Speaker 1: Welcome back everybody to these Surely You Can't Be Serious
podcast For those about to rock, we salute you. We
are here to take on the second part of the
Appetite for Destruction versus Back in Black episode. Jason, how
are you doing?
Speaker 2: It's been along. I'm glad to be back. Yes, I'm
let loose from the noose. Thanks kept me hanging about.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm just understruck, so let's start rocking the free world.
Speaker 3: Hello everybody, and welcome to the Surely You Can't Be
Serious Podcast, discussing and debating the iconic and the forgotten
of eighties and nineties pop culture.
Speaker 1: With your co hosts James D.
Speaker 3: Graves and Jason Collivin.
Speaker 1: We are here today to talk about the ACDC album
Back in Black. Last week we talked about Appetite for
Destruction by Guns N' Roses, and once we're done with
going through today's episode, we will give you our final
judgment as to which album we think is the best. Jason,
do you know what you're gonna pick? Yet?
Speaker 2: I do know what I'm gonna pick. I do know
what I'm gonna pick. This was a really fun episode
to put together because I mean, you and I went
back and forth. We had to find two worthy opponents.
Speaker 1: Right, we've got Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson face to face.
Here we go. That's who's gonna bite somebody's ear off.
Let's do it, man, Let's yeah, all right, we're gonna
jump right in. So we're talking today about ac DC,
who has a unique history. They started off and got
famous with a singer that was not the singer for
Back in Black.
Speaker 2: They went through a couple of singers before they got
to the singer Back in Black. When they started out,
initially they had this guy named Dave Evans, Yeah, Dave
and Mark Stone and uh, the guy for the police
need to form this band called Missus, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so Dave Evans was the guy. They had
had a guy or two before that. But I'll rewind
just a little bit. You know, we gave you the
story of the Van Halen Boys history and with this band.
There's no question that Malcolm and Angus Young are the
backbone of the band. They're the founders of the band.
They're the consistent and so some interesting things about them.
You know, this is regarded as an Australian band, but
most of the members the core members anyway, were transplants.
They were immigrants from Scotland. Bond Scott, who ultimately became
the lead singer, came over in the fifties, and Angus
and Malcolm came over with their family. In nineteen sixty three.
Scotland had had what was called the Big Freeze, which
was like the worst winter on record, and so everybody
was kind of miserable eight feet of snow, and their
dad sees a advert on the telly, as they say,
and it's given, you know, financial help for somebody who
wants to travel down to Australia, and so he and
another family member's travel down there. And it's down there
that their older brother, George starts a band that within
just like six months or so has a reasonably popular success.
And the boys see his fame and they're like, hey,
I think we could do that.
Speaker 2: Their brother, George was a member of the band called
the Easy Beats, who had a hit song in America.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they were inspired.
Speaker 2: They're like, hey, our brother put together a couple of guys,
made some music, and all of a sudden he's famous.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean they came over there and they were
they're poor, they were staying in a hostel. You know that.
It was a meager means that they existed by. And
then six months later they've got cameramen on their front
doorstep wanting to take pictures of the new rock.
Speaker 2: Star, their famous brother. That's right right. They grew up, though,
in a musical family where they would sit around the
piano and they would play songs, and for them this
was normal behavior. They just assumed every family did these things.
Speaker 1: Right, just kind of like reading. For them. Everybody just
learned how to play something.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Angus's first instrument was actually a banjo that he strung
as a guitar so that he could play it like
a guitar. And he and Malcolm formed a couple of
high school groups, separate groups, and eventually they decided, you
know what, these groups aren't working out, but we do
something together. And then George, the older brother, got home
and they said, hey, we've started a band together, and
he goes, I give that one two weeks.
Speaker 2: These were two brothers separated by two years, and they
constantly fought.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's interesting to hear that two weeks for
guys who ended up staying together from nineteen seventy four
until Malcolm had to leave the band due to health issues. Yeah. Yeah,
forty years.
Speaker 2: It's a great run for them, great run for them.
I think it's interesting where they got their name from
their band name. Yeah, their sister Margaret had a sewing
machine and she just made the comment something about her
sewing machine and on the back of it has this
little label that said ACDC. Yeah, basically heard that and
he's like, and that's that's pretty good, you know, And
that to them meant power and energy, and they thought, well,
that's a pretty good name.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're electric. Not much longer, they're riding in a
taxi cab and they tell the cabby their name and
he's like, are you guys gay? Like what speaking.
Speaker 2: Of their name? Yeah, So it really did just come
from the back of a sewing machine. Everybody has tried
to put different meanings for it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I had heard all the rumors about how anti Christ
Devil's Children or after Christ Devil comes all this sort of.
They just thought it was pretty cool little electrical term.
Speaker 1: You know. There's this thing that happened when we were
kids where this guy in California was murdering people as
the Nightstalker. As it happened. You know, the sheriff's office
found a hat that he had left behind at one
of the murder scenes and it happened to be an
ACDC hat. The you know, the sheriff's office was like,
we use that information to try to get people to go, hey,
maybe I know who that is. You know, it's identifying.
But the press took it and went an entirely different
direction and try to make them into this demonic band
and yeah, anti christ thing. It kind of dumb.
Speaker 2: If you liked ac DC's music, you were suspected of
being a serial.
Speaker 1: Killer, right, yeah, But I mean, to be fair, they
did have a lot of stuff that would have cost
I mean, if I was a parent back in the
eighties have been like, wait a minute, there's a guy
with the devil horns and deviltale on this album and
the songs the songs called what Highway to Hell?
Speaker 2: Okay, no, right exactly.
Speaker 1: I think they like to do things that were controversial
and stir up excitement about themselves. I don't a new
idea knowledge, No, And it's not a satanic band, right right.
So the boys have their band, they go through a
couple of singers, end up with Dave Evans for a
little while, who's very much a glam rocker. He's putting
on the makeup, he's got the spandex going on, and
the guys are like, uh, this is not working out.
I don't like this.
Speaker 2: They didn't like the glam thing at all, but they
did have a hit with him. Was called can I
Sit next to You Girl? Yep, sounds like a Beach.
Speaker 1: Boys too, but it was. Yeah. So they decide, we're
tired to Dave. We want somebody else who can rock
a little bit while they have been going through this experience.
Bon Scott, whose name is given name is Ronald, but
they called him Bond, which was short for Bonnie Scotland
because he was from Scotland. From Scotland, right, and so
he had a rough go of it. He's kind of
like Axel, you know. He had he had some run
ins with the law, maybe punched a cop in the
face here and there, you know, like you do, right.
And he had been involved with a couple of bands,
one of which was named Fraternity.
Speaker 2: He was in Fraternity, the Valentines and the Valentines.
Speaker 1: Yes, he had been in those bands, but had kind
of you know, reached the end, hadn't been much of
a success, had played with some guys and done some tours,
but really was just kind of at a low point.
And one night in nineteen seventy four, gets in kind
of a yelling match with someone in the middle of
the night in one of the bands and drinks. I mean,
he'd been drinking all day, which he did for most
of his adult life, and jumped on a motorcycle and
had a wreck that almost killed him.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right, very near to death.
Speaker 1: At that same time, as he was recovering in the hospital,
the boys are looking for a new lead singer for
the band and somebody says, hey, you know what about
having Bond Scott And they're like guy who drives with
the van right right, when you do these things that
you find that there's never a completely consistent history on
exactly what happened. But basically Bond Scott had kind of
acted as a van driver or roady for the band,
played drums with him here and there, and initially the
idea was suggested to him somebody, and I think it
may have been George said he's too old, and I'm
pretty sure that motorcycle accident has messed him up permanently.
I don't think he's a good fit. And then Bond
goes to see ac DC playing and he watches him
and he's like, he wanted to join the band right away,
but he was like, man, they're really young. I don't
know if they're mature enough to handle me. But once
they got together, they were immediately brothers. You know.
Speaker 2: Angus At that moment when Bond wanted to join the band,
Angus was only nineteen, Malcolm was twenty one, and bon
Scott was twenty nine. So he's an older guy. He's
been around the block a few.
Speaker 1: Times, yeah, and a few times.
Speaker 2: And he went to him and he's like, hey, give
me a shot. You know, I think I can. I'm
a better singer than the guy that's been traveling with
you guys. You know, give me a shot. I can
do this. Yeah, And then when he stepped in, man,
it took off.
Speaker 1: It was magic.
Speaker 2: Okay, everybody, we're going to take a quick break. We'll
be right back after this business.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, kind of the rest is history for
a time there. They put their first record out in
nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 2: That album is called High Voltage and actually that's the
first international release. I think they had a couple of
albums that were Australia only and they kind of combined
those two to make an all star one called High Voltage,
which was released. Most people are familiar with that one
nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 1: And it's it's interesting, you know, you look at the
album covers, the center of attention is Angus, right, you know. Typically,
I mean even with van Halen, David Lee Roth was
in the front. I mean, Eddie was there, but it
was you didn't have only the guitar player on the front.
But Angus had done a heck of a job kind
of developing this persona with a schoolboy outfit. This was
the This is the other way. His sister was involved, right,
that's it. That's right.
Speaker 2: So his sister, Margaret, who came up with the name ACDC,
also commented that Aegis still looked like a schoolboy, right,
and he thought, well, heck, if I look like a schoolboy,
I might as well still wear the schoolboy outfit.
Speaker 1: He had been trying to find a stick. He had
tried Superman parody called super ag and he had tried
a spider Man and a Zoro outfit. But when he's
a small man. Small he was young at the time anyway,
I mean a young guy. But he's a small, young guy,
and so the schoolboy outfit worked. It was kind of this, Hey,
is there a little kid up there shredding the guitar
right now?
Speaker 2: I saw this. This is really interesting. Angus is five
foot two, yeah, Malcolm is five foot three, yeah. Brian
Johnson's only five foot five.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the power that these guys put out. These guys
are pint sized rockers, but they are awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They to kind of promote the schoolboy image. They
told everybody that Angus was actually five years younger than
he really was.
Speaker 2: When you think about what I was doing at nineteen,
I mean, he's touring the world doing all this crazy stuff,
playing crazy guitar. He's a rock star.
Speaker 1: All these guys were high school dropouts who became world touring,
world changing rock stars.
Speaker 2: Malcolm and Angus dropped out of high school exactly at
fourteen years nine months, which is legally the minimum you
can go to school. I'm out of here.
Speaker 1: My school birthday is tomorrow.
Speaker 2: That is math, Assimon, that you jumps are doing tonight,
I ain't doing it.
Speaker 1: So they became a pretty big hit in Australia, and
then with the release of High Voltage they started to
get some international success. It took them a little while
to become a success in America, though.
Speaker 2: It did they. I heard. One of the ways they
did it was they would play anywhere, anytime, all the time.
Ten people, five people, three hundred people, didn't matter. Their
play and play and play and play and play. And
that's something that the Beatles actually did in Hamburg. They
would just play so much they got good at their craft,
right and people they made a name for themselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you and I have both read the book Outliers
that talks about how the Beatles would play in that
strip club in Hamburg, and it would they wouldn't have
a half hour set, they wouldn't have an hour set.
They would have an eight hour set in a strip club.
So people aren't really looking at them, so they were like, Okay,
we've got to find some music that's interesting for people
to listen to because we're not the focus of the
show here. And they got so much practice just as
kids that by the time they hit America in nineteen
sixty four, there were already experts in their craft.
Speaker 2: So after High Voltage, they moved to London in nineteen
seventy six in an effort to become international rock stars.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, you know, to hear these guys talk because
they don't sound Scottish, but they also don't exactly sound
Australian either. That's funny because Brian Johnson at this time
is playing in a band called Jordi, which refers to
a group of folks who have a very unique style
of speaking from the UK. If you've seen Britain's Got Talent,
the two guys who are you know, off to the side,
who like introduce people and stuff, those guys are both
Jordy guys and it's that kind of the accent is
intriguing to.
Speaker 2: Me, you know, just kind of on that note, I
read that. So these guys are short, they kind of
look like truck drivers, They kind of talk funny. They
had trouble getting into their own gigs sometimes because people
didn't believe they were the rock stars that they are.
They looked like just these average guys off the streets,
the little scruffy you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah they did. Bond was missing a few teeth
as an older guy. I mean, he looks too old.
They look too young. It's all very I mean, this
guy's got tattoos and chest hair and this is supposed
to be a lead singer for a rock band. I
don't understand what's going on here.
Speaker 2: So after High Voltage, also in nineteen seventy six, they
release Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.
Speaker 1: There Dune Dirt Cheap.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they don't stop there. In nineteen seventy seven
they release another album, Let There Be Rock.
Speaker 1: And the music was good and the music was loud.
Speaker 2: Then in nineteen seventy eight, notice they're not taking any
time off at all. They release Poweradge.
Speaker 1: Album Tour, Album Tour.
Speaker 2: It's just like the Van Halen episodes. We talked about
lash Back if you haven't heard episode one of Van Halen.
Then again in nineteen seventy nine, they released an album
called If You Want Blood, You've Got It that was
a live album.
Speaker 1: All of those albums were produced by their brother, George.
I guess he was the seasoned expert at the time
that they started the band. But you know he's helping
him out through this process and he's the older, wiser
guy who can put these albums together. And make them
sound good. Well.
Speaker 2: Then in nineteen seventy nine, we have an album called
Highway to Hell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this one was not produced by their brother Georgie.
This one was produced by Langa Lega.
Speaker 2: We love him. He produced Pyromania, He produced Hysteria. He
produced some albums by Celine Dion and Schneia Twain. He
also did Heartbeat City by the Cars back in. Michael
Bolton Michael Bolton, this guy knows how to make hits.
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, yeah, he does, and he was
Highway to Hell was one of the earlier ones that
he had done, and he had not quite gotten to
the state that he was at by the time Pyromania
came under his control. But he was definitely a guy
who knew what he was doing and was still meticulous
and was still making hit albums.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They would talk about how they get started about
ten in the morning, and then they would come in
and record and he would stay until three o'clock in
the morning, just be a studio rat.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Then just as things are taking off, they're on
their meteoric rise. February nineteenth to be exact, nineteen eighty
bon Scott goes out drinking with his friends, and bon
Scott was always the guy who wanted to keep partying,
who wanted to drink a little bit more, stay up
a little bit longer. And he and the boys had
gotten together just a few days before and they had said,
here are some of the songs that you know, here's
the music, some of the songs that were working on
for our next album. He even played drums. There's a
couple of demo tapes out there that have him on
the drums on those songs. But he walks out the
door and they say, just a couple more weeks, man,
and we will have these songs ready for you to
put lyrics to. And that was the last time when
they saw him. He went out drinking with a friend
of his, and you know, like I said, he wasn't
a stranger to drinking. They had a good time, got
home late that night or early the next morning, and
he was sleeping it off, as they say, except that
when the friend came out the next day he found
him lifeless in the car.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I don't want to get too graphic,
but the story that I read up on was he
passed out in a passenger seat. His friend leaned the
chair back and put a blanket on him. Couldn't rouse him,
couldn't bring him inside, so just let him sleep in
the car, and overnight he aspirated some of his vomits
and passed away that way. The death certificate says a
cute alcohol poisoning death by misadventure.
Speaker 1: And there are all kinds of conspiracy theories out there
that we don't need to get into. We sure don't
have the expertise to talk about that sort of thing.
But the point is they're shooting up like a rocket
and then suddenly the pilot's gone.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's right. I do think it's interesting Bond had
several lyrical ideas for the album, the unnamed album that
was coming, that those ideas were abandoned in favor of
Brian's lyrics. Yeah, but ACDC manager Ian Jeffrey claims to
still have a folder that contains lyrics for up to
fifteen songs that was going to be Back in Black.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The boys are notified of Bond's death. They have to.
I mean, his mom's still down in Australia and they're
up in the UK, and they have to give her
a call and let her know what's happened, and they
go to the funeral. They are trying to figure out
does the band continue on? What do we need to do?
And it's actually Bond's father that says, Bond would want
you to go on. He would want you to continue
with ACDC and make it something great. And so they
decide not to mope about. They decided to start playing
and pick things back up where they had left them off.
And then they start their search for not a replacement
singer because you can't replace Bond Scott, but a new
singer to be their front man. Okay, everybody, we're going
to take a quick break. Please stay with us. We
will be right back after these messages. So we know
what happens. We know that Brian Johnson becomes the new
lead singer. But do you know who the first person
to recommend Brian Johnson to the band was?
Speaker 2: No, who was it?
Speaker 1: It was Bon Scott? Wow. So yeah, So we mentioned
earlier that Bon Scott was in a few bands before
he joined ACDC, and one of those bands was a
band called Fraternity. Well, Fraternity used to do supporting gigs
for this band called Jordy, which I mentioned just a
bit ago, that had Brian Johnson as their lead singer,
and they had had a little bit of success as well.
But Bond Scott had seen them perform, and after seeing
them perform, he came and told the young brother. He's like, oh, man,
I wish you could have seen this guy. He was amazing.
He was like little Richard, and Little Richard was Bond's
favorite performer. He was like, he did this whole thing
where he fell on the floor and was spinning around
like he was in agonizing pain. It was amazing and
he like sealed the deal. Like they came and like
took him out in a wheelchair. It was. It was
and I'm just you know, I'm kind of imagining I'm
kind of imagining James Brown, you know, where they try
to walk him off the stage and he goes back on.
But as it turns out, Brian Johnson was actually he
had appendicitis. He was actually rolling around the ground on pain,
and they really did take him off to the hospital
after it was over. But after Bond's passing, they had
a fan that sent him a tape of Jordi and said,
you guys should really look at this guy. And they're like, hey,
isn't this the guy that Bond talked about, and then
Mutt Lang, without knowing any of this, says, I think
you guys should listen to Brian Johnson, and I think
he's I think he'd be a really good fit for
the band. And so by the time they started doing
auditions with folks, he kind of was already the pick
in their head.
Speaker 2: That fan from Cleveland that mailed the album to the
record company and said, you guys need to listen to
this guy. If you're listening to this podcast, we want
to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Yes, we don't know your name, but.
Speaker 2: Please hook us up on Facebook say I'm the guy
contacted the record company on behalf of Brian Johnson.
Speaker 1: So, Brian Johnson, I mean we talked about we talked
in our episode about Journey, and you know, Steve Perry
was working on a Turkey ranch when he got the
call and said, hey, we want you to come see
for Journey. But Journey was nobody at that point, you know,
they were the leftovers from Santana. The guy who took
over for Steve Perry was working at the Gap. He
was working at the Gap when he got the phone
call that hey, we'd like you to come be the
lead singer for Journey. Well I've kind of got like
a insurance now and dude, Journey Journey. Oh okay, yeah, okay,
I'll come out. So when Brian Johnson gets the call,
they don't tell him who the band is, and he's
like and he's like, okay, well you want me to
come down there, and you know, it's it's a bit
of money. Can you at least give me the initials?
And the lady who's talking to him on the phone goes, yes,
the initials are A C, D C. He's still hesitant,
you know, he's like, ah, man, I just don't even
know that this is worth it, because he had kind
of reached the end like so many, you know, so
many of the guys that we've talked about. He's just
kind of given up on the music industry and had
started a little car repair place.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: He's like, ah, no, no, you know, just fix and windshields, right, oh,
think about it, gots why walls and so, as we
mentioned in our Spaceball's episode, he happens to get another
call near the same time that says, hey, we got
a paying gig for you. Oh all right, how much
does it pay three hundred and fifty pounds. Oh solid,
what's it for Hoover Vacuum. So Brian Johnson thinks, Okay, well,
I'm getting paid enough money that it makes it worth
the trip down there. I guess I'll go ahead and
audition for ac DC while I make my vacuum commercial.
Speaker 2: I love the Human Vacuum Clinic commercial. It is amazing.
It's no vacu in black, but I mean, you know, it's.
Speaker 5: Good though, It's really good. It's a beautiful mover. And
then he's got to go over and sing for ac
and these guys are our world famous at this point,
and he's petrified. He talks about sitting in a cafe
across the street, too scared to go over, having a
bit of tea and a and a biscuit or something,
and the pastry's so crusty that he can't even eat it.
And he's like a fit. I guess I better go
do this, and just walks across the street. Well, meanwhile,
Malcolm and Angus and the boys have been auditioning all
these other lead singers and they are like, hey, where's Brian.
He was supposed to be here like an hour ago,
And somebody goes, oh, I think he's downstairs playing pool
with the roadies, and they're like, well, okay, well at
least he plays pool, and so they call him up
and the first thing Malcolm does is hand him a
beer and says, I'm sure you're thirsty, and he's like,
I bet I could drain this thing right now, you
know what, I think I will, and he drains the
beer and they say, well, what do you What would
you like to perform and he says it.
Speaker 2: Was my Iicantina Turner is called Nutbush City.
Speaker 1: Limits and so they hear him say that, and they're like, oh,
thank god. Every other person that's been in here singing
says smoke on the water. Yeah, okay, that's good. And
so they do that and it goes pretty well, and
so they say, well, what else have you got? And
he he had put his band back together at that point,
but they were just doing small club shows. But they always,
as their closing song would play a whole lot of Rosie,
and so he says, I can do a whole lot
of Rosie. I'm like right on, and so they play it,
he sings it and they know immediately this is our man.
So They send him back home, and a little while
later they're like, hey, can you come down for a
second audition, And again he's like, guys, you know this
is it's kind of expensive for me to come down there.
And they find a way to get him down there.
He sings with him again. That night, he stays at
a hotel with one of the roadies, and the roadies
roady guy is like, I think you got this man,
and he's like, now he has no help. He has
given up hope on this thing. He goes back home.
He continues working on cars. He continues playing small gigs
and says, oh, hey to his band at the time, says, oh,
by the way, guys, I went and had a sing
with ac DC And they're like, what, I had a
sing with ac DC And they're like, oh cool. And
then they go play and that was all the conversation
that they had, you know. And then he gets a
call on his dad's birthday. He was still he had
gone back to living with his parents, came to the house,
had bought his dad a bottle of whiskey for his birthday,
but comes in and nobody's there and the phone rings
and it's Malcolm Young and he says, so we're going
to be leaving in a couple of days to go
record this new album. Do you think you can make it?
And he's like, are you serious?
Speaker 2: Get it?
Speaker 1: They get it? What do you mean? And he's like yeah,
so we yeah, we're just thinking, you know, we got
to leave pretty quick. So are you in? And he says,
can you call me back in ten minutes? I just
want to make sure that people that's nobody, that somebody's
not screwing with me right now, you know that. Malcolm's
like okay, hangs up the phone, calls him exactly ten
minutes later and says okay, so can you go And
he's like, yeah, yeah, okay, he's not using that language.
He's using better language than that. He puts the phone
down for a second, says the F word, gets back
on and says, yep, I'll find a way to do it.
And he then he hangs up the phone and he's like,
I'm the only one here. So he pops the top
on the bodily he bought for his dad because he
figures out I needed, and he chugs himself a celebratory
drink by himself, and in one week he is in
the Bahamas with Mutt Lang and ACDC recording what would
become one of the greatest albums of all history.
Speaker 2: It's incredible. These stories are amazing. This is why nobody
should ever give up on their dream. Steve Berry was
working at a Turkey ranch, Brian Johnson was fixing windshields.
One week later, he's in the Bahamas recording back in Black.
Speaker 1: Okay, everybody, we're gonna take a quick break. Please stay
with us. We will be right back after these messages.
Speaker 2: All right. That is how the band came to be.
Are we ready to dive in track by track on
this one?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And just real quick, just you know, briefly touch
on the recording process. You know, it sounds really nice
to be recording in the Bahamas. You know, we kind
of talked about the police and their beautiful island that
they were on as they were recording. It was not
exactly that for the ACDC boys. It was a kind
of a cement and mortar type of place. The only
reason that they went to the Bahamas is because there
were no recording studios available in the UK, and also
it worked as a tax advantage to record down there
instead of recording in the UK. This recording studio that
they had was run by this old Bahama lady who,
in addition to giving them a room with a table
and a lamp on the table, gave them a stick
it's like a harp like a fish harpoon stick to
put by the door. And she said, you got to
be careful. Sometimes at night, these wild Haitians have come
down and try to rob you. Okay, this is not
the Bahama, this is not the Bahama vacation I was expecting.
But again, you know, you put all these circumstances together
and somehow you come out with Back in Black.
Speaker 2: Amazing. All right, So Back in Black has released July
twenty fifth, nineteen eighty. Talk briefly about the cover.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, Yeah.
Speaker 2: First of all, the title back in Black was a
phrase that Malcolm Young had in his head for a while,
but he knew in his brain this is what I
want the album to be called back in Black YEP,
as a tribute to Bon Scott. The cover of the
album is all black, with just some basic white outlined
letters saying ACDC back in Black.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The boys had wanted it to be just straight black,
and the record company was like, not okay with that,
but if you'll just put your name in white lettering,
that's fine. Yep, okay, So are we ready to do this?
Let's do yes, let's jump in. I'm excited about this
first song. I listened to this album again today, cranked
it up, pumped my fist as I drove home. So
the first song on the album.
Speaker 2: Is Hell's Bells.
Speaker 1: Okay. So we've talked before about how Mutt Lang puts
these albums together, their brick by brick, and this first
song is such an awesome layering of sounds because you
start off with that bell, you know, and there's a
story behind the bell I'll get to in a minute.
You've got that bell and it's it's all you hear.
It's like here are you coming to church? What's going
on here? And then on your right speaker, it lays
down that first guitar, you know, layer one bell, Layer
two guitar, Malcolm's guitar is over there, and then layer
three you get just little snippets of Angus's guitar coming in,
you know, just little bits that's over here on the
west speaker. In this incredible job of using the stereo
to its full advantage and then the drums come in
Layer four and you're like yeah, yeah, and then it
all comes together face comes in, which is I mean,
the bass on almost all of their songs is just
that straightforward boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom,
and it is.
Speaker 2: Amazing or a great start for the album. And like
you said, it's layer intensifies builds to this great rocking song.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so there are literally thousands of ac DC
fans that, I mean, within a matter of just a
few months have learned the lead singer to their band
has just died, and six weeks later learned they've already
got a new guy. And I mean it's just I
could I mean, this is akin this to like, you know,
your your parents get divorced and then one of them
has a you know, girlfriend or boyfriend in a month
and a half. You're just like, oh, what's what's going on?
And this isn't right? And so the question is, you know, like,
how are the fans going to react to this new guy?
And are they I mean, if this album is dedicated
to Bond Scott, is it going to be some sort
of you know, sappy sentimental tribute, but they don't do
that at all. They give, they give, they give that
ominous tone in the and the even the guitar has
kind of an ominous feel to it. But it's the
song is Hell's Bells, which is kind of a nod
to for whom the bell tolls, You know there's it's
come up several times, but the saying is ask not
for whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee. And
the idea is, don't worry about the dead, worry about yourself,
worry about your life. And that's exactly what they do
with this album. They say or Bond would not have
wanted us to play some sappy ballad. He wouldn't have
wanted some song you know about him. He would have
wanted us to kick ass. And that's what we're gonna do.
Speaker 2: A few episodes ago, we talked about Jonathan Kane when
he wrote Faithfully by a Journey, he had kind of
a supernatural experience where that song, he says, God gave
it to him and just sort of supernaturally came through
him out of his hands and he just wrote it
down on a piece of paper, just flowed out of him.
Something similar happened to Brian Johnson on Hell's Bells It's supernatural.
He's not a believer, but something weird happened to him
and he talks about it. He said, I don't believe
in God or heaven or hell, but something weird happened.
He was in his room. He said, I'll never forget.
I just started to write and never stopped, and it
just flowed out of my hands. I thought that was
a really interesting story. Did you know that there's an
ac DC all female tribute band called the Hell's Bells Elles.
Speaker 1: No, but I did know that there's a bluegrass band
tribute to ACDC called HAC Dixie. You're only you.
Speaker 4: Good?
Speaker 1: That's good. So he came up with the lyrics to
this one midway through the recording of the album. He
did a majority of, if not all, of the lyrics
in this album, which is kind of a big deal.
I mean, they auditioned him to sing, but they didn't,
you know. They just were like, hey, can you write
the lyrics? And I guess you know it's writing an
entire album's worth of lyrics is a daunting task, and
he had done quite a few songs and was just
kind of out of ideas and was stressing about it,
and Mutt Lang just I guess, gets gets the feeling
and goes so he goes by his room and says, hey,
you know, Brian, are you doing all right? He's like, man,
I'm just I'm out of ideas, and like, as he
says it, lightning strikes yep, right, and then of course,
you know they're in the Bahamas where you get tropical
weather just instantaneous, and so the lightning strikes and there's
this really loud thunder cut that comes through, and Lang says, God,
do you hear that thunder? And Brian just kind of
with his head down says, yeah, it's a rolling thunder.
And Mu's like what he says, rolling thunder. That's just
what they call it in the UK. It's a rolling thunder,
and Much says, write that down right. And then as
they're talking that, this torrential downpour happens, and so in moments,
you know, you talk about that divine inspiration. In moments
he goes from I can't think of anything to the
first lines of his song I'm a rolling thunder, a
pouring rain coming on like a hurricane.
Speaker 2: That's great, man, that's awesome. Okay, So here's something that
Hell's Bells means to me. All right, and we talked
about this in our Major League episode. But I'm a
baseball fan, right right. River Hoffman was a relief pitcher
for the same Diego Padres in the nineties, and every
time he took the field, they played Hell's Bells as
an intimidation to the other team. Right, okay, So for me,
Hell's Bells signifies Trevor Hoffman's coming on the field and
he's going to shut everybody down. However, this was one
of the first they call it entrance songs for baseball players.
Oh yeah, they got this idea from when Ricky Vaughan
took the field and they played wild thing in Major League.
Speaker 1: So flashback to a Major League episode. That's great. So, yeah,
the you know the line You're only young, but You're
gonna die. I mean, there they are these, I mean,
it comes up in a few of the other songs.
There are these references to death and drinking that are
not in any way sentimental, despite the fact that a
month and a half earlier their lead singer had died
because of drinking too much.
Speaker 2: Right, Basically, every single ACDC song is about either sex, booze,
or rock.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's it's there, that's what they do.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I don't know if Brian Johnson was inspired.
I don't know if like if Bond Scott was speaking
to him from beyond the grave or if he just went,
you know what. Bonn had a lot of success with innuendo.
Let me see what I can do with that.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna run with that. I think I got this. Yeah,
all right, let's talk about the actual bell sound.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they needed a bell. You know, they've they've
got this idea that the bell is going to be
the perfect way to start the album, the perfect way
to start the song. And they can't get a good
bell sound. And somebody says, why don't you just go
to the church it's down the road and just use
that bell, And so they're like okay, and so they
take their recording equipment and they go to record the bell,
and every time they rang the bell, all these pigeons
that are sitting in the around the bell would take
off flying and you had the sound of flapping wings
on your recording of the bell. Yep, Like okay, So
we wait for the bell to quiet down. It's finally
quiet again. They hit the bell and by that time
all the pigeons had come back and there's flapping all
over again, like well, balls, this is not going to work.
Speaker 2: So they have to have a bell custom made, right, yeah, yeah,
So they have a bell, a two thousand pounds cast
bronze bell made by John Taylor. It's a replica of
the Dennison bell in the Carolyn Tower at Lowborough War Museum. Okay,
I can't if I mispronounced that. I'm really sorry. I've
never been here. But when they recorded the sound effect
for the bell, they used fifteen microphone because the acoustics
of the bell, you never know where the sound is
going to come from, right microphones. And then when they
got the sound that they wanted, they slowed it down
to half speed. It gives it that real ominous boom.
Speaker 1: Oh nice, Okay, that's awesome. Well, and then of course
after they produced the album, they went on tour and
they took the bell on tour with them and they
would start every show by lowering that bell down and
Brian Johnson would slam it with a hammer as or
you know. Sometimes he would even run and jump and
ring the thing, but it was It was a great
stage prop that they had made just by needing to
have the sound for the album You're Keeping Drag at Home.
Speaker 2: There's thirteen bell tolls, four before the music starts and
nine after all.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, I did not count the bells.
Speaker 2: Okay. The next song on the album is Shoot the Thrill.
Speaker 1: So in just a bit, we're going to talk about
Back of Black, which was the intro song for Tony
Stark in iron Man one, and then for iron Man
two they used Shoot the Thrill.
Speaker 2: It's so freaking good. This song is awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it kicks a whole lot of butt, and it's
got the sexual inuendo in there and the dangerousness. You know,
is this a real gun? Are we talking about a
male gun? Probably a little double entre picked up on
those euphemisms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you touched on it. You're right. This for
my family. I mean, I know this song from Back
in Black, but my boys recognize it as basically iron
Man's theme, right, So when he enters in iron Man two,
they play Shoot the Thrill. They also play this in
the original Avengers when iron Man enters. Brian Johnson was
explaining the inspiration for this song. He talked about how
this is about suburban neighborhood board housewives who get in
to extramarital affairs and too much narcotics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the girls who want the bad boys.
Speaker 2: This song, interestingly enough, was never released as a single
and no video was ever made for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's crazy, because this song is amazing. It was
made to be a single. I can't figure out why
they would not have done that. I'm with you.
Speaker 2: This is one of the best songs on this album.
It's a five star song.
Speaker 1: But I mean, as I understand it, I think radio
stations played every single song on this album at some point,
like it's just not it was whether it was a
single or not. The radio stations recognized this album is
full of hits.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean DJ's definitely lashed onto this song and
played it anyway despite not being released as a single.
All Right, this song's amazing. I love it. Five stars.
Song moving on track number three is a song called
what do You Do for Money? Honey? Okay, So, some
of the lyrics on the song talk about calling out
gold diggers and saying that he will not be set
up by the women who are after his.
Speaker 1: Gold a gold digger song.
Speaker 2: It's a gold digger song. It's a good song. It's
not a great song.
Speaker 1: That's hard song. Yeah, No, I love this song. Okay, Yeah,
it's a good one.
Speaker 2: It's hard to maintain the shoot to thrill back in
black Hell's Bell's level of songs throughout, but.
Speaker 1: Well they come back. But yeah, they come back with
kind of their punching intensity that they had from their
previous albums. On this one, I mean, it explodes out.
Whereas the other ones were a bill this one is
immediately in your face, bam bam.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I like it. I definitely like it. Track number
four is a song called Given the Dog the Bone.
It's gonna be hard to remain family friendly as we talk.
Speaker 1: About this one. So is it giving the dog or
bone or given the dog a bone? I got given
It will appear differently, like I think on the album
it was g I v E N, but then like
on iTunes, it's g I v I N and it
has appeared as g I v I n G in
certain spots.
Speaker 2: Either way, as I can best tell, this is a
song about going to the store buying a milkbone for
your dog. I don't know this song. I saw it
described as a very spinal tap esque.
Speaker 1: You're saying, you're saying, there's a lot of subtlety going
on here, Is that right?
Speaker 2: There's some description that leads you to believe certain things.
So I don't know, what do you think about this one?
Speaker 1: This one is okay for me, But it wasn't. It
wasn't something that I want to come back and listen
to over and over again.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing, in all honesty, here's the thing. If
you like one ac DC song, you probably like almost
all a CDC songs because there's very similar. It's heavy guitars,
it's sex, booze and rock. It's pretty simple rock, you know,
right in your face. Some are just better than others,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: She's no Mona Lisa, she's no Playboy star, but she'll
send you to Heaven then explode you to Mars. I
really I don't know what he's talking about there. He's
talking about doing ugly chicks sorry, family friendly. He's talking
about having an ugly girlfriend or something. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Oh, well, she'll send you to Mars. It's okay.
Speaker 1: This is this is this is kind of like a
whole lot of rosy Part two.
Speaker 2: Nice, good reference, right there. Okay, good song, not a
great song. Good song all right? After giving the Dog
a bone, that brings us to a song called let
Me Put My Love into You.
Speaker 1: I'm still I'm lost. What do we think we mean
here on the well?
Speaker 2: You know I have love to give, and so let
me put it into you.
Speaker 1: Let me put it on the line.
Speaker 3: This song.
Speaker 2: Okay, I've been waiting to talk about this.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, let me cut your cake with my knife.
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2: All right, So this song has the distinction of being
on the Parents' Music Resource Center list of the Filthy fifteen.
Have you heard about this list?
Speaker 1: Yeah? This is the Tipper Gore thing right this?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Really, like all the stor senator wives got together and said,
these songs are profane, these.
Speaker 2: Songs are awful for our youth.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So her husband's off inventing the internet and she's complaining
about ACDC song. What's going on there?
Speaker 2: Okay, so here's the Filthy fifteen. You ready for this?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: So let Me put my Love into You? Okay, we
get it. It's about sex and probably not great for
fourteen year olds to be saying that you know at home.
But here's the I was just curious about who else
was on this list, right, So, just some other songs
that you may have heard. A song called Darlin Nikki,
a song called Nasty Girl by Vanity Sugar, Walls by
Sheena Easton. So far, we got three in a Row
by Prince, right high and Dry by def Leppard. We're
not Gonna Take It by Twisted's sister. What yeah, rebellion
type of attitudes, violence, I think that one.
Speaker 1: No, but yeah, yeah, that's a stretch right there.
Speaker 2: Well wait, she Bop by Cindy Lauper. What that song's about? Masturbation?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 2: And then finally Dress You Up by Madonna.
Speaker 1: I think they were going more for a look than
an actual context of the song.
Speaker 2: Here the Filthy fifteen. That's just a portion. Now some
of those you're like, some of these styles, I'm like, whoa, Yeah,
I definitely see what that's on there. But do you
have anything more to say about let me put my
love into you. I can crack up every time I
say that.
Speaker 1: From what I understand is that all of those songs
actually got a boost in ratings when they got put
on the Filthy fifteen.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. One of the songs is by Motley Crue,
and Vince Neil was like, that was great for us.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, these songs are dirty. Let's listen again.
Speaker 2: Okay, So after let Me Put My Love Into You,
that ends side one of Back in Black.
Speaker 1: Push Stop It.
Speaker 2: Ejecked flip it over, Back in Press Play.
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, at this time, at this point, you're
probably flipping the LP over.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty, you probably are flipping the LP. You're
probably about.
Speaker 1: That you you might even be flipping the A track over.
Speaker 2: I had this on tape. Quick funny story about Back
in Black. So I was on a ski trip with
five of my high school buddies plus an adult. To
make sure we didn't get in too much trouble, so
I asked my buddy, Chris Bauer, friend of the show's
Chris Bauer, good friend of mine. His nickname was Bomber.
Everybody called him Bomber. So anyway, at about nine pm
we're driving out to Colorado, I asked him. I said, hey,
can I borrow your Back in Black tape? Because everybody's
got their headphones on their tape players. He's like, yeah,
I'll give it to you when I'm done with it.
I'm like, all right, great. So I fall asleep at
three o'clock in the morning. He whacks me on the
forehead with Back in Black and I'm like, what are
you doing, dude. He's like, you want to borrow the tape.
I'm like, I didn't want you to whack me in
the forehead and wake me up. And Alm was at
a fist fight in the car on the way up
to Colorado.
Speaker 1: So this is why you had your mom confiscate his
other tape.
Speaker 2: Right, that's right, that's right, all right side to first track.
It's a song Back in Black.
Speaker 1: Oh, now I have to think of it. Oh, something's
just happened. Somebody scattered this song. I'm gonna have to
look this up now. Okay, So forgive me for interrupting
this awesome song for just a second, but somebody scattered
the song and I'm gonna put it on so.
Speaker 6: Well, and uh, you know, I've got the notoriety came
from the the A C.
Speaker 4: D C.
Speaker 6: Which I really took sale, which is the.
Speaker 1: Okay, So this song is very memorable to me for
a couple of reasons. Number One, this is a song
that we would cover this in my band. We did
this song and I don't know why I was dumb
at this particular point, but my drummer just had to say, Okay,
just wait until I hit the cymbol twice before you
come in. Okay, and we play in and then it's
gonna go all that's gonna be real quiet, and then
you come in after that. I'm like, okay, I'll get
it right this time. I promise.
Speaker 2: This song is the best song on the album. This
song blows me away. The guitars are so hooky, gorgeous,
crunchy rock. Love it. Malcolm actually had the phrase we
talked about that he had the phrase in his head
back in Black and he had the riff for the
song before they really had the song. This was a
warm up exercise, kind of like how we talked about
last week with Slash and Sweet Child of Mine. He
would do this as a warm up exercise.
Speaker 1: Okay. So title track right, dedicated to Bond Scott and
one of the lyrics in this song is forget the
hearse because I never die. I love it. I mean,
this is the perfect tribute to Bond Scott, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's basically saying Bond, your spirit will live on,
your legacy will live on. I thought it was interesting
they were talking to There was an interview with Brian Johnson.
He was talking to Mojo magazine in two thousand and
nine when they said, can you write lyrics? They gave
him the music for this song, and he's like, well,
I'll give it a try, and they said, here's the deal.
The only thing is it can't be morbid. It has
to be for Bond, and it has to be a celebration.
So he thought, okay. So that's when it came up
with you know, nine Lives, Cat's Eyes abusing every one
of them and running wild, and the boys really really
enjoyed it, and they thought it was a great tribute to.
Speaker 1: Bond, perfect tribute, and it was a perfect tribute for
the fans to hear as well for them to go, okay,
this as one of us.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think it worked. I think it totally worked.
I think the fans embraced Brian Johnson. I don't I mean,
there's I'm sure there's a there's a a section of
folks out there that were like, I don't really care
for a CDC. After Bond died, probably a really small contention. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The vocals on this are incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: For me, this is Brian Johnson at his best right,
And it's that perfect singing scream you know. I mean
we talked about when Nirvana did it, but it's just
that perfect oh, that full emotion that sounds great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know it's they have I won't I
won't say it's I mean that their voices are not
the same, but if there's a similarness to them, I mean,
he can pull off the Bond Scott songs right right.
He can. He can sing Highway to Hell and still
kill it. But just you know, the voice. Bond Scott's
voice was a gravel voice, right I read he actually
his early morning ritual was to gargle with honey and
red wine and that kept his voice nice and raspy.
And then Angus described Brian Johnson's voice as what somebody
sounds like if you dropped a truck on their foot.
He's got a screech, you know. Brian Johnson has got
a higher pitched screaming style to his voice, but it
fits with the ACDC style perfectly.
Speaker 2: What a great tribute. This album came out five months
after Bond's death and this wonderful, amazing song, and it's
a tribute to Bond. I will tell you this. This
is a cool thing that I found. Kurt Cobain was
given a guitar on his fourteenth birthday, and the first
song you learned to play was Back in Black. Okay,
if you're a movie fan, you'll recognize this from Iron Man.
You called Grudge Match, Mega Mind, Karate Kid, the remake, eh,
the one we don't talk about, Okay, School of Rock
and the Muppets. The Muppets, not the Muppet Movie, not
the Great Mumpet Caper. The Muppets.
Speaker 1: Oh, the Muppets from like twenty eleven. Okay, yeah, so.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, So we're done with Back in Black,
starting off side to with an amazing song. Then we
follow that one up with You Shook Me All Night Long.
Speaker 1: She is the best song.
Speaker 2: Now, I can't really argue. The two songs are freaking amazing.
Speaker 1: Back to that, yeah, I can remember. I can remember
as a kid, the same cousins that as a seven
year old I went and saw my first three sets
of boobies in the movie theater. When I became a teenager,
I think I was probably fourteen when I went out
to see them again and they had they had CDs,
and they had a really large CD collection. They were musicians,
and among the CDs was Van Halen one. So that's
how I got introduced to Van Halen One, which we
talk about in which I still say is my favorite
Van Halen album to this day. And then also Back
in Black and I made the best mixtape that has
ever existed in the history of mixtapes, using all of
their CDs. But I was a collectic in my tastes,
and so were they. And so now every time I
hear you Shook Me all night long when the song ends,
I really expect Crazy by Patsy Klein to come on
that trade. Man.
Speaker 2: We got that mixtape mixed up in your head.
Speaker 1: Pavlovian Spot, because that was what was next on the mixtape,
and I listened to it eight million times. So I
just that's what I expect. Be weird for Pandora to
do that, though.
Speaker 2: Okay, here's an interesting thing for you. When I discovered ACDC,
it was in nineteen eighty six when they came out
with the album Who Made Who, which was the soundtrack
for Maximum over Drive.
Speaker 1: Right, right.
Speaker 2: This is Stephen King movie with Emelia Estebez.
Speaker 1: It's terrible.
Speaker 2: It was terrible, but the soundtrack was amazing. So it
had all a CDC songs and one of them was
you Shook Me All Night Long along with Hell's Bells.
So they pluck some from Back in Black, and that's
how I discovered this song. What I really like about
this song is when it's art, you have the guitar
and then as you continue on on the left side
of your stereo and then it comes in with like
the twinning guitar.
Speaker 1: YEP. They bounce it back, they pan it back and forth.
It's awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great effect. This song reached number thirty
five on the US Hot one hundred.
Speaker 1: Yeah. This was the first single off of the album.
Speaker 2: YEP, released August ninth, nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1: So Brian Johnson came up with this song because of
all of the posters of American girls that were in
the Bahamas, and I guess somehow he was thinking about
his old car shop at the same time he was
thinking about those girls. Because she was a fast machine,
she kept her mooter clean.
Speaker 2: She was the best damn woman that he'd ever seen.
I did hear and we're talking about writing the lyrics
to this. He uh, the line she told me to come,
but I was already there.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: He thought he pushed it too far on that one,
and they were like.
Speaker 1: Nope, sounds yep. Best line on the album. Really.
Speaker 2: You know who else has a version of the song?
Should I A Twain and Celine Dion?
Speaker 1: Yeah? That was like one of the worst covers of
all time?
Speaker 4: Give me a second, all right?
Speaker 2: So you Shook Me All Night Long was placed at
number ten on VH one's list of the one hundred
Greatest Songs of the eighties.
Speaker 1: So I heard. I haven't verified these yet, but I
heard that there were some copies of the single that
were pressed incorrectly and they accidentally put shake a Leg
on there instead of Shook Me All Night Long.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I heard about that. That cool collectors item.
Speaker 1: Yeah apparently it's Yeah, it's tough to get, but they're yeah,
it's collector's item, they're expensive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Shake a Leg nearly as good a song as
You Shook Me On a Long?
Speaker 1: No, not a bit.
Speaker 2: Okay, listen to this. I got this cool story VH
one series pop up video.
Speaker 1: You remember that ah VH one the pop up video.
I have not thought about that in a long time. Okay,
go ahead, all right.
Speaker 2: So, according to VH one's pop up videos, the video
for You Shook Me All Night Long featured a mechanical bowl,
with a woman playing Johnson's lover riding the mechanical bowl.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 2: During the filming, she accidentally jabbed herself with a spur.
The roadie who came to her aid married her.
Speaker 1: A year later.
Speaker 2: Ah and Hanka's young gave them a mechanical bull as
a wedding present.
Speaker 1: That's awesome.
Speaker 2: How about that? That's all right?
Speaker 1: We done what?
Speaker 2: You Shook Me All Night Long?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Okay, two amazing songs back to back.
Speaker 1: Next, No, that's not it. Okay, sorry sorry.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, have a drink on me.
Speaker 1: Again. I just love it that. Hey, let's sing songs
about drinking.
Speaker 2: I know we just lost our buddy to drinking, so
have a drink on me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean it's perfect. It's exactly what. It's
kind of their toast to him, right right, It's like, hey,
you brought us here, thank you, we're having a drink
on you.
Speaker 2: Seriously, they don't see Bond's death as a PSA. They
just see it as a celebration to continue doing what
we're doing.
Speaker 1: So lived life to the fullest.
Speaker 2: Okay, have a Drink on Me. Awesome song, not quite
at the level as Back and Black and You Shook
Me on It Long. Just another great song on this album.
Speaker 1: So honestly, this one is one of my least favorites
on the album. I know that this is one that
the fans. Yeah, I know, this is one of the
ones that fans love it. And it's not bad. I
don't hate it or anything, but this is not one
that I get excited about.
Speaker 2: Okay, So you and I talked earlier this week. There
are songs like my personal songwriting. This is a turn
it up song, this is a let it ride song,
or this is a skip song.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gonna I mean, I'm probably gonna fast forward
through the song.
Speaker 2: Okay, you got me?
Speaker 1: Sorry man, I.
Speaker 2: Love the song, all right, So that doesn't for have
a dream.
Speaker 1: I'm okay.
Speaker 2: Now we're on.
Speaker 1: Shake a Leg, yes, which I think you know. Whenever
Angus Young plays and he does a crazy, crazy show anyway,
but he has this stick that he does that is
totally a chuck Berry knockoff where he kind of does
the duck walk and he's kicking his leg out there
and it's this goofy, crazy thing. And every time I
hear this song, I'm like, we're talking about Angus, right,
this is Angus shaking.
Speaker 2: His leg exactly exactly on that note, I read this
really involves Bond. But one of the things that Angus
used to do was he'd get on the shoulders of
a roadie, right, and he'd play in the crowd. The
roady would carry him around the crowd and he's, of course,
he's five foot two, he's this little shrimpy guy and
he's playing this killer guitar. And then the roady would
bring him back up on stage. He'd put him up
on Bond's shoulders and he'd play on Bon's shoulders, right.
But if he got a bad saddle, he would say, me, balls,
me balls, put me down.
Speaker 1: That's awesome, all right.
Speaker 2: So shake a Leg is an awesome song too. It's
a good song. We talked about how this was printed
on some of the You Shook Me All Night Long singles,
and that has become a collector's edition. It's it's a
good song. I mean it's it's not the world's best song,
but it's good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, what you're feeling on again, this is you know,
the you pointed out that there's not a lot of
variation in the sound in these songs, right, right, and
so some of them, I mean, the great thing is
is that they're great songs. So if you're gonna repeat
something great, that's good. They're all fists pumping, they've all
got that solid, punchy guitar that you know, doesn't have
the reverb. It's just bump butt up right there in
your face. But some of them don't sell me the
way that others do. And if I'm listening to that
and I'm thinking, okay, this is the this is the
seventh time I've heard this kind of sound and it's
not just blowing me away, that's time.
Speaker 2: On that note, you're exactly right. There's not a lot
of variations. So if you like one song, you probably
like most of them. Some of them strike you're a
little bit stronger than the others. But notice, so far
there have been no ballads.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So, I don't know if you heard this story, but
at the time the production company, the producers came in
and basically put their foot down and said, you guys
have got to come up with a ballad. Your your
peers are writing ballads that are selling their albums like crazy.
You guys got to come up with a ballad. And
they said, we don't know how I do it, Like,
we don't know where to start. We've never done one.
And so the producers are like, all right, here's what
you do. Think about your last girlfriend, write some lyrics down.
We'll send in the guy to help you.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: So after this they kind of gave it the good
old college try, and when the producers came in to
listen to the results, they just got up, shook their head,
walked out of the room and said, you guys, just
keep doing what you're doing.
Speaker 1: That's that's good. That's good. Yeah. I don't know. I mean,
I don't know what I would do if I heard
a ballad from ac DC. I can't. It just would
be wrong, right.
Speaker 2: It just doesn't go together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it'd be like Celine Dion singing an ac DC song.
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly, like putting mayonnaise on a steak. I mean,
just yeah, yeah, all right. So the last song on
the album is a song called rock and Roll ain't
noise pollution.
Speaker 1: So I've said, now, hey, I've heard the same song,
you know, the same style of song over and over.
This is one where I was getting to that point.
But I was then I was like, who hey, this
is different, this is bluesy, this is more kind of
I'm grooving here a bit. And you got Brian Johnson,
who apparently Mutt Lang just told him, hey, just just
say something over this. I just need something, you know,
so that I know that your microphone's working or something
like that. And so Brian Johnson does this kind of
preacher esque kind of speech to the working man, and
but left it on.
Speaker 2: Hey you there, all you middle men, throw away your
fancy clothes while you're out there sitting on a fence,
So get off your ass, come down here. Rock and
roll ain't no riddle man. To me, it makes good,
good sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah this song, Yeah, I mean, on an album full
of great music, this song might be number two for me.
I really really dig this song a lot. They throw
you a curveball at the end. They finish with something
that is unique, and it's not so unique that you're like,
what is this? It's still ac DC the guitar still
comes in here in a little bit, and it still
kicks some major butt. But it has got a groove
to it that the other songs don't have. Not that
they're bad, it's just that they don't have that kind
of groove that this one has.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I love hearing that from me. This song
starts out slow, but it has a building power and
it comes full tilt. This is a great, great song
for me on the album as well. This one blows
my skirt up, as you would say. But this song
is similar to or some Sugar on Me. We talked
about when we covered Hysteria that Mutt Lane got to
the end and said, all right, guys, we've got some good,
really good solid songs here. Need one more, right, right.
So initially they only had nine tracks for Back in Black,
but they thought they needed one more song. So Mutt
Lane said, all right, guys, get to work. Angus and
Malcolm wrote this song. The music for the song in
about fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's incredible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then it caps off this album so good.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I'll say this before we get into our
final judgment. They had a formula that they put into
play here, Yes, and that formula worked.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, it still works.
Speaker 1: It really does. And the songs they last the test
of time. This album is a great album.
Speaker 2: Okay, everybody, we're gonna take a quick break. We'll be
right back after these messages, I.
Speaker 1: Think at this point, unless we got more to talk about,
it's time to jump into final judgment. Let's do it. Okay,
I'm gonna let you go first this time.
Speaker 2: Okay, Before I get to final judgment, I did want
to bring up something really quick. These two albums that
we're comparing are similar, and they're both rock on blues
bassed rock. They both have that screechy, strong guitar, strong vocals,
really turn it up, your pump your brains out type
of music. But these are both all time best selling albums.
Speaker 1: Okay, yep.
Speaker 2: Now, for whatever reason, it's difficult to pin down an
exact number on album sales. I have seen acdc's Back
and Black listed as high as number two on all
time sales.
Speaker 1: Just behind Michael Jackson's Thriller. Highest for a band.
Speaker 2: Yes, this one has it at number seven overall, with
Appetite for Destruction at number thirteen. So one of the
things that really can't be disputed, is that Guns Rose's
Appetite for Destruction is the best selling debut album of
all time. Yes, okay, all right, So when I go
to final judgment, here's what I'm weighing. I've got to
what I would consider front to back. Every song on
it is a non skipper for me, twelve tracks, no filler,
all killer, back in Black. Back in Black is the
same way, It's shorter. Okay, Now, then, in my estimation,
Appetite for Destruction is a better album, partially because it
has more tracks. But we had never heard Guns of
Roses before. So I'm going to give ACDC a little
bit of a break here. They get a little bit
of grace because this is their seventh album and they
did this six weeks after they lost their lead singer.
So I'm not discrediting Back in Black at all. The
accomplishment of Back in Black is incredible under those circumstances.
But for me, if you put a gun to my head,
the first one I'm getting out of my tape deck
is Appetite for Destruction. What do you think?
Speaker 1: Okay? So here's my thought. We've got two bands, and
the last time that we talked, I said, hey, you know,
what do you think the difference is between hard rock
and heavy metal? And you had kind of an idea
and I shared what my thoughts with you were. But
as we're going through this process, we're we're examining a
lot of music, right, I mean, we've we've listened to Journey,
We've listened to the Police, We've listened to def Leppard,
We've listened to Van Halen, we've listened to Nirvana, we've
listened to Pearl Jam. And as I'm going through this
and I'm trying to you know, I'm looking at these
musical categories and I'm and you know, is this alternative music?
Is this hard rock? Is this heavy metal? Is this
something entirely different? What is this? And something that spoke
to me about both of these bands, they both said
the same thing when people would try to paint them
into a corner, like are you metal or are you
hard rock? They both said the same thing. We play
rock and roll, yeah, and that's it, like, and that's
the you know, it's the lyric to the Billy Joel song.
Is the thing it's screaming in my head. It's all
rock and roll to me, right, Yeah, I mean I
realize that there are some folks who hate on some
of the bands that we have talked about in the
past because of what they did to some of the
bands that we're talking about right now. But it's all
rock and roll. Ultimately, it is all rock and roll.
And I love rock and roll. And right now you
can't get a good rock and roll song from anybody
that I can find. I'm waiting for that comeback. I'm
waiting for the I'm waiting for the ACDC of the
two thousands to show up, where the Van Halen or
the Pearl Jam, whoever it is it's going to show
up and say, guys, we're going to start rocking the
free world again. I'm ready for that. So what ACDC
did was pure simple rock. They had that formula. You
have a punch guitar, you have loud drums, and you
have euphemistic lyrics that are about the basics of sex,
drugs and rock and roll. Man, I mean, that's sex, booze,
and rock and roll. Whatever you want to say. And
so they they set a standard. I mean, Back in
Black has set the standard for what playing rock and
roll in the eighties means. And so they're there at
the beginning of the eighties, setting the standard. And yes,
it's great. It is unarguably one of the best albums
of all time. But because they're so dedicated to their formula,
there's a lack of variation that you have that you
get from other albums, and that you specifically get from
Appetite for Destruction. Appetite is good old rock and roll,
hard rock rock and roll, whatever you want to call it.
But they've they have a little bit of a ballad
that comes in from time to time. They've got a
variation in their sound. They use a talk box here
and there, and with the doing all of those variations,
they not only give you variety, but they maintain some
kick butt tunes. And so I have to say I'm
on the same page with you. I think Appetite wins
the day. It doesn't sold as many albums, it probably
doesn't have as many diehard fans. But when I'm putting
them on the scales, as you say, if I decide, okay,
I got two tapes I can pick before I walk
out the door, I'm gonna pick Appetite.
Speaker 2: Something that would be a complete oversight if we don't
mention Brian Johnson when he had to step away from
ACDC for a little bit. Yeah, we filled in for him.
Axel Rose, Axel Rose and Guns and Roses you sent me.
They play a whole lot of rosie.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So when they first when they first came out,
Melody Maker described them as a week ACDC. You know.
Speaker 2: And here's the other thing. ACDC has given us thirty
years worth of great music. Forty forty years with the
great music.
Speaker 1: Well, if they did it first in seventy six, it's
nearly forty five.
Speaker 2: Gosh, that's incredible. Yeah, so they keep a CDC has
been pumping out music for decades.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now not all of it is Back in Black or
Highway to Hell.
Speaker 1: No, some of the day I don't.
Speaker 2: They have any songs on it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but they still even in you know, even
in their fifties, they were making some hits.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, absolutely. Guns and Roses on the other hand,
you know, I keep waiting and waiting and waiting, and
it's just not going to happen.
Speaker 1: So I think that Appetite will continue to stand the
test of time. I think Back in Black will continue
to stand the test of time. They're both albums that
you can go back to over and over again, and
I think without Back in Black, there there is no gni,
there is no appetite for destruction. So you got to
give you got to give them that consideration. But it's
a hard choice. These are definitely two major contenders. But
we'd love to hear from you, guys, tell us what
you think.
Speaker 2: For me, this is appetite by a nose, But tell
us where we're at. If you're all the way back
in Black, or if you hate appetite, if you hate
access voice, or if you think bon Scott was the
man in Back and Back and everything after that was terrible,
let us hear from you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, you can catch us on Twitter at Shirley Podcast,
on Facebook at Shirley Podcasts, or if you want to
send us an email. We respond to every single email
that we get, and that's shirleypodcast at gmail dot com.
We really appreciate all of the support that you continue
to give us. We're overwhelmed by how many people have
reached out and given us their opinion on things. It's fantastic.
We love it. So please join us in the debate
here and let us know what you think.
Speaker 2: All right, Thanks everybody for listening. Check us out on
Facebook and Twitter. We will see you next time.
Speaker 1: All music, images, and movie clips are used for the
purposes of commentary and education in conjunction with the fair
Use agreement under the US copyright law.