The AC/DC song Malcolm Young thought would never get old: “It could have come out today”
The biggest enemy for any rock musician is the passage of time. It’s one thing to be able to capture the zeitgeist in one moment and have the culture in the palm of your hand. Still, it’s anyone’s guess as to whether a song will maintain its relevance for years at a time or be considered incredibly dated within the span of two months. Although AC/DC was considered a bit of a throwback to the stone age of rock and roll even when they debuted, Malcolm Young always thought that ‘TNT’ was never going to go out of style.
In fact, AC/DC worked so well because they changed little from the initial rock and roll formula. Their language of music seemed to start with Chuck Berry and end somewhere around Jimi Hendrix, so the basics of the blues were really all they needed to get their point across half the time.
Then again, their first attempts are a bit of a weird beast to tackle. As much as their version of Chuck Berry’s ‘School Days’ is a good time, ‘Can I Sit Next To You Girl’ is one of the more mindless tracks that they would ever write, and that’s coming from the same band who used some of the most mindless double entendres in rock history.
But ‘TNT’ was something different, if only for how primal it sounds. Only a handful of chords play throughout the entire track, but it doesn’t matter that much when Bon Scott starts wailing. The Young brothers may have written every single track, but Scott’s lyrics about his fiery personality and/or sexual prowess have all the sleaze that AC/DC classics would be built on from that point forward.
There’s a good case to be made that this was the tune that ultimately started the ball rolling. Other tracks like ‘It’s a Long Way to the Top’ are great for what they are, but listening to ‘TNT’, you can draw a straight line to classics such as ‘Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap’, ‘Girls Got Rhythm’, and even ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’ during the Brian Johnson era of the group.
Despite being ground zero for them, Malcolm still thought that the tune hadn’t aged a day since it was released, telling Louder, “‘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?” And while Angus Young is known as the default mascot of the group, the best part of the tune is actually Malcolm’s rhythm part. He never played a single lead, but his solid right-hand technique made every track sound absolutely ferocious whenever it came out of the speakers.
It’s not just the straight-ahead rock and rollers trying to ride the Aussie legends’ coattails, either. The sounds of glam rock looked a lot prettier than AC/DC, but if you wipe away all of the glitter and lipstick, a lot of their guitar licks have the same primal energy that the Young brothers started. They never claimed to write the most intricate music in the world, but who needs a degree in music when all you need to get people grooving is a few chords?
