The AC/DC album Angus Young wants to be remembered for: “Pure hard rock guitar”
AC/DC are an interesting band to debate with someone, as it tends to be the case that what fans like about them is also what other people dislike about them.
One of the major criticisms the group tend to face is from people who say they don’t like the band because all of their songs sound similar. However, that’s what many people like about AC/DC; in the face of an ever-changing landscape of music, they stuck to their guns, utilising the hard rock sound they’d perfected to the full extent.
Granted, there are certainly some altering themes throughout their discography, be it in subject matter, tone or production. For instance, the album Fly On The Wall, which is often widely criticised, showed the band stepping further into a different production style and veering into the conceptual side of rock as they made a short film depicting half the LP’s songs.
That being said, other albums from AC/DC follow in a very similar vein. For instance, when you compare Back In Black to For Those About To Rock We Salute You, the sounds the band embody run relatively parallel to one another. Given that this is a common theme throughout the band’s discography, it can be hard to pick a standout album from their catalogue of classics; however, Angus Young has weighed in on what he believes the band’s definitive record to be.
“Let There Be Rock, for me, is the album,” said Young, “My brother, George, [asked] me and Malcolm… ‘What sort of album do you wanna do this time?’ And Malcolm just looked at me, and he said, ‘We just want an album that’s just gonna be pure hard rock guitar’.”
Now, if you’re looking for a single record to define a band as humongous as AC/DC, you are bound to split opinion. The fact that so much of their work is underpinned by the necessity for hard rock values is perhaps the one thing that binds all AC/DC fans together, so by that logic, Let There Be Rock, picked out as the most definitive of the era for having the most hard rock, seems the most obvious pick.
This was a pivotal moment for the band. The album came out in 1977 when rock music underwent a dramatic change. Punk was steadily being introduced into the world, and the beginning foundations of more stylised music, such as hair metal and glam rock, were starting to protrude through the cracks. AC/DC could have gone in several directions, but they stayed true to what they knew and made a hard rock album. In doing so, they cemented themselves as one of the best in the world at it, which they are still widely considered today. Their career might have taken a strange course if it had gone differently.
Young comments, “I thought it was great because everyone else in the world was into whole other genres – there was punk music, there was new wave; it was all this other stuff that was coming out.” He continued, “And I just thought, ‘This is pure magic’. And that album defined AC/DC in my eyes. That’s when I went, ‘This is a great band’.”
To deny the moving evolution of music can sometimes feel like an archaic move, an unwillingness to see change and ride the wave. But, in many ways, AC/DC became an island upon which the oceans fo new music and new sound batter against. And, like a blinking ligthouse in the misty and dangerous waters, sits Let There Be Rock a beacon of hope that AC/DC will never change their ways.
AC/DC continues to be considered one of the greatest bands to perform. As they embark on their most recent world tour, they continue to fill arenas and blow crowds away with their unrelenting sound.
