411 Music Hall Of Fame Class of 2010: AC/DC

Posted by Mitch Michaels on 03.11.2010

Rock Band
Hard Rock, Metal
Inducted On: 03.11.10

It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock ‘n’ roll…


AC/DC'S MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

Five Top 40 singles and twenty Top 40 Rock singles, including the #1 Rock hits "Big Gun", "Hard As A Rock", "Stiff Upper Lip" and "Rock ‘n' Roll Train"

Eighteen of their albums have gone platinum or multi-platinum, including the 22x platinum Back In Black

Back In Black is the second biggest selling album of all-time, with 45 million worldwide sales

Seven Grammy nominations in the Rock and Hard Rock categories

Won a Best Hard Rock Performance Grammy for "War Machine"

Listed as one of Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Artists of All Time"

One of VH1's Top 5 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock

One of MTV's Top 10 Greatest Heavy Metal Bands of All Time

Inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association Hall of Fame (1988)

Inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (2003)

Pioneers of heavy metal

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For Malcolm and Angus Young, there never seemed to be a period where they wondered what they were going to do with their future. That's probably their brother George's fault. George Young was the guitarist for a band called The Easybeats – the first Australian rock band to have an international hit and the biggest Aussie rock act of the 60's. Once George taught his little brothers to play guitar, that was pretty much it.

Malcolm spent his teenage years bouncing around bands. At the tender age of 15, he recruited Angus to be the lead guitarist in his new group. The boys' sister looked at a sewing machine power cable and gave the group a name – AC/DC was born.

Like most great bands, AC/DC didn't become the powerhouse we know today overnight. They spent quite a few years gigging around Sydney figuring out their own voice and style. But the seed – the riff heavy writing ability of the Youngs – was there from the beginning. And while the band gained experience onstage while shuffling members in and out, it also became apparent that the live show was going to be a big part of their appeal. Speaking of the live show, we can also thank the guys' sister Margaret Young for suggesting Angus Young wear his school uniform during concerts – a practice still used 30 years later. I hope Margaret's pulling in royalties somewhere in Oz for all those good ideas.

1974 is the year it all came together for AC/DC. By then, their line-up consisted of Angus on lead guitar, Malcolm on rhythm guitar, drummer Phil Rudd and bassist Mark Evans. The band was in need of a vocalist, though, after original singer Dave Evans kind of flaked out on them. Enter Bon Scott – the band's driver and a veteran of the Sydney rock scene.

Scott provided the missing piece of the puzzle for AC/DC. He was a legitimate hooligan, had a voice that sounded like whiskey-soaked hell and was just the guy to write lyrics to the Young brothers' thunderous riffs. The result? High voltage rock ‘n' roll.

AC/DC spent the mid-70's paying their dues. While it would be a stretch to say they took off immediately, it's an understatement to say that each of their albums simply topped the one prior. By 1977, the guys were legitimately the biggest band in all of Australia, with three Top 10 albums and five Top 10 singles there. That year, they release Let There Be Rock, the last album before adding bassist Cliff Williams. Rock gave the band their first real taste at international exposure, catching fire all over the world, thanks in part to the no-nonsense punk scene. Yes, AC/DC was amazingly lumped in with punk in the 70's, though they'd last much longer than the scene. Their stripped down, riff-heavy, big sound would actually be more influential to the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, which brought up bands like Iron Maiden.

Everything was foreplay, however, until the release of 1979's Highway To Hell, perhaps Bon Scott's greatest work. It was the perfect storm, really. The band's legend had grown to mammoth proportions in Australia and their incredible live show had the whole world buzzing about the sheer rock that these boys from down under were amassing. Those who had heard were believers and those who hadn't were curious.

Highway To Hell would team the band with producer Mutt Lange, a young rock production guy who had just had his first success with the Boomtown Rats' "Rat Trap" in the UK. Something about this collaboration worked, and Highway To Hell became the DEFINITIVE AC/DC album – a mix of hard rock, perversion and menace that, quite simply, no other band could pull off. It would be the band's first album to crack the US Top 100 and their first album to sell over a million copies.

Unfortunately, just as it was looking like AC/DC would set the world on fire, tragedy struck. On February 18, 1980, Bon Scott died in a friend's car after a night of heavy drinking. It would have been a death blow to most bands, to lose their vocalist and lyricist just as the sky seemed like the limit. And it nearly was for AC/DC. The four surviving members seriously considered calling it quits, but encouragement from Scott's mother – who said the only fitting tribute to her son would be for AC/DC to continue – helped them press on.

Replacing a lead singer is hard. Bands have tried to do it several times in the past to disastrous results. But replacing Bon Scott, a guy whose voice and image were so distinct? Nearly impossible. How could anyone wail like a banshee and not sound, at best, like a bad Bon Scott imitation?

They say lightning doesn't strike twice, but when you have the lightning bolt in your band name, maybe it does. AC/DC drafted Brian Johnson as their new lead singer after seeing him play with his band Georgie. Johnson had the growl and, more importantly, he had the tough guy swagger. This might work out afterall.

AC/DC retreated to the Bahamas with Lange as their producer to work on their next album. The result was both a tribute to their fallen comrade and a declaration to the world – perhaps a rumble straight out of the very mouth of hell – that AC/DC was not going to die.

I don't think I need to tell you about Back In Black. It's the greatest hard rock album of all time. Period. Front to back, not only is there no bad song, there's no song that isn't fucking awesome. Hell, half of that album is still in heavy rotation at radio – 30 years later. "Hells Bells", "Back In Black", "Shoot To Thrill", "You Shook Me All Night Long". Heavy hitters. The heaviest.

Back In Black would go on to certify 22x platinum, becoming the fifth biggest selling ever in the US and the second biggest selling album of all time worldwide. For their part, AC/DC didn't rest on their laurels with that massive success. They followed it up with For Those About To Rock We Salute You in 1982 – their first album to ever go #1 in the US.

Any band with that kind of success would be hard pressed to keep it going, and the same is true with AC/DC. When you add in all the drugs and the tragedy with Bon, it was only a matter of time before things reached a boiling point. In 1982, Phil Rudd left the band after getting into a fist fight with Malcolm Young. The band soldiered on with new drummer Simon Wright and released Flick Of The Switch in 1983. Reviews were terrible, with some noting that the band seemed stagnant and willing to just release the same sounding album over and over again.

Perhaps it was the grind of the road and recording and maybe it was just the era itself (more known for synthesizers and canned beats than riffs and boogie), but the late 80's weren't kind to AC/DC. The band's fans continued to eat up their output (all of their albums from the period still went platinum), but their only true success was 1986's Who Made Who, a repackaging of some of their biggest hits for the movie Maximum Overdrive.

For most bands, this would be a pretty good end to the story. Capturing success. Overcoming adversity. Having one of the biggest albums in the world. Keeping a decent core fanbase.

But that wouldn't be the end of AC/DC. The band roared back in 1990 (with yet another new drummer – Chris Slade) with The Razor's Edge. Maybe it was Malcolm Young getting clean, maybe it was the new blood in the band or maybe it was just a third lighting bolt, but Razor brought us a more focused AC/DC, returning them to the top of the heap. The album hit #2 on the charts, went multi-platinum and brought them back to the Rock Top 10 with "Thunderstruck" – one of the greatest guitar and vocal riffs of all time that harkened back to the Back In Black days. The album also brought them back to Top 40 radio with the singles "Moneytalks" and "Are You Ready".

Since 1990, AC/DC has established themselves as one of the biggest bands in the world. Their albums have become events and their concerts are regular sell-outs (not to mention Phil Rudd and Malcolm patched things up in the early 90's, reuniting the Back In Black era band). Each of their post-1990 albums has charted a single at #1 on the rock charts, including the recent Black Ice, which also returned AC/DC to the top of the album chart and was one of the best selling albums of 2008-2009. The band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, reaffirming what the world already knew – AC/DC is something that only happens once in a lifetime.

Why AC/DC Was Selected:

So many rock bands – giant rock bands – have become cliché in a way. You can't have swagger and not sound like the Stones. You can't have a high register without being compared to Zeppelin. You can't have two guys writing songs without being called the new Lennon and McCartney. NOBODY gets compared to AC/DC because nobody has come along and done what they did and continue to do.

Maybe it's because AC/DC doesn't truly care about anything BUT rock music. There's nothing contrived about this band. They are rock and roll with Chuck Berry boogies amplified to 11 and nothing but sex and dirty limericks in their head. They shouldn't be more than a one note joke – a grown man in a schoolboy uniform – but instead, they're the avatar of basic, ass shaking, fist pumping hard rock. It's a band that was born to rock and risen above every adversity that a life in rock music (rock music in the 70's and 80's, mind you) could throw at you. And they came out stronger. AC/DC is rock and rock survives.