“They were rampant at the time”: The STD that inspired a classic AC/DC song
Sometimes what makes a song successful is its relatability, and that’s why love and heartbreak are such evergreen subject matters for lyricists to revisit time and time again. Loss, grief and depression, in contrast with their respective positive counterparts all tend to resonate with listeners, purely for how human it makes the performing artist seem to their audience, and allows both parties to make a connection between one another.
Aside from human emotion and personal experiences, songs about real-life events or history can also be entertaining to listen to, as can fantastical or fabricated tales, and there are many artists who have chosen to go down this path in their approach to songwriting. AC/DC weren’t interested in that, though, and would often tread a different path in their lyrical themes, either resorting to juvenile jokes, sordid subject matters or general silliness. Bon Scott was a terrific lyricist, but he wasn’t the most eloquent of poets, instead choosing to lean on his cheeky sense of humour for inspiration.
The band’s Australian sense of humour comes through on tracks like ‘The Jack’, and this song is a prime example of Scott’s excellence when it came to writing frankly disgusting turns of phrase. From all of the references to poker and card games littered throughout, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the song takes place in a casino, but if you’ve got a good smut detector on you, then you’ll have probably realised this isn’t a game of whist that Scott is playing with his girlfriend, and it’s actually far dirtier.
‘The Jack’ in the song is not the playing card but is Aussie slang for ‘the clap’, or gonorrhoea. When going back through the song with that in mind, the euphemisms start coming thick and fast. “She was holdin’ a pair” isn’t in reference to the two cards in her hand, while Scott reporting that “my ace was high” is similarly an anatomical reference. We’re then told all about “full houses” and “royal flushes”, which I’m sure we can all put our imagination towards figuring out before the chorus announces to the world that “she’s got the jack” – informing the listener about the girl’s STD problems.
Speaking to Guitar World, guitarist Malcolm Young stated there was a deeper story to how the song and its contents came about, revealing perhaps too much information in the process. “Crabs and scabies – they were rampant at the time,” Young began “Because every band was screwing the same women. That’s where ‘The Jack’ came from. Some girl at a gig accused Bon of giving her VD. She was yelling it from the front of the club. And in between songs Bon told her, ‘I didn’t give you the jack. It was Phil!’”
Young would then continue to explain that they wrote the song due to women blaming the Australian rockers for spreading the diseases around. “It wasn’t our fault,” he protested. ‘It was already out there. So we figured we’d put it in a song so when these girls came to our shows we could point at ’em and shout, ‘She’s got the jack!'”
It’s every bit more gross than you might have imagined and really begs the question of just how unclean the band were down under. If you want another song of theirs to give you a far less euphemistic account of just how rampant the STDs were in the band, try ‘Crabsody in Blue’.
Going into more unnecessary and graphic detail on this song for Guitar World, Young explained, “We all got the crabs at one time or another. They would spread in the car! We were touring in Australia at the time, and just about every town we went to somebody had to go into the VD clinic.”
