Albums of My Life - 1980 - AC/DC "Back In Black"

by Steve Pick

The me of 1980, a cocky 21-year-old who knew there was a lot yet to learn but was willing to believe that what he already knew was probably the most important anyway, would probably hate the me of 2009. How could I take a year which featured such incredible records as Elvis Costello's Get Happy, Magazine's The Correct Use of Soap, the English Beat's I Just Can't Stop It, or the debut from the Pretenders, and decide that one of the two or three biggest selling albums of all time deserves to represent it?

Well, I still listen to all those records, and many more besides from what was a pretty darn good year, but there is something singular about Back In Black which moves me in ways no other music does. Put quite simply, Back In Black is the record which most sounds the way it feels to have a raging hard-on.

Rock and roll and sex share a long history - heckfire, the term was originally slang for doing the nasty. The rhythms, the wild dances, the innuendos, the double entendres, and the downright obvious seductions were reason enough to hate it for those who preferred to pretend young people never get those special feelings. And, there's no question that, like virtually everything else in the popular culture, rock music was most often assuming a male point of view on the subject.

Basically, I'm saying there were forebears for the sexuality of AC/DC, but this band took it to the next level by virtue of a single-minded commitment to the metaphor of rock and roll as orgasm. And, yes, there are those who will insist that AC/DC perfected their sound and subject matter in the years before 1980, when the late great Bon Scott was writing the lyrics and screaming the words. I love the guy, and I can thrill to most of his songs, too, but it was somehow the perfect storm of newcomer Brian Johnson taking over after Scott's death just as Angus Young created his most memorable of many unforgettable guitar riffs and producer Mutt Lange figured out how to squeeze all this sound into the riffs with more power and passion than had been heard before.

The feminist in me is never going to defend lyrics such as "Oh she's blowing me crazy / Til my ammunition is dry" in the extreme "Given the Dog a Bone" or "Let me cut your cake with my knife" in the literal "Let Me Put My Love Into You." But, dammit, these songs sound just like it feels when such actions are being undertaken, and if those aren't the thoughts which pop into my head at that moment, I'm not saying my dirty words are any more clever or thoughtful. And when Johnson expresses his admiration for the skills of his partner in "You Shook Me All Night Long," it's even kind of tender to hear him say, "But the walls were shaking / The earth was quaking / My mind was aching / And we were making it and you / Shook me all night long."

Not that I'm going to pretend AC/DC is about tenderness. They're not. They're about waving their big dicks in the air and shaking them like they just don't care. They're about the most perfectly placed rhythms in all loud rock, as guitarist Malcolm Young (the older brother of lead guitarist Angus, who gets all the attention on stage) is about the most rhythmically intense player I know. Angus may write the riffs, but it's Malcolm who puts them into your groin, aided, I admit by the rumbling bass of Cliff Williams and the dynamite right foot of drummer Phil Rudd.

Side one begins with "Hell's Bells," one of the most thrilling album openers I know (so much so that most, if not all, of the times I've seen them live, this has been the first song. As that bell intones its warning, the band revs up slowly until reaching full throttle, from which they don't let down again until the record is over. Now, I'll admit the rest of side one is merely average AC/DC, which is to say it's nasty, it's sexy, and it grinds real good. But side two is a masterpiece which gives this album its place in my personal pantheon.

"Back In Black," that stuttering rhythmic delight; "You Shook Me All Night Long," which taught Mutt Lange that big money could be made by combining pop melodies with heavy metal thunder; "Have a Drink On Me," a song which still sounds like sex but is really more about fellowship; "Shake a Leg," the weakest link on the side and yet a pretty powerful number; and finally "Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution," perhaps the best of their long-time crusade to demonstrate the way they felt at age 25 would be the way they would always feel.

At 21, I understood a little about music making me feel good, but my head was still ruling my heart when it came to breaking a tie. I was convinced that sex was a demeaning subject for a music which had made so much of it for so long, and I was equally convinced that guitar solos shouldn't go on for very long (not that Angus Young ever overstays his welcome - his blues-based licks are always entirely appropriate comments on the riffs and chord-changes at hand). I wasn't willing to accept the possibility that a record this ubiquitous - according to Wikipedia, the best selling album ever by a band - could possibly be good. But, listen here, you silly, pompous 21-year-old - eventually, you came to the conclusion that feeling good is its own reward, and Back In Black feels really, really good.