with ac dc's work uh let me put my love into you it just is it gives them a chance to sort of display something slightly out there's something extra from the you know the full force rocking machine that they are it was released as a single later on in the life of back and black and wasn't a huge success but i think it may be the song the soul song on back in black that gives an understanding of brian johnson's psyche not just about brian johnson's uh need to have a quick shag i think this may actually be bronze plea to ac dc fans saying i have to be my own man it's not my fault bon scott died i have this opportunity you have this opportunity let's move forward together [Music] i think part of the reason why backing black works so well is the way that tracks are ordered had it started with back in black i don't think the impact would have been as immediate as hell's bells there's something about the structure and the way the songs are actually put onto certainly the vinyl that work so magnificently and i think a lot of time and effort went into where the songs were going to go in the album it wasn't the case of let's record the nine throw them up in the air wherever they move that's what we're going to do with it one of matlan's trademarks is to only work on the final tracks intended for an album this is why there are no spare or partially finished songs for back in black they recorded 10 and that was it which is why you know when uh we've had like the bonfire box sets come out with a remastered version of back in black or backing black's been reissued along with the rest of their back catalogue you don't find extra tracks or things like that because the most of the hard work will have been on on the music that's on the record the the track order didn't relate in in any way to the order in which we recorded it we we it with the the order in which we recorded it was um was more about what everybody felt that particular day um the last track on the left side was recorded last song because it hadn't been formulated or it hadn't been written basically before we got that back then we're talking about two sides of vinyl these days you're talking about 70 minutes of cd which is why albums tend to have a lot of filler on them but you look at back in black and it's ten absolutely scorching hot rock tracks inevitably with mutt you'd put it together in one order and then take it apart and put it together in another order and of course other things came to bear on it because this was recorded in the days of vinyl and and so one had to make sure that the sides were balanced up in terms of length and you couldn't put more than 25 minutes on one side and 10 minutes on the other side so um and plus the fact that there were always 10 songs on an ac dc album so there were going to be five songs on one side and five songs on the other they kind of knew most of the order of the tracks where they wanted to put the kind of big numbers that they'd got in mind and certainly at the start of each side and at the end of each side there's kind of certain tracks probably four of them that were interchangeable and perhaps they weren't sort of thinking too detailed about where they were going i think likes of what do you do for money honey shake like that kind of thing that could have gone almost anywhere it was obvious that hell's bells was going to be the first track on side one which inevitably meant that side two would start with back in black there were certain things that that lifted themselves in into their position um and then we just tried things in different places because it it you can think that song will work great against another song and then you put it in there and it isn't it just doesn't work right you know it dips at the right point it lifts you back up at the right point it hits another absolute peak but doesn't leave you on that peak it then just drops you down leaves you wanting just that little bit more back in black the song and back in black the track that's the tribute to bob that's what it was you know that's what it was meant for it comes housed in the black sleeve you know they're in mourning even though they've carried on um they are in mourning for their their lost singer they do have a new singer who's belting his guts out in itself a tribute to bomb because you know this guy knows the shoes that he's got to fill and he's giving his all we are still in mourning for uh for our fallen comrade if you want it's only been a couple of months since he died so don't think for a minute we're not sad at his loss so there may be a certain element of that please accept the fact we are moving forward and therefore this song is called back in black as indeed is the album in order to represent the way we really feel deep down but i think it's also a song of hope it's a song about ac dc saying we really feel we're on the verge of something special you know it's not just a case of losing a singer and replacing him there are moments on the album when brian johnson firmly establishes himself very much as the new front man and back in black is certainly one of them he never came across as trying to copy bomb of trying of trying to be a newborn he just was bomb was great and on me the news [Music] [Applause] [Music] yes [Music] [Applause] very unusual song in a sense that the way it's played it's sort of like a uh it's sort of like the turnaround on a blues song you know that you come you come to the end of the 12 bars you turn around you start again you know it's just that it's like that little bit there [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] funny with ac dc i always used to think i could play the riffs and then when you get into it they're not as easy to and the simplest things are the hardest and back in black i find it now fairly comfortable to play i don't need to look at the guitar for the little fiddly bit but i do often miss a note there on the language the rift for back in black had been around a while from the highway to hell to her and malcolm had come up with it and been playing it kept santa angus what do you think of this and he he was like yeah that's that's [ __ ] oh you know if you don't want it i'll have it and i'll say i wrote it and so they it was something when something like that kicks around for a long time and they keep playing it and it keeps being refined but they know they've got something with that general structure they knew it was going to metamorphose into something something pretty big it's the space between the chords as well i've always said that ac dc about anticipation you're waiting for the moment when the rocket goes off and you're waiting for the bass and drums to come in or whatever the impact of the song is there's always a moment we're back in black playing it after the lead break then malcolm will probably have a little bit more gain on the guitar there's a little riff that he's got to do in there where he follows angers and uh playing it on a standard grip setup would probably wouldn't sound too good you know it would sound too twangy one more thing about backing black is they decide to put a new riff in near the end which is one of the great rifts where they're quite quite fast challenging [Music] [Music] two guitars the drums in the bass drop out classic ac dc two guitars on the riff drums and bass kicking again and then the backing vocals on back it really is great packing black unlike a lot of ac dc songs got a lot of gaps in it that those gaps make it a lot easier to put lyrics into place it was one of the songs that did get a lot of lyrical contribution in the studio and we all contributed doing double time on the seduction line was one of my ones so i'll always i'll always claim that [Music] it's almost like a rap i think in fact probably there's a couple of rap artists have used back in black lyrics in songs back in black i hit the sack i beat doing i'm gonna have to be back you know that kind of thing they wanted to write back in black obviously about bomb but not so people would really you know with his name in it and we think bonnie's lovely we think bonnie's great within the song some of the lines are a bit of a giveaway number one with the bullet i'm a power pack the lion forget the hearse because i'll never die i've got nine lives cat's eyes was certainly a bomb lyric i think um it's kind of how he was feeling before his death was the fact that he was untouchable and couldn't die and uh made it all the more ironic back in black i hit the sack i've been too long i'm glad to be back it almost suggests of an after life um almost it's almost spiritual without being religious i think you've got to point that out because ocdc aren't the type to be political religious or anything i mean you know making black it's been too long i'm glad to be back let loose from the noose that kept me hanging around about it's almost sad i nearly you know nearly died my spirit lives on in whichever way you want to look at that that's what's good about these lyrics they don't actually paint the whole picture you you got to think what you they mean to you we are still in mourning for uh for our fallen comrade if you want it's only been a couple of months since he died so don't think for a minute we're not sad at his loss so there may be a certain element of that please accept the fact we are moving forward and therefore this song is called back in black as indeed is the album in order to represent the way we really feel deep down but i think it's also a song of hope it's a song about ac dc saying we really feel we're on the verge of something special you know it's not just a case of losing a singer and replacing him it is the center point of the album it's still a major part of the live show it's still one of the greatest songs that the band probably um ever recorded perhaps at the time overshadowed by hell's bells because it had the bell and it opened the album and it was but back in black is is the one that you know really stands out 26 years down the line as being the centerpiece of of the album as it should be it's the title track it's all about bond scott about you know saying goodbye about paying homage to this great rock and roll singer who's sadly no longer with them and about moving on [Music] the psychic rapport between them is obviously because they're brothers first of all but there's something there nobody can play those two lifts as tight as those two however you hardly try there's something about the way they play which is uh it is like a psychic link they're very adept at getting a selection of tunes that would fit together mutt was obviously having some input on that and guiding that but mutts a very perceptive producer his role with ac dc was was very much as a guiding hand because these weren't people you could order about you know the proper adult musicians that that had a very clear idea in their mind of where they wanted to be with their next album if you stripped down the angus brothers guitar plane and took it back to the 50s he would end up with a sound very reminiscent of chuck berry take the distortion down a bit take the volume down a little bit perhaps sing it with a little less gravel and you can almost every time come down and it will become a 50s rock and roll number [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] well from what i know about the glitch firstly it's a much bigger guitar heavier it's a rhythm guitar malcolm uses quite heavy strings on it to give it more volume more punch more output whereas the gibson st that angus uses is a light one of the lightest electric guitars you can get it's a guitar that can sing light gauge strings of course you know the thinnest you can get i think almost nines you can stroke the guitar and you can make it whale and sing which is perfect for the guitar perfect for what angus does malcolm plays a large gretch which produces a very different sound to malcolm's tiny gibson if you have two guitars in a band and you have them both coming out of separate channels you get like a wall of guitars if you pan the stereo on highway to hell and back in black if you pan to the left you'll hear just malcolm coming out [Music] if you pan to the right you can hear just angers coming out [Music] and and the lead brakes usually just come straight out the middle well i think malcolm's had his glitch since 1963. he must have changed the pickup a few times but he's got his own sound and he's always used a certain amp if you listen to back in black for instance for the guitar sounds malcolm uses a gretch and the gretch has a filter tron pick up i mean it's been around since the 50s you can only get it from one place it's on the verge of becoming a single coil like a telecaster whereas angus uses an sg which has got a humbucker in it and a humbucker is two pickups put together and the reason why it's called a humbucker is because because of the two magnets it cancels the hum that you get from single cores my main guitar i use the angus young signature pick which is a slightly modified version of the same it's got more top end on it more treble more bite slightly different sound nice sound but the tightness of malcolm's rhythm and angus loose playing work really well together so if malcolm's got a riff going he'll keep it nice and tight locked in malcolm angus is hits the chords over the top malcolm uses a very high gauge of strings on his guitars these thick strings can only be used for rhythm guitar work and are an important part of the ac dc sound if you get two guitars one with a standard set and one with a heavy set and you strum one and strum the other you'll notice there's a big big difference between the two but the difference with a heavy gauge string you can't do some of the stuff that you can do on a standard set of strings you know like playing lead or stuff like that but if you if you want to get some chords or if you're just playing rhythm like malcolm does perfect and you get a lovely sound you can get the definition of one guitar and you get the filth of another guitar when backing black came out there a couple of moments on on the album i felt were new new styles of playing angus started picking the three finger picking and shoot the thrill [Music] wenger's carried on virtually every album after that featured that style of picking i mean for those about to rock the intro to that was another example he'd found something else that he liked to do and it worked really well the sound of the two guitars works so well together there's a music there's a musical knowledge between the two that is it's quite simple what they're doing but it is psychic [Music] [Applause] [Music] machines you shook me all night long was the single from back in black its chart success gave ac dc a brand new audience of pop fans both in the uk but especially in america you know ac dc have a knack of being able to pen brilliant hit singles you shoot me all night long is is just a great catchy you know it's one of the bet one of the all-time great metal singles [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] acdc's audience grew exponentially with black and black it went from the hardcore very big hardcore die-hard hard rock fans into an audience that embraced everybody partly due to that song i think i'm sure that they've sold 10 million of the 40 million albums because of that song and i feel that you should be all night long certainly gave it a kickstart but it wouldn't have happened had the album not been as strong as it were lyrically it's disgusting for the top 40 but you know that'll put a smile on any found the face of any ac dc fan you know it's great hcdc sing about it's another song about shagging you know talking about shang those women you know american women are noted for having hefty thighs brian had never been to america knocking me out with those american thighs what theosaurus did he borrow that from it's an incredible song he'd never been to america how did he know about american thighs he'd never really written songs greatly about about women but that was one song where he just went and thought right he always said there's a classic line he said he'd never been to america but he'd seen the women and he said everything everything pointed north on them i think it's great she wrote this song about women he'd never met in a country never been though i think it's fantastic she told me to come when i was already there which i'm still you know was a bon scott line but it's nicely worked into the whole fabric and the song itself is a joy it's joyous it's uplifting it's upbeat it's got that sexual overtone of course but it's not smutty it's just a little naughty the song was a hit all over europe charted in the uk and more importantly for ac dc went into the us top 40 their first ever single to do so so they knew exactly how they wanted to sound when they went in to record back in black where they probably hadn't when they went into record highway to hell but they knew exactly what they wanted they also knew that they needed to write a hit if they were ever going to get their music played on commercial u.s radio stations where in the early 80s rock was still considered a niche the recording of you shook me all like long that was the one moment where we started off down the wrong path malcolm and angus weren't around when we started putting the vocal down and we got some of the chorus happening and and mutt had got brian singing the emphasis the other way around instead of you oh shut me on night it was you shook me on it went a different way the emphasis was slightly different malcolm came in and said no it wasn't supposed to be like that it's supposed to be like this so we had to go back and do that again and you know and i mean that kind of gives you an impression of how the collective spirit of making the record was there was no great argument about it the way the lyrics go isn't the way that matt langer wanted them the first off when brian was the first vocal take that brian did on back in black mart lang wanted to go she was a fast machine and she kept him out of clean he wanted it pulled apart and he played it back to malcolm and he went nah what the [ __ ] that i don't know did go back the other way at rocks i've seen interviews with angus and malcolm and angus was saying there's a little country rift that they had and they brought it into the song they sort of built this song around that during the chorus you shook me on that that little thing that i do in there that's just very country [Music] the rift goes from the main key to the dominant key the dominant key is when you hear a dominant key in a piece of music it's like the end of a hymn or a piece of music where you're waiting for it to return to the last call that's the best way i can describe it in 12 bar blues it's the last key they get to before they go back to the beginning and you know they're going to go back to the beginning and that's possibly part of the commercial aspect of the riff again the chorus is very big it's lots of harmonies going on i wouldn't like to think how many vocals are actually on that but when you listen to them do it live it's a stripped down version but there's a lot more voices in the actual final mix down of that when massive success came to them it wasn't just a quick flash in the pan it was built kind of slowly i just got bigger and bigger and bigger i mean by the time they released fly on the wall which i think is perhaps the worst album cdc ever released they were probably at their their biggest commercially much much bigger than they were when they released back in black and yet back in black is by far and away you know a better album and unless everybody knows a much much bigger selling album you shook me all night long was actually released as a single twice firstly from back in black and then five years later from the who made who compilation album um it was certainly a track that they would do more of in the future it's something that kind of led them to to see that they could do that kind of material whereas before they were a bit limited in the kind of stuff they could put together when we'd finished mixing the album in new york um because of the schedule that everybody had and because we were a little bit behind the schedule it fell to mutt and i to take the album and in those days you kind of delivered the album to the record label and all these guys came in all of the marketing people from all the various territories around the states and they all sat around in this room and uh and we played them the album from top to bottom but the thing that always sits in my memory is is that all these guys kind of sat around and and the the main marketing guy said well started discussing what would be best in best terrible you know different territories and of course he mentioned he said well you shook me on another seems to me a good lead-off single that would be great in the midwest and so on and you've got all these guys well i'm not sure we'll get that onto radio and things like that so it's very much it always put into perspective to me sometimes how wrong these people can be because that's arguably one of the best rock hit singles that ever hit the american charts [Music] have a drink of me was question marked as being potentially tasteless given the circumstances surrounding bon scott's death but evidently um you know was another tribute to bond a man who liked to drink um who you know but bond liked to drink and bond like to take drugs but did so in moderation i don't think any of them actually sat there and thought oh that's a bit close to the mark because bond wasn't that kind of person he wasn't someone that would be offended by that kind of thing i feel that a lot of assumptions were made about have a drink on me the assumptions about bonn and his role in inspiring the lyrics but i think the reality is very different and i don't think bon scott had any real part to play in that particular song but according to brian it wasn't like that at all it was more the way that he met the boys in the band and kind of got to know them well um his whole mentality being from newcastle where people are big drinkers and um kind of friendly and get to know each other through a drink you kind of say have a drink on me so in a way it's acdc paying tribute to what they were about and their position in rock and roll because hey this is what we do he's delirious whiskey whiskey gin and brandy with a glass i'm pretty handy you know i'm trying to walk a straight line on sound mash and cheap wine they are genius that is absolutely genius to get the lyrical role to it and that includes all those drinks in it i mean you got to sit down and be and be sober to do that [Music] [Music] now we're gonna make a big noise [Music] [Music] it's almost a tip of the hat from bryant a bond but whether bond had any input into that song there's only a few a handful of select people that know the the essence of the lyrics were brought about by brian obviously and angus and malcolm and then everybody else fed in when there were maybe lines missing but the the way the lyric in the song went was the perception of of the guys whose songs they are and and if i was to give an opinion of whether the lyric was one thing or another it would be my opinion just the same as anybody else has an opinion on that particular song i think there's too much trying to read into the lyrics from certain songs and back in black a bond stop connotation i actually think it it's a combination of acdc saying to everybody amuses about having a good time so go and have a drink of us have a drink on me is based on a very simple blues riff but with matlang's musical input the song is given a more refined sound this is an emotive song it's one of the ones that brian really i think feels at home with everybody likes a drink i think he feels slightly more at home with his song and he starts off again he doesn't blow his cookies in this one it comes in very powerfully but i think it's part of bond's role in ac dc that everyone wanted to relate every song on back in black to him and to his reputation and to his legacy and i think that pays tribute to bomb but is unfair on ac dc on an album like back in black if you put that track on any other album people will be saying oh fantastic it's it's not lost because it's on back in black but it's not the classic would have been on another album [Music] there was a certain audience nature um to what was going on we were the audience for brian albee at the small audience while he was performing those songs and i think that encouraged him to perform so it was quite natural that some of the most extraordinary performances that he gave on some of those songs you you just the only comment you could make when he finished that performance was to push the talk back and clap because it said everything brian johnson delivered on back in black one of the greatest rock and roll debuts of the 20th century it's an absolute tour de force i don't think he was ever better before or after this was when he really rose to his moment all musicians perform best if you can create an environment that they feel most comfortable in brian was certainly no exception in that and my approach to recording any musician is always the same is just to try and make people feel as comfortable and as natural as they possibly can you know some people might crack under that pressure i think it's it's a measure of the character of brian johnson um that he he managed to adapt to that situation as far as what i think of his his vocal performance on back in black it's absolutely stellar it's enormous the sound that matt lane got he got a really good sound he positioned the vocals well within the mix they weren't done they weren't over they weren't domineering but they weren't too far back and he's never been able to better that and he as he says there are some songs where there are some notes that even dogs can't hear them there seems little point in comparing the performance of brian to bonscott when both singers have such a different approach to their craft brian came into a completely different set of circumstances from the ones that that bomb faced um obviously from brian's perspective it was kind of a scary moment but the guy is an amazing singer and and really it was really down to making sure that brian was comfortable and he could then get on with doing what he did best and and he did that in bucket loads if brian had tried to emulate bond from the off he wouldn't have even got the gig with a band because when i was talking about going back to alan friar the reason he didn't get the job was that he was too much like bond he's he was australian he had that that inflection in his voice and also he was very he had good bond homie he liked to drink and the band thought what if this happens again there are two controversies that hang over back in black did bond record material for the album and did he contribute any of the lyrics there is no demo with bond scott he never demoed anything with the band for back in black sorry all those people out there who believe in the loch ness monster this is where it's debunked it doesn't exist i know people claim they've heard cassettes they've heard mp3s on the net they're not bombed the lyrical issue with bond squad is a little bit more muddied and slightly more controversial the fact is bond did write one or two lines for the back and black album i know i saw them i saw he'd written them down she told me to come but i was already there from he shook me all night long as a bond scotland definitely no question about it ian jeffries ac dc's tour manager claims to have sheaths of papers of lyrics born had written for back in black and that some of those lyrics turned up in songs now how much he actually contributed is a moot point my feeling is no more than a couple of lines were ever used but the vast majority of the lyrics came from brown johnson and also maybe from anglers and malcolm young he's rehearsing with them the next thing he's recording an album with them but not only that he's actually replacing one of the best loved singers in rock and roll in the band and he dealt with it all and for him it must have been a very strange feeling because he was replacing an icon he was stepping into the shoes of someone who'd become a legend someone who was a character very popular one of the great front men of all time and he was worried about the um the kind of reaction to him being the new singer but as far as actually whether he could do the job whether he was capable of leading that kind of band that was never in question not only that someone had a very distinctive way of writing lyrics and he suddenly you're in acdc congratulations we're going in the studio in a couple of weeks to start recording an album so get writing those lyrics and get weaving in the studio i think it's it's kind of probably stretching the boundaries to think he might have been unhappy there because although he said he didn't like the relaxed kind of pace of life um in a sense it actually suited him down to the ground to be like that because that way there was less pressure which is one of the reasons why they were there in the first place although the pressure on brian must have been enormous it's easy to overlook how the rest of the band must have been feeling one of their band mates was dead two months later during the studio with this guy they hardly knew doing an album and they must have wondered at certain points are we doing the right thing maybe we should have waited you might perhaps think the band had to adapt to blind but i don't believe they did the acdc ethic is to get a good riff put it together hand it out two guitars put the bass and drums behind it so i still believe that brian was working to the band and it worked it worked as did bon scott but the ac dc style didn't change it's a kind of hammered out belter of a voice especially on back in black but it's the kind of voice that has to be used at full pelt you know what i mean uh it hasn't been easy playing sailing for him all the way through being an ac dc it's not the young's aren't the easiest people to um you know to deal with at times you know and there's always been rumors that oh brian's out abandoning it and someone else he's always denied brian tells you that they're not true but you know to have that kind of speculation going on about what you do in your career can't be that easy and he's dealt with all that and very much the same matter of fact way that he dealt with joining the band you know it's a bit like um going into a an acting role and they're saying well we we don't want your love each side we want you just to be tough and mean um and ac dc just said there's no balance in this band you got to get in there and give 100 and there is the story that brian tells himself about the first track being that he actually vocally recorded was you shook me all night long and he sort of said what do you want me to do lads and malcolm said go in there and give it some and he did he went in there came back out and they played it back and he said jesus sounds like someone's dying in there and it was it was him shake a leg i think the most underrated song back in black i think it's the best riff on the album um i think it's the best vocal performance on the album but it's one hell of a beast of a rock and roll song what earth are they talking about shake a leg to most people it's when you're going for a piss in the path when you're trying to get the last bit because it doesn't trickle down your leg and i think actually that may be closer to the truth than anything else shake a leg almost verges into heavy metal and is certainly the heaviest track on the album this was a great way of showing what they were capable of when they put their minds to it [Music] [Applause] [Music] brian's vocal performance on the track was so remarkable that the song was immediately considered too dangerous for brian to perform live and he's only done so on a couple of occasions it's the only song in the album where matt lang let them loose to just do what they wanted to do and i have a feeling it's the free form song the song that was born almost out of a jam their songs are built around riffs um you know primarily that's what they're about and and this you know when they lock into a groove like they do on on a shaker leg they just sort of like knock everyone else out for six you know if you think about what else was around at that time there was nothing like it you know it was a kind of brute power that's totally different from all the other songs on the album because of the way they play the riff the rift that they play throughout the song is played on the e string it was like that they had this riff and it's all done on one string and it's a run down or we're actually to run up i can't think of another song that they did where they did that the vocal performance from brian sends shivers down your spine um you know that married with this just super powerful riff the kind of riff that sort of thing that metallica would be coming up with on their black album sort of you know like 10 11 years down the line because of its tempo and high reaching notes shaker leg was by far the toughest song on the album for brian to perform you could see the veins standing out on the side of his head when he sung that one that's for sure that is the most difficult song to sing and i've sung it and it is almost impossible to sing live most of the vocal performances we spent the best part of the day working on each one but a lot of that was because you can't expect anybody to sing at that level with that amount of power consistently all day so we we'd have to take breaks we'd have to go off and do something else you know we'd stop and do a bit of you know guitar something like that or do some backing vocals it's a hell of a of a vocal because it starts off again it starts off quite high anyway it sets us it really does set the scene and when brian moves up he moves through the gears pretty rapidly and it's got a double edged chorus where he he says shake a leg the next line shake your head is even higher than shake a leg shake a leg shake your head and it's really high i couldn't do it without standing up and squeezing me nuts it's fantastic because we you know one of the points about recording those vocals was that matt and i expected him to put 110 percent into every single line on that album and he put 120 140 into every line on that album which is why it's so absolutely remarkable what the good thing about that where it sits i think on the album um because you have a drink on me and it can shake a leg and then it's just before the end of the album and it sits nicely because you're sort of almost blown out you sort of listen to that and it's oh geez it's been traditional for ac dc to finish their albums with a slow bluesy number rock and roll ain't noise pollution was the one song that hadn't been written before the band reached the studio originally um the band were quite happy to go with nine tracks but the record company and matt langer really want to tend to round things up and in fact what happened was we all went off we took an evening off and went out for dinner while malcolm got on with putting it together with um with the studio assistant benjamin armbrister huge great uh bahamian guy who sat in on drums um and uh when we came back from dinner that's what they got and it was just where everybody went yeah this is fantastic this is perfect [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] i took [Music] [Applause] any blues guitarist would immediately recognize the song as simple 12 bar blue 12 bars the structure of a general rock and roll number and you it runs through 12 bars and you run through three three four changes and you get back to the beginning and it's great that they did that and they put that on the other because to me it's it shows that that's what sort of musicians they are they are that you know that's that's their route if you want to call it you know that's where that came from the song is allegedly inspired by the marquee club in london which was facing charges of noise pollution from its local council it's obvious what the song's about to them you know they know people don't like what they do but to them that's what it's all about i like noise pollution you've got to play rock and roll louder what's the point if you're not getting up people's noses there's no point you know it's the rock and roll is meant to be played loud from elvis presley to icdc ac dc had caught a controversy before on highway to hell by recording the track knight prowler the song was allegedly written about the serial killer richard ramirez known as the knight prowler who when finally caught was wearing an ac dc t-shirt bonn always maintained otherwise but the band were always to be plagued by the incident you know they were then responsible for all sorts of serial killings and slayings and they'd not really help their cause by appearing on the front cover with bomb wearing a pentagram and angus with his devil horns once they'd seen the reaction to it they just thought this is ridiculous and just kind of washed the hands of it and ending the back and black album with rock and roll like nice pollution was just kind of really drawing a line to the end of that whole thing the beginning of the song had a sort of freeform flow to it and almost brown just mumbling [Music] why they left it in i wonder sometimes if it were a mistake and it shouldn't have been there at all however such is matt lang's meticulous attention to detail i can't believe that to be the truth i just i bummed it into record as i always do right at the very very beginning and um that's what he said and we just went up that's got to stay in it's almost like a man oh um i'm caught like a rabbit in the headlights um what do i do and basically that's what he said he said about what what do you want me to do how do you want me to stand in this and match i just [ __ ] about around that time there was uh there's a lot of evangelists on television and uh you know we will we will cover all your sins if you give us enough money and that kind of crap and um mountain said give us some of that preaching [ __ ] and the way they play that song you know with angus playing it open and malcolm playing up high on the 12th fret you know they mix the two guitars together and when they go into the chorus they both go into into it at the same with the same way of playing that that lifts it up into into into this you know lifts it up to the big chorus yeah i was saying earlier about brian being able to put his cheeky stamp on it the way that the bomb would have done and this line is is his testament i took a look inside your bedroom door you look so good lying on your bed great scene to be set there he is he's he walks in he's primed there's this woman curvature remember she's lying on the bed he says i asked you if you wanted any rhythm in you she said you said i want to rock and roll instead he's been given a red card i rather not i'd rather listen to the music mate it's what a double you know i'm the rock and roll stein at back off i'd rather listen to this ac dc were not played very much on the radio in the uk but noise pollution was to become their biggest hit from the album this was the first time that they they found themselves in the top 20 in the uk and it kind of indication it's where they would stay as as about as a band who would release singles a couple of singles off of their their albums they would stay there for quite some time over the years with with future singles from future albums to me rock and roll noise pollution was a celebration of 25 years of rock and roll 25 years of one of the heroes chuck berry and rock and roll noise pollution rock and roll ain't gonna die on the one hand was basically saying to people this isn't about noise and it wouldn't survive this long if it had been about noise it's actually about great songs and great performance great performances and has defined the last quarter of a century of all our lives but even if you think that you've come this far it's not going to die it's going to stay going it's got the right feel it's just dirty it's a little bit bluesy there's no huge big ending on the at the end of the album it's just a nice classic ac dc moment again just a little bounce and that's it before you know it it's gone and however long that album lasts it still catches me out almost the way that rock and roll noise pollution ends because it's just it's just like almost from sneaking out the back door and going dunk and oh they're gone they left the party there's women laying over there and there's booze laying over there but they've left the party but they closed the door on the way out they're nice lads [Music] on july the 31st 1980 back in black was released to a hungry audience of die hard fans still mourning the loss of their singer and an expectant music press keen to see how that bloke from geordi was going to cut it metal was still in a regenerative process um the new waves of british head of metal had reignited interest in rock music um in the uk and then of course that the influence was spread worldwide um and ac dc were perfectly poised to sort of be towards the top of the tree as the whole rock movement gathered a pace the enormous marketing machine that accompanies album launches these days was simply not around in the early 1980s particularly in the emerging rock and metal scene they were taking some adverts in the music press i mean i doubt whether whether atlantic records would have even bothered trying advertising outside of the music press when back in black came out karanga metal hammer didn't exist it only really had sounds enemy melody maker and record mirror so you know the metal community would have known about back in black but it's obviously by just by how many copies it sold over the years it sold to way beyond that community because it's a great record the press reaction to the release was very encouraging and the album surprised everyone by topping the uk charts but for some the introduction of brian raised concerns about ac dc's future direction a lot of people felt he changed the band too much and took them in a direction that wasn't suitable for certainly against what they were used to hearing from ac dc you know it was a big big success when it came out but you've got to put it into context it wasn't it wasn't a huge album in the same way that appetite for destruction by guns and roses or hysteria by def leopard or the black album by metallica or never mind by nirvana but for the ac dc fans aware of the hostile reaction brian was getting in the press support was always sincere particularly during the band's first live gigs promoting the album and as soon as they saw them live they knew that this was the right guy for the band he managed to sing his own material perfectly and just recreate it as it was on the album but he also managed to sing difficult songs in the circumstances he had to put across to a lot of bond fans bond songs without trying to do it in a way that tried to say you know i'm i've replaced him you can market and game plan an album to sell about five million worldwide on a very clever strategy after that momentum takes over no one in their wildest dreams could ever imagine the album would go on to become the juggernaut it became it continued to sell steadily for over 25 years and now tops an astounding 42 million copies sold the second biggest studio album ever behind michael jackson's thriller ac dc hit exactly at the right time they hit spot perfectly why combination of great songs great performances great momentum and the great loss of bond scott and the fact there were an awful lot of people who identified with trying to cheer the band on because they really wanted it to succeed but beyond all that the x factor took over um the the record company weren't directly involved in in the day-to-day making of the record um we were talking about an era when record companies were supportive of artists like ac dc and and all the key people at atlantic records knew that this was a fantastic band and they knew that the space had to be left for them to get on with it the quickfire hit will not guarantee you long-lasting sales but delivering an absolute corker of an album from start to finish that you know the ultimate package people are constantly going to go out and buy over and over and over again they waited until we finished the album and then the band had a great influence on how that album was how it was packaged how it was marketed how it was presented and all the rest of the stuff and the the marketing people took that and took it forward and worked with the product if you like to use their terminology it was the right album at the right time with the right sound it had a modern sound for 1980 but a retro feel it had songs that people could relate to but aspire towards it had performances that people felt were simple but also were very complicated because httc songs may be simple to play so isaac no one does it as well as ac dc i think everything came together at the right time and the era was white everybody was waiting for a hard rock band who could take the world i think the album went on to be a massive success because uh it was a it was an incredibly honestly made album with great songs by a band that could back up you know they they were writing checks they could fill all the way down the line they have the greatest respect for their audience for their fans and and that comes across in the records they make it comes across in the gigs that they do [Music] it meant a lot it still means a lot um because i was i was you know i was a young rock fan when it came out ac dc word and still are my favorite band um you know i went through the trauma of being a fan whose of a band had just lost their lead singer um probably nothing to the trauma the band themselves went through but it's still quite a traumatic thing when you were that young and that into into a band um you know i mean the fact that i can remember to this day every detail of putting the needle on the record and hearing hell spells for the first night and hearing brian sing for the first time um you know that will be with me you know i can't i couldn't probably tell you that in context with any other ac dc album but back in black sticks so firmly in the memory because of what was happening at the time that you know it came out it is astonishing that here we are more than 30 years after acdc first started and they're still one of the most celebrated and important and influential bands of all time i don't feel they've made a great album since back in black they've made good albums for those about to rock stiff upper lip more recently maybe flick of the switch but it made a lot of mediocre albums interestingly enough across the years ac dc have become so well loved there's so much still the people's band that they get away with all of that back in black when you're younger you don't necessarily realize what the whole story was with it but there's kind of an attitude and a there's something buzzing off the vinyl that you get that just feels different and it was one of those albums that really piqued my interest in the band it was the first i heard obviously you go back and it's a it's a different era with bonn and that's great for what it is but back in black was really the kind of beginning it's true you can look there's there's two acd seats isn't there there's there's there's born and there's brian and i would never take anything away from brian i think he's terrific the record that back in black became may have been the absolute swan song that acdc did you know with bond scott had he lived you know i've sort of had a bit of a theory that you know had bond lived and gone ahead and done that this is all hypothetical of course that that he might have even left the band but for a man to come in under those circumstances and produce a vocal performance that he has never battered and even if he could go back to those days would never better now even with hindsight he stopped ac dc from becoming a name of where are they now the great bands for me are bands that evolve a sound and a style that reflects their influences and you know ac dc are no different from the stones or any of those other really great bands who who had the influences they went back to these influences they've got influences that go right back into musical tradition it's the one where they kind of reached a new plateau which they could never hope to do again and because of that it still sells it's still reissued people know that it comes out now reissued remastered it sounds even better than it did then and it's just like a new album again to some people you can put the headphones on and hear new things every time you listen to it i want to say it's when their balls dropped that's when the band became they came they start they finished up being kids and they started into men you know literally you could see that they changed from being like rock and rollers to being proper rockers if that's a if that's a way but like to put it in a nutshell it's a rebirth of ac dc i think it's it's important to sort of make the contrast with some of the bands that have imitated ac dc and there's bands now that are kind of going back only that far um and imitating bands from that particular era they haven't taken the time to go back another stage or two and really get to the roots of where that music comes from and turn it into something that's new i think it's a fitting tribute to bond scott i think it's a perfect introductory vehicle for brian johnson you know there's a touch of of sorrow that acdc have never managed to hit those creative heights again you know um but you know i acknowledge that they're still my favorite band i still but i know they'll never make another album as good as back in black um it's just got everything they make these albums and yeah okay they're they're commercially successful albums more because they've got a great deal of backup to them to make them commercially successful but they disappear without trace after a couple of years and yet here we are still talking about an album that we made years ago how many years is it and people are still interested in in why it was successful and there's no formula it's just honesty it's just being good at what you do made in 1980 it doesn't have a field date because every time you take it out the tin it's as fresh as the day that it was made you don't have to remaster that you can't remaster that i've never known another album like it for the sonic it's the sonic majesty that is back in black it's fantastic

Channel: Amplified - Classic Rock & Music History

Views: 128,532

Keywords: AC/DC Back In Black, AC/DC Album Review Back In Black, Bon Scott Angus Young AC/DC, pop culture documentary, Amplified, music documentaries, art documentaries, documentary movies - topic, music documentary, full documentary, full length documentary 2022, old school music, Educational, Back In Black classic rock album, angus young guitarist dance, brian johnson bon scott ac/dc, ac/dc highway to hell, ac/dc thunderstruck, ac/dc shoot to thrill, ac/dc rock and roll legends

Id: KqeFR_zQFO4

Length: 112min 40sec (6760 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 09 2022