“Too classical”: the one instrument AC/DC would never use on their albums
It’s never been that important to think about the mechanics behind an AC/DC song. If it swung the right way and the kind of bad-boy attitude they were looking for, it was more than worth having on an album, and by the late 1980s, the Young brothers had built up an institution of balls-to-the-wall rock and roll that could go against anyone else on the charts. And for a band that had been going for that long, they knew their music inside and out well enough to realise when something was going wrong.
But we should also get one thing out of the way when it comes to AC/DC, which is their signature sound. While some people can call it monotonous or have the gall to call them a one-trick pony, AC/DC are proof that sometimes having one trick that you’re really good at works. Everyone might know what they’re getting into, but the Australian rockers have found the same sweet spot that bands like Bad Religion and Motörhead had, where they could barely do anything wrong by sticking to their sound.
And it’s not like they couldn’t switch things up every now and again. The whole premise of their music may have been about having a good time and talking about what it was like on the road as a rock and roll star, so to see a band that talked about filthy stuff have a heart when paying tribute to Bon Scott on ‘Hells Bells’ was a definite change of pace from what fans were used to hearing.
In terms of rock and roll, though, the band’s definition of the genre didn’t stray too far away from what the old blues rockers were used to. It would come as no surprise if neither Angus nor Malcolm listened to records past 1965, and considering how well they pulled off their own version of that style, why the hell should they have to keep up with what’s current with the times?
That’s not to say that there haven’t been some people who have tried to work in new influences into their sound. Rick Rubin wanted to put his own spin on their sound, and even Mutt Lange turned them into one of the most gargantuan-sounding bands on record, but when confronted with the production legend Eddie Kramer, they pushed back severely when they heard one dreaded word: piano.
Little Richard had made the ivories sound like they were crying out in pain whenever he played, but for Angus, putting a piano line on a record would have been as much an offence as making something that ABBA would write, saying, “I don’t know why, but he kept talking about pianos. Maybe he thought that a piano was an interesting thing for a rock and roll band. But that was the wrong word to use around us. Too classical sounding! But there were some very extravagant things going on at that time.”
Even if Kramer did have some ferocious rock albums under his belt that boasted pianos, there was no way that AC/DC would have sounded like that. There was still a lot of ground for them to cover with guitar, bass and drums, and bringing in a piano would have made about as much sense as them adopting the same cloaks that Yes wore and trying to create some large-scale epic tune.
That was never how they thought, and while they decided to sack Kramer as producer before he even started, it’s a testament to their abilities that they never backed down from what others wanted from them. They’ve never gone unplugged, featured synths on their albums, and never bothered to play to the singles market because they knew that the only reason people come to their shows is to hear that blistering rock and roll played as loud as possible.
