“It could have come out today”: The AC/DC song Malcolm Young considered timeless
Love ’em or loath ’em, but rock ‘n roll Aussies AC/DC are hard rock royalty. Formed in Sydney in 1973, their trademark, unfussy stomp and strutting bravado saw swift commercial success in their native Australasia region, wasting no time unleashing their proto-metal on to the rest of the world, influencing the UK’s ‘new wave of British heavy metal’ in the process.
With a remarkable lifespan, AC/DC survived original singer Bon Scott’s death by alcohol poisoning, recruiting Brian Johnson to front their defining Back in Black album which ended up being one of the biggest-selling albums of all time, and enjoying two late-career resurgences with ’90’s The Razors Edge, and 2008’s Black Ice the second highest selling record that year.
With eternal rock radio hits like ‘Back in Black’ or ‘Highway to Hell’, and a back-catalogue adored by their devoted fanbase, you’d think it difficult to single out any of their cuts for special appraisal, but in a ’92 interview with the now defunct Metal CD, founding rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young, elder brother to 69-year-old ‘schoolboy’ and lead guitarist Angus Young, one song struck him as particularly timeless: “T.N.T. is a song that still goes over a storm every time we play it. It sounds like it could have come out today. D’you know there are bands out there still trying to write another T.N.T. today?”
It’s an interesting choice. While other tracks like ‘Rock ‘n Roll Damnation’, ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’, or even ‘Thunderstruck’ possess a greater grasp of arena-stomp fever, ‘T.N.T.’ captures the band’s cartoon character most succinctly. Originally featured on ’75’s Australia-only self-titled LP before its international release on the following year’s High Voltage, ‘T.N.T.’ has become a firm fan favourite and an essential part of their live set for nearly 50 years.
Whether there were bands in the early ’90s trying to come up with their own ‘T.N.T.’ is up for debate, however, Six Feet Under and Anthrax boast covers, the latter inviting Slash and Kirk Hammett to join their rendition on their ’13 tour.
‘T.N.T.’ is everything that AC/DC is about; primal, unpretentious, and a bit silly. Depicting an Aussie ‘ard bloke marauding around town and generally giving everyone a hard time is an anthem for every testosterone-fuelled adolescent metalhead. Add some caveman sexual politics and they were on a winner, “so lock up your daughter, lock up your wife, lock up your back door, and run for your life, the man is back in town, so don’t you mess me ’round” gleefully wallowing in its cloddish, unsophisticated luxuriation in playing the womanising, hard-drinking, street fighter.
Well, it worked, reaching gold in the UK singles charts and triple platinum in the US. Perhaps the secret to its success was simply the straightforward ethos that guided them in those heady ’70s, Young recalling: “Back then, we never went into the studio with anything more than a riff. In fact, we thought a riff was a song. We really didn’t know any better.”
