Speaker 1: Good day listeners. This is Martin from Tasmania, Australia and
you are listening to the Surely You Can't Be Serious Podcast.
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? It's been along. I'm glad to be back.
Speaker 2: 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. Graves and Jason Colovin,
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? I do
know what I'm gonna pick. I do know what I'm
gonna pick.
Speaker 2: 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 right, 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 the guy for the police need
to form this band.
Speaker 1: Called Missus, you know. 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 health for
somebody who wants to travel down to Australia. And so
he and eleven other family members 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. 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're 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 star,
their famous brother. That's right right.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: Things right, just kind of like reading. For them, everybody
just learned how to play something. Yeah. 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'll 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. It's a great.
Speaker 2: Run for them, great run for them. I think it's
interesting where they got their name from their band name. Yeah,
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, that's that's pretty good,
you know, And that to them meant power and energy.
Speaker 1: And they thought, well, that's a pretty good name. 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 of their name?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it really did just come from the back
of a sewing machine. Everybody has tried to put different
meanings for it. Yeah, I had heard all the rumors
about how anti Christ, Devil's Children or after Christ's 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 an
identifying But the press took it and went an entirely
different direction and tried 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 killer, right yeah, But I mean, to
be fair, they they did have a lot of stuff
that would have caused 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? Okay now 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 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 moderate hit with with him. Was called
can I Sit next to You Girl?
Speaker 1: Yep, sounds like a Beach 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 was 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. That's right, that's right,
very near to death. 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 ACDC 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.
Speaker 1: You know, I think I can.
Speaker 2: I'm a better singer than the guy that's been traveling
with you guys.
Speaker 1: You know, give me a shot. I can do this. Yeah,
and then he stepped in. Man, it took off. It
was magic.
Speaker 2: Okay, everybody, we're going to take a quick break.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: High Voltage, which was released.
Speaker 2: Most people are familiar with that one in 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 aang and he had tried
a spy 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? I saw this.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: He's a rock star. 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 nine months.
Speaker 1: I'm out of here. My school birthday is tomorrow.
Speaker 2: That is math assigmon that you jumps are doing tonight, I.
Speaker 1: Ain't doing it. 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
it did they I heard.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: They made a name for themselves. Yeah. You, 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 the 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 me.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: Dirt Cheap, the Dune Dirt Cheap.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they don't stop there. In nineteen seventy seven
they release another album, Let There Be.
Speaker 1: Rock, 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. It's just like the Van Halen episodes.
Speaker 2: We talked about flashback 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.
Speaker 1: A live album. 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. We love him.
Speaker 2: 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 stage 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. Yeah.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: Just be a studio rat. 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 demopes 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, 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. I want you to continue with
ACDC and make it something great. And so they decided
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? No, who
was it? 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. Yes, we don't know your name,
but 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 said, 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 somebody
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. You know, He's like, I don't know,
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. I love
the Human Vacuum Clinic commercial. It is amazing.
Speaker 2: It's no vacu in black, but I mean, you know,
it's good.
Speaker 1: Though, It's really good. It's a beautiful move. And then
he's got to go over and sing for ac DC,
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, ah, f it, 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, wow, 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 dream 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 Iicontina Turner is called Nutbush City Limits.
Speaker 1: And so they hear him say that and they're like, oh,
thank god. Every other person that's been in there 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, sorry,
this is our man. So they say him back home,
and a little while later they're like, hey, can you
come down for a second audition and he 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 times, 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? Get it?
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 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,
I need a drink, 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 going to take a quick break. Please
stay with us. We will be right back after these messages,
all right.
Speaker 2: 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, Like, 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 out with back
in black amazing.
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Speaker 2: All Right, so Back in Black has released July twenty fifth,
nineteen eighty. Let's 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 Bond Scott. The cover of the
album is all black, just some basic white outlined letters
saying ACDC, back and 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 Let's jump in. I'm excited about this first song.
I listen. I listened to this album again today, cranked
it up, pumped my fist as I drove home. So
the first song on the album is Hell's Bells. Okay,
so we've talked before about how Mutt Lang puts these
albums together 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 tune a minute. You got that bell,
and it's it's all you hear. It's like you're are
you coming to church? What's going on here? And then
on your right speaker it lays down that first guitar,
Layer one belt, 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 left speaker that 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.
Speaker 6: And it is amazing.
Speaker 1: What a great start for the album.
Speaker 2: And like you said, it's layer intensifies builds.
Speaker 1: To this great rocking song. 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 girlfriend or
boyfriend in a month and a half. You're just like, oh,
what's what's going on? This isn't right. And so the
question is, you know, like what 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 and
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,
the 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. He just wrote it down on a
piece of paper, just float out of him. Something similar
happened to Brian Johnson on Hell's Bells. It's supernatural. He's
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.
Speaker 1: He was in his room.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 3: B E.
Speaker 1: L Ees No, but I did know that there's a
bluegrass band tribute to ACDC called he C Dixie. You're
only you.
Speaker 2: That's 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 instantaneously and so the lightning strikes and there's
this really loud thunder cut that comes through, and Mutt
Lange 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
all thunder and 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. That's great, man,
that's awesome. Okay. So here's something that Hell's Bells means
to me.
Speaker 2: All right, and we talked about this in our Major
League episode, But I'm a baseball fan, right right. Trever
Hoffman was a relief pitcher for the San 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.
Speaker 1: He's going to shut everybody down.
Speaker 2: 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, they're there 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 ac DC song is about either sex, booze,
or rock.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's it. That'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. I'm
gonna run with that. I think I got this. Yeah,
all right.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the actual bell sound.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they needed a bell. You know, 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 around the bell would take off flying, and
you had the sound of flapping wings on your recording
of the bell. Yep, and 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.
They're 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, so 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 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 dragging home.
Speaker 2: There's thirteen bell tolls, four before the music's arts, and
nine after all.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, I did not count the bells. Okay.
Speaker 2: 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. Yeah, so you touched on it. You're right.
This for my family.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: For this song.
Speaker 2: He talked about how this is about suburban neighborhood board
housewives who get into 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.
Speaker 1: All Right, this song's amazing. I love it. Five stars.
Speaker 2: Song moving on track number three is a song called
what do You Do for Money?
Speaker 1: Honey?
Speaker 2: Okay, so some of the lyrics on this song talk
about calling out gold diggers and saying that he will
not be set up by the women who are after
his gold.
Speaker 1: A gold digger song. It's a gold digger song.
Speaker 2: It's a good song. It's not a great song. It's
hard song. Yeah, No, I love this song. Okay, Yeah,
it's a good one. It's hard to maintain the shoot
to thrill back in black Kell'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. Yeah. I like it.
Speaker 2: I definitely like it. Track number four is a song
called Given the.
Speaker 1: Dog a Bone.
Speaker 2: This is gonna be hard to remain family friendly as
we talk about this one.
Speaker 1: 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 milk bone
for your dog.
Speaker 1: I don't know this song.
Speaker 2: I saw it described as a very spinal tap esque.
Speaker 1: You're say, 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.
Speaker 1: So I don't know what do you think about this one?
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. Here's the thing. In all honesty,
here's the thing.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: Some are just better than others, you know what I mean.
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. Oh, well,
she'll send you to your bars. It's okay. This is
this 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 this one?
Speaker 2: Well, you know I have love to give, and so
let me put it into you, Let me put it
on the line. This song. 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.
Speaker 1: Have you heard about this list? Yeah? This is the
Tipper Gore thing, right this. Yeah, like all the Sator
senator wives got together and said, these songs are profane,
these songs are awful for our youth. Yeah. So her
husband's off inventing the internet and she's complaining about ACDC song.
What's going on there? Okay?
Speaker 2: So here's the Filthy fifteen.
Speaker 1: You ready for this? 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, all right? So just some
other songs that you may have heard. A song called
darln Nicky, 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 Twist's sister what yeah,
rebellion type of attitudes. Violence, I think that one no,
but yeah, yeah, that's a stretch right there. Well wait,
she Bop by Cindy Lauper.
Speaker 1: What that song's about? Masturbation? 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 that, But do you
have anything more to say about let Me put My
Love into You.
Speaker 1: I can crack up every time I say that. From
what I understand is that all of those songs actually
got a boost in ratings when they got put on
the Filthy fifteen. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: 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 let Me put My Love into You. That
ends side one of Back in Black, Push stop It 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.
Speaker 1: To make sure we didn't get in too much trouble.
Speaker 2: So I asked my buddy Chris Bauer, friend of the show,
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 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 o'clock
in the morning. He whacks me on the forehead with
Back in Black and I'm like.
Speaker 1: What are you doing, dude. He's like, you want to
borrow the tape.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I didn't want you to whack me in
the forehead and wake me up, and alms that fice
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.
Speaker 1: A song back in black. Oh no, 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 7: Well, and uh, you know, I've got the notoriety came
from the the A C.
Speaker 1: D C. Which I really took sale, which.
Speaker 7: Is the ut.
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 symbol 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 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.
Speaker 1: Malcolm actually had the phrase.
Speaker 2: 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 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's an interview with Brian Johnson
and 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
on 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 guy's one of us. Yeah, 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
there's a section of folks out there that were, like,
I don't really care for ACDC after Bond died. Probably
a really small contention. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The vocals on this are incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for me, this is Brian Johnson at his best right.
Speaker 1: And it's that.
Speaker 2: 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 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 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. What a
great tribute.
Speaker 2: 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 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 Muppet Caper.
Speaker 1: The Muppets. Oh, the Muppets from like twenty eleven. Okay, yeah,
so okay, all.
Speaker 2: 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 s, this is the best song.
Speaker 2: Now I can't really argue the two songs are freaking amazing.
Speaker 1: Back to back. 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 get 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 collectick in my taste,
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.
Speaker 2: Man, we got that mixtape mixed up in your head.
Speaker 1: Pavlovian repose, because it was that was what was next
on the mixtape, and I listened to it eight million times,
So I just that's 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. Right right, 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 ACDC 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 starts, you have the guitar and
then as you continue on on the left side of
your stereo and.
Speaker 1: Then it comes in with like the twinning guitar. 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 hermoter 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 the line she told me to come,
but I was already there. Oh my gosh. He thought
he pushed it too far on that one, and they
were like, no, sounds great.
Speaker 1: YEP, best line on the album. Really.
Speaker 2: You know who else has a version of the song,
Shania Twain and Celine Dion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was like one of the worst covers of
all time. 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.
Speaker 1: Of the eighties. So I heard, and 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. Yeah, I heard about that.
Speaker 2: That would be 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 not nearly as good a.
Speaker 1: Song as You Shook Me All Night Long? Oh, 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 bull.
Speaker 1: I remember that during the filming she.
Speaker 2: Accidentally jabbed herself with a spur The roadie who came
to her aid married her a year later. Ah and
Hanka's young gave them a mechanical bull as a wedding present.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. How about that? That's all right? We done
when you shook me on that long? Yes?
Speaker 2: Okay, two amazing songs back to back.
Speaker 1: Next song is no, that's not it. Okay, sorry, sorry, no, no, no, no,
have a drink on me again. I just love it that. Hey,
let's sing songs about drinking. I know we just lost
buddy to drinking, so have a drink on me. Yeah,
And I mean it's it's perfect. It's exactly what. It's
kind of their toast to him, right right. It's like, hey,
you 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.
Speaker 1: Ride song, or this is a skip song. Yeah, I'm
gonna I mean, I'm probably gonna fast forward through the song. Okay,
you can me sorry, man. I love the song, all right,
So that does.
Speaker 2: It for have a dream?
Speaker 1: Okay, Now we're on the shake a Leg, yes, which
I think you know when 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 the song,
I'm like, we're talking about Angus, right, this is Angus
shaking his leg exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: On that note, I read a story 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.
Speaker 1: He put him up on Bond's.
Speaker 2: Shoulders and he'd play on Bos's shoulders. But if he
got a bad saddle, he would say me bowls, me bawls,
put me down. It's awesome, all right, So shake a
Leg is an awesome song too.
Speaker 1: It's a good song.
Speaker 2: We talked about how this was printed on some of
the You Shook Me All Night.
Speaker 1: Long singles, and that has become a collector's edition. It's
it's a good song.
Speaker 2: I mean it's it's not the world's best song, but
it's good.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, what's 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 pomp, but 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 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.
Speaker 1: Come up with a ballad.
Speaker 2: Your peers are writing ballads that are selling their albums
like crazy.
Speaker 1: You guys got to come up with a ballad.
Speaker 2: And they said, we don't know how to 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, It just doesn't go together. Yeah, it'd
be 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, whoa, 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 them, hey, 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 what left
it on?
Speaker 2: Hey you there, all you middle men, throw away your
fancy clothes. And while you're out there sitting on a fence,
so get off your ass, come down here.
Speaker 1: Rock and roll.
Speaker 2: Ain't no real man. To me, it makes good, good sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this song, 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's still
pick some major butt. But it has got a groove
to it that 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 got some good,
really good, solid songs.
Speaker 1: Here, but we need one more, right right.
Speaker 2: 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. Oh yes, it
still works, it really does. And the 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.
Speaker 1: I think at this point, unless we've 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
were comparing are similar, and they're both rock blues bassed rock.
Speaker 1: They both have that screechy.
Speaker 2: Strong guitar, strong vocals, really turn it up, pump 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, right. 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.
Speaker 1: Album of all time. Yes, okay, yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: 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 gonna 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.
Speaker 1: What do you think? 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 examining a lot of music, right. I mean, 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 that'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, is going to show
up and say, guys, we're going to start rocking the
free world again. I'm ready for that. So what ac
DC 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 career. 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 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 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 Appithite.
Speaker 2: Something that would be a complete oversight if we don't
mention Brian Johnson when he had to step away from
ac DC 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.
And here's the other thing.
Speaker 2: ACDC has given us thirty years worth.
Speaker 1: Of great music. Forty years worth of great music. Well,
if they did it first in seventy six, it's nearly
forty five. Gosh, that's incredible.
Speaker 2: 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. No, some of the I don't have
any songs on it, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but they still even in you know, even
in their fifties, they were making some hints.
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.
Speaker 1: Not going to happen. 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 GNR. 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 Bob 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. All right,
Thanks everybody for listening.
Speaker 2: Check us out on Facebook and Twitter, and we will
see you next time.
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purposes of commentary and education in conjunction with the fair
Use Agreement under the US copyright law.
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