AC/DC: Back in Black

Did I tell you about the time Lucy and I went to the final of the UK Air Guitar Championships, up in Camden? We were on the guest list, courtesy of a slightly unusual competition on the John Peel show (when did competitions creep into his show? only in the final year or two, I think). The competition question was "In what year was AC/DC's Back in Black released?" I knew that, and — ever the smartarse — even took at the stab at the month in my emailed entry. I said August 1980. I was wrong, of course; it was 25 July.

I remember Tommy Vance playing tracks from the album on the radio for the first time. We were down in our usual holiday flat in Milford-on-Sea, which is why I guessed it was August (in those days, they didn't play records months before their release — just a week in advance if you were lucky). Remember I wasn't so much an AC/DC fan then. If I ever had a Metal Year, 1980 was it — and it lasted about 6-9 months. But my favourite releases around that time would have been Iron Maiden's first album and Black Sabbath's Heaven and Hell. It's still a good album, Heaven and Hell: I dipped into it recently when drawn into a Twitter discussion about Ronnie James Dio, thus breaking my injunction against Celebrating the Dead Artist.

The backdrop of death is one of the things that raised Back in Black above its peers. The sense that AC/DC were unbowed by the loss of their lead singer. No wonder the album wasn't played on the radio months in advance of release: the whole sweep from Bon Scott dying, to the band considering disbanding, but then advertising for and recruiting a new singer, recording and then releasing the album, was only a few days over five months. These days you need that long for the media wake alone.

A second thing is the quality of the songs. One after the other, they're just blisteringly… blistering. Even back in 1980 I sensed they were starting to sink hooks into me. The one thing I notice now that I'm three times as old is that I've developed a prissiness about the Stag Night version of masculinity that runs through all these songs. I went to my first ever stag do last week, and I'm old enough to know that men never get to be old enough to know better, so I wasn't shocked; but I can start to imagine myself having concerns about the Boy listening to lyrics like these when he's 15.

The final thing that's lifted Back in Black is time. The time it takes for the hooks in the songs to take hold and become one with the flesh of our culture. Also the time it takes for the target audience not to have been born when the record came out. If you're 15-25 now, Back in Black must seem every bit as Handed Down by Our Forefathers as, say, Exile on Main Street.

Many times over the last decade or so I've hunted a reasonably-priced copy of this album. But, along with fellow download-holdouts The Beatles, the price remained stubbornly high for a long time — presumably indicative of a steely determination by the record company to milk these long-term bestsellers to cross-subsidise all their other operations. (I had no idea, though, that it's now the second bestselling album of all time). Then I came across this vinyl copy in Steve's "getting shot" boxes last year. At last. So now I have it on indefinite loan from him.

The Air Guitar Championships, meanwhile, were a bit like a stag do: best experienced once and once only. I was a bit disappointed that the judges seemed to focus solely on stagecraft, with no account taken of fidelity to the actual movements involved in playing a guitar. I sent a report back to John Peel in thanks for our freebie:

Many thanks for the guest list entry to the above event on Sunday. Our favourites were Conrad Monster (a reference to Colonel Kurtz?) for technical performance; Iron Muff for attitude, choreography and a poodle wig larger than many an Alsatian; and Triple Slash for the Spinal Tap stage furniture.

When he read it out, he didn't chide me for being a smartarse for my Heart of Darkness reference; he just completely ignored it. Perhaps some men do know better after all.

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Comments

[Andy]

I was probably a Bon Scott snob when Back in Black came out ("it's not *real* AC/DC") but am happy to concede that actually it probably is AC/DC's finest hour - maybe that five month period of reflection/mourning/creativity was just what the band needed.

Lyrical content is something that I've been struggling with. When I listen back to some of the questionable lyrics I spent my formative years listening to I can't help but get a rather sour taste in my mouth. A couple of years back as Adam was trying to find his own musical "place" (still not there yet) he went through an it-might-be-hip-hop phase and I spent many hours trying to establish what parts of the genre were not homophobic, misogynistic or glorifying violence... even now as he's going through an it-might-be-heavy-metal phase I balk at using my knowledge of the genre to recommend anything.

Still haven't established how to deal with it (or even if I should) - I just hope that he comes through it all with an understanding of what he's listening to...

[David]

Thanks for the thoughtful comments, Andy. I was genuinely surprised by my reaction to the lyrics on Back in Black - I think it was just the relentlessness of them. I remember listening to tracks like "What do You Do for Money, Honey?" 30 years ago, and I knew pretty much what the gist was, though I didn't pay a lot of attention (I was a precocious snob, and knew the words weren't as 'worthy' as Neil Peart's fanfic paraphrase of Samuel Taylor Coleridge!). So I don't think my psyche was damaged by them - but then none of us can step outside our own minds to judge if we might have turned out more emotionally balanced and secure had we not listened to these wicked words.

And still there's something about the songs on Back in Black that feels different to a song like Whole Lotta Rosie, which has always seemed like cartoon fun, impossible to take seriously, and therefore quite harmless.