The transitional album Heart will always regret making
AC/DC receive a lot of criticism from music snobs.
People are happy to roll their eyes and denounce the fact that their songs sound alike; however, there are many a rock band who would do anything for the consistency that AC/DC were able to get away with throughout their time as a band.
In the late ‘70s, when the band made their album Let There Be Rock, they looked the changing tides of music in the face and chose to ignore them. Never before has there been such a significant shift in the music that people were making, as the golden age of rock was gently being pushed to the side, and genres such as funk, disco and new wave were taking centre stage. Music, production styles and songwriting were shifting right in front of bands’ very eyes, but AC/DC didn’t flinch.
“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,” said Angus Young when discussing his love for their record Let There Be Rock, “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’.”
While AC/DC were able to use this period of transition and fully establish what kind of music they wanted to make, the same couldn’t be said for a lot of other rock bands of the time. Rock was changing, as it was no longer the dominant genre in music, and the way that people recorded and produced albums was also changing dramatically.
The result was that a lot of bands tried to embrace this change and wound up making something that wasn’t a true reflection of them at all. Heart fell victim to this shift in popular music, as despite a successful run, they released their first album which didn’t make it into the top 20 of the charts. Private Audition was released in 1982 and both Ann and Nancy Wilson have agreed that it’s a record which should have never seen the light of day.
While both agree that the album isn’t good, they disagree on its necessity. Ann admits that she wasn’t a fan of the album and would rather it not be released; however, she also admits that the band needed to make it so that they could learn how to adjust to the changing shape of music.
“The band was in a period of transition,” she said, “And that was reflected on the record. It wasn’t a bad record. It just wasn’t a commercial record.”
Nancy is a bit harsher in her assessment of the album. While she acknowledges that there was a period of transition, she also criticises the production of the album and the general headspace of the band when they were making it. She admitted that they, “Probably weren’t in our right minds very well […] I know I was doing a lot of partying in those days.”
This album represents a period in rock music that a lot of people struggled to adjust to. And while Private Audition may not be Heart’s greatest offering, in the grand scheme of things, it was very much a sign of the times.
