The rock subgenres AC/DC continually fought against: “What we do best”
Nobody does rock and roll like AC/DC.
Despite emerging in the most exciting and diverse era of music, they were never preoccupied with the myriad subgenres. Punk, prog and psych were just buzzwords to them, prefixed onto the more meaningful name of rock, which, in essence, was a relatively simple idea.
At its core, it was about harnessing a feeling. Not one that inspires a pensive chin scratch, but rather a head bang instead, where a world of transcendent escapism awaits.
“If you hear a good song, you don’t dissect it,” Angus Young once said. “You just listen, and every bit seems right.”
That’s what some of the best AC/DC songs had going for it – an innate feeling that everything was where it was meant to be. Even something like ‘Thunderstruck’, which boasted a spiralling guitar line a proghead would have been proud of, the band found a way to pivot it into the mainstream, coupling it with a brutally primal chorus line that granted permission to incite chaos.
Their most important record of that model came at a crucial time. In 1980, the world was waving goodbye to what would later be called classic rock and looking forward to an uncertain future. Modernity was on the horizon, and the question was, where would that leave rock? Ultimately, the answers came in hair-metal and synth-rock, which, in shades, had its merits. But it felt like the soul was still missing and would have been completely extinct if it wasn’t for the bonafide spirit of AC/DC.
Back In Black kept the pure essence of rock and roll alive and saw the band elude the subgenres that culture had conjured up to better understand the changing times. For the band, that was good news, for they would rather have been seen dead than bundled into a new era of music categorisation.
“We were never ones for getting slumped under a tag or filed under A, B, or C,” Angus Young explained. “We started as a rock and roll band. That’s what we play – what we do best. We never claimed to be anything else. And then in the Eighties, they’d slump us in as a heavy metal band. Even before that they had other things: power pop. Crap.”
Watch any gig of an old AC/DC show or, better yet, catch one of the few that appear in the modern day, and you’ll be hard pushed to disagree with him. Rarely is there a moment to catch your breath and deliberate on how Young is carefully straddling the lines between genres. You’re too busy screaming your lungs out from banging your head to the unrelenting rock and roll mantra of the band.
Even when the band were at the crossroads of their career, facing a future without Bon Scott at the front, they made a decision that protected the simple sanctity of their model. Brian Johnson came in and kept it straightforward, delivering heart, soul and little else in the way of thrills.
He got it right from the outset, famously saying, “I’m an out-and-out basic man, and AC/DC are one of the best rock ‘n’ roll bands in the world, doing things just to the basics, you know.“
