Malcolm Young picks the album with the best AC/DC songs: “Still has a real kick”
Picture this: your house is a mess; you need to hoover, put your clothes away, and do the dishes in one big hit. It’s a daunting task and one that warrants the sort of pep-talk Rocky Balboa’s trainer gave him before a bout with what villainous character he was boxing at that time. You grab your headphones, switch them into noise cancelling and pump yourself up to the sound of one band and one band only: AC/DC.
They’re the ultimate rock and roll band, brimming with inhibited energy and purpose, made to get your blood flowing. The mere sound of the ‘Thunderstruck’ riff or the opening chord of ‘Highway To Hell’ is enough to ensure rock and roll carnage, capturing the lightning-in-a-bottle energy of a live show. While Pink Floyd were stretching the boundaries of studio rock, AC/DC and the Young brothers were focusing solely on the escapism of pure rock and roll.
As such, they garnered a much-deserved reputation as a live tour-de-force and had fans begging for more than just fleeting opportunities to catch them on stage. “Everyone said right from the start that AC/DC are a live band and that the studio albums never matched us live,” Malcolm Young told Classic Rock.
It was a hard act to follow. No studio could capture the expanse of their live energy, so they did what any band with their performing prowess would do: release a live album. Released in 1978, If You Want Blood, You’ve Got It was a ten-song epic showcasing elaborate riffs, roaring vocals and a fever-pitch crowd lapping up every note.
Perhaps more impressive was their ability to capture that during an era of live-show opulence, when prog-rock bands were widening the appetite for expansive set design and multi-platform immersion. As a result, the more primal product of a band like AC/DC was somewhat under threat, and there was a curiousness around how an audio-only live product would be received.
“Around the time of For Those About To Rock, we started to fill some of those big amphitheatres,” Young explained. “And many bands playing the same venues were starting to put on a real show. People pay the same amount of money to see AC/DC as they do to see Genesis. But if they don’t see any lights, any stage set, if all they get is five guys playing in the background, they’re going to feel short‑changed. It doesn’t matter how good the music is, you have to present something the best way you can. People now expect the bell and the cannons when they go to an AC/DC show, and we’re happy to give it to them.”
Despite that, Young still contests that If You Want Blood, You’ve Got It is one of their finest bodies of work, providing an unfiltered look into the thumping energy of the band. Concluding, he declared, “This album has all the best AC/DC songs on it from both eras of the band. Some of the old stuff, like ‘Whole Lotta Rosie’, still has a real kick to it.”
