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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Summary.
AC/DC are one of the greatest heavy-metal bands of all time, and one of
the most authentic acts of rock'n'roll. They embody the wild, rebellious
quintessence of rock music like few other bands before punk-rock.
They were the opposite of the intellectual singer-songwriter or the brainy
progressive-rock or the decadent glam-rock of the 1970s: they were not the
brain and not the heart but the guts of rock and roll.
Rolling Stone Magazine gave a "zero" to several of their albums: the
greatest compliment ever paid to them.
Full bio.
Scottish brothers
Angus and Malcolm Young (both on guitar) formed AC/DC in Sydney (Australia) in
1973, adding
hoarse and feverish vocalist Bon Scott (Ronald Belford) one year later.
Thanks to their stage antics, both Scott and Angus Young became cult
idols. The hard and frenzied blues-rock of
High Voltage (Albert, 1974 - Atlantic, 1976),
whose reissue contains their early anthems The Jack (1975) and It's A Long Way (1975),
TNT (Albert, 1975),
Dirty Deeds Done Dirty Cheap (Atlantic, 1976),
perhaps their best engineered frenzy
(Ride On,
Problem Child,
Dirty Deeds),
Let There Be Rock (Atlantic, june 1977), with
the ferocious Whole Lotta Rosie (1977),
and
Powerage (Atlantic, may 1978)
defined their ethos, if not their sound (that was still very much indebted to
the Free).
Highway To Hell (aug 1979), containing the anthemic
Highway To Hell, an abrasive and syncopated blues-rock a` la
Free, reveals Angus Young's guitar pyrotechnics Bon Scott's vocal skills as a blues shouter.
The peak of their success came with the death of the singer (1980) and with the
album
Back In Black (aug 1980), of which eight million copies were sold,
containing classics of hard rock such as
Back In Black, the gothic
Hells Bells and especially
You Shook Me, in which new Scottish vocalist
Brian Johnson unleashed the most perverted roars in the history of rock music.
For Those About To Rock (1981), with
For Those About To Rock and Inject The Venom,
Flick Of The Switch (1983)
Fly On The Wall (1985), with
Shake Your Foundations and Sink The Pink,
Who Made Who (1986), an anthology that adds the instrumental
Chase The Ace and Who Made Who, repeated the formula with
less inspiration, but always delivering solid, massive riffs over panzer-like
rhythms, satanic screams and werewolf-like choirs.
Recovering from the artistic crisis that was destroying their reputation, they
touched new peaks of fury in
I Wanna Rock And Roll and especially Heat Seeker (1988),
off Blow Up Your Video (1988), another masterpiece of incontrollable
savagery,
followed by
Money Talks on The Razor's Edge (1990) and by the single
Thunderstruck.
The primordial energy of dynamite boogie
from You Shook Me
to Heatseeker,
is the emblem of a musical paganism that eschews sonic ideology and simply
aims at
wild instincts. More rustic and naive than their hard-rock rivals, AC/DC
celebrated
Dionysian rituals that are as old as the world, not the decadent orgies of the bourgeois age.
The band of Ballbreaker (EastWest, 1995) confirmed that the season
of Heatseeker
and I Wanna Rock And Roll had been a pure mirage.
Brian Johnson's ferocious roar has become pathetic, and Angus Young's riff has been the same for at least ten years.
It is not a coincidence that the best songs are those that hark back to their
"black" roots:
Boogie Man and Burnin' Alive.
Too predictable instead are Hail Caesar and Hard As A Rock.
Bonfire (Elektra, 1997) is a 5 CD box-set of live, rare and remastered
material, dedicated to Bon Scott.
Stiff Upper Lip (East West, 2000) is their worst album ever.
Nonetheless, Black Ice (2008) catapulted the band to the top of the
charts again in its home country, in Britain and all over Southeast Asia, thanks
to the old-fashioned roars of
Rock'n'roll Train, Wheels, Rocking All the Way.
A very ill Malcolm Young was missing on
Rock or Bust (2014), the shortest album of their career,
whose material is so lame that a trivial mid-tempo rocker such as
Rock the Blues Away ends up sounding like a standout.
AC/DC's guitarist Malcolm Young died in 2017 at the age of 64 after a long battle with dementia
Undeterred, they released Power Up (2020), a more serious attempt
at recapturing the energy of their golden age with songs like
Realize, Demon Fire,
Witch's Spell and especially
Shot in the Dark.
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