ACDC Retrospective: Why

The Start of the Journey

Over the past few months I have taken an ACDC record one at a time and given them several listens.

I guess the first question is ask and answer again is "why".

ACDC was very integral to my formative attitude towards things.  It was a constant reminder of what it means to have a little "rock and roll" in your life.  "Highway to Hell" was one of the first records(in actual record form too) that I remember, that and some Muppet Christmas record my mom owned.  I grew up on the essentials, and remember when Razor's Edge was new.  I remember when the videos for "Shook Me All Night Long" were done.

But not just that.

I have finally, REALLY, started on the road of learning guitar in a meaningful and lasting way.  While Angus was not the soul reason that I chose to get a Gibson SG, he's easily 50% of it.  I have all my life wanted to be able to play "Highway to Hell", "Back in Black" and "Shook Me All Night Long".  The guitar of Angus and Malcolm is a pure blues-rock style guitar that I have always enjoyed and thankfully is one of the first genres you can learn competently as a guitarist.  Even Angus' advanced soloing work is fun variations and tricks within the pentatonic and blues scales.

Then there are my black-out areas of which I did not have much listening experience with ACDC.  My Bon Scott era knowledge was larger than I had believed when I started this adventure, but it was still greatly expanded by listening to the era.  My biggest surprises came from listening to early recordings.  The "Fly on the Wall" and "Flick of the Switch" era was another blackout section, and to tell the truth I did not know much about the album before those two, or after those two.  Finally the last black out era was everything after the release of "ACDC Live", other than Harder than a Rock, Stiff Upper Lip and Rock and Roll Train.  That's 3 of around 30 tracks I had never heard.

Was it worth it?

Absolutely.  With the exception of a grand total of 1 album out of 18(or 14, depending on how you count them all) that might be considered "wasted" money, I would say that is a hell of a career.  Some bands get a handful of albums in under a decade to make a career on.  ACDC has had huge success in 4 different decades.  They have a 10x US Platinum "Highway to Hell" in the 70's.  In the 90's there was the 5x US Platinum Razor's Edge.  The 2008 "Black Ice" is 2x US Platinum.  The 80's Back in Black is the SECOND highest selling album of ALL TIME in all the world.  More than Madonna, more than P-diddy, more than any Beatles album.  All this means is that over all these albums, there is lots and lots of quality rock.

I kept a listing of my favorite songs on each album.  I have 29 new "good" songs that I never knew existed, on top of the over 20 that I already knew I loved.  The hard part will be to create a "must have" playlist without including all of those.  I have found that while I love many songs on a lot of albums, there are 4 albums that I feel are a cut above the rest.  I have learned that ACDC is influenced greatly by their producers.  When family or the band are in charge, they get more and more like their idols, when they get someone else in there, they tend to get pushed to be more the "hard rock" they helped invent.  In either case, I love what they do.

I have to say that my favorite memories while going through the albums were that of "Ride on" being a huge huge surprise.  I am also proud that they did not take the route so many harder acts do; when a softer song gets popular they don't put out a new album with half being soft songs trying to bilk it.  I enjoyed being able to hear Mutt Lange's influence and understand its him in there.  This is because I know my Def Leppard and my Foreigner songs from classic rock radio, and can tell the similarities from all those albums he produced.  I love a strong come back, and ACDC has had the most legendary ones.  "Back in Black" is what every band hopes to pull off when they lose an integral member.  "Razor's Edge" is the "we can show these young'uns how to rock" come back, and "Black Ice" is the "we ain't dead yet, we're still F*ckin' rockin", and with each I was so happy to hear them doing their thing.  I also enjoyed how "Blow Up Your Video" was an "almost there" kind of album, with a detour back to hard rock, but was revisited with Ballbreaker to great success.

So there will be a few more posts coming.

1. The Album Summations
2. The Ultimate Playlist

To everyone that stuck through and read my weekly updates and posts about this, and largely I've said everything I said here before in those, thanks for reading.