“It just rocks”: The definitive AC/DC song, according to Angus Young
Throw a dart at AC/DC’s back catalogue, and the chances are you’ll hit a faultless song. Yet, it is also true that you’re unlikely to hit anything remotely surprising.
Despite their unintentional formula for writing fantastic music, the Young brothers never claimed to be the most eclectic bunch of musicians in the world, and considering how well their music works, it’s really hard to argue with that mentality, either. As they famously joked, “I’m sick to death of talking about how we’ve released 11 identical albums. In fact, we have released 12 completely identical albums.”
But even a tried and trusted formula needs fine-tuning. After all, if AC/DC were so easy to imitate, then a legion of bands would be rattling off classic riffs and selling out global stadium tours, too. Magic doesn’t come that easy. Even the band admit that there are still highs and lows to be found in their arsenal. But they also claim that nothing defines what they were going for quite like the barnstorming classic, ‘Back in Black’.
Then again, listening to the title track of their best-selling album does mean that people miss out on half of the context. Sure, there might be the ringing open chords and the harsh vocals, but the Bon Scott era was already a part of history well before they had even come up with the classic stabbing intro.
In fact, there was a good chance that AC/DC could have been dead in the water the minute that they started working on Back in Black. Scott was a musical hellraiser of the highest order, and if the rest of them thought he was disposable, you couldn’t deny that he had that strange charisma that made everyone want to be his best friend at the end of the bar.
Once Scott was found dead of alcohol poisoning before going to work on their next album, Johnson was unintentionally the perfect fit. Aside from looking the part, his raspy cadence fit in pretty well playing Scott’s material while also giving them a more aggressive edge when crafting hits like ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’.
Although ‘Back in Black’ isn’t reinventing the wheel or anything, it did exactly what it was designed to do the minute that it roared across the airwaves. Everyone knew that Scott was gone, so just having the group deliver the next single and not worry about how their legacy would be preserved was exactly what they needed to do. It got the band back on the road. In fact, it had them roaring down the highway. That spirit alone defines the persistent adherence to the power of rock ‘n’ roll at the heart of the Aussie band.
When discussing the record, Angus felt that ‘Back in Black’ was the definition of what AC/DC stood for as a group, telling Vulture, “I think the song people would get straight away is ‘Back in Black’. It just rocks. It starts with one big punch with one big guitar. When you hear that one note, you think, ‘This is what AC/DC are all about.’”
Beyond its sound, the tune’s message is one of the biggest cases of perseverance in modern music history. AC/DC knew nothing would be the same after Scott passed away, so introducing themselves back into the world with this track wasn’t just a battle cry; it was them giving their former frontman the rock and roll equivalent of his last rites. In this manner, it captures the strange way in which, despite all the fun and thrills, AC/DC can be oddly moving.
Most people might call a song like this much too simple to be a fixture of AC/DC, but keeping it rudimentary is the point. It’s not meant to be the most complicated music ever conceived, but sometimes if you stick to the bare essentials, you come out on the other side into all-time classic territory. People connected to that. And the millions of record sales prove that.
