A long way to the top: What happened to call and response in rock ‘n’ roll?
There are many features of traditional rock ‘n’ roll and classic rock that we don’t experience as often nowadays. One is the AC/DC-perfect beast itself: call and response.
In the mid-1970s, AC/DC had a point to prove. Where High Voltage proved their capability in unforgettable and explosive rock moments, TNT proved that they were here for the long haul. Most of the material on TNT achieved the seemingly impossible, with many of the tracks becoming hits that would forever be etched into the band’s legacy and the fabric of anthemic rock.
‘It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll)’, for one, has not only become one of the biggest rock ‘n’ roll tunes in history, but it’s also become a major embodiment of its entire ethos, representing the interactive dynamics of the genre itself. This rang true for several reasons. Firstly, it was written about the pressure the band faced night after night to deliver a show that people would never forget. Secondly, it was also a reflection of what those high stakes did for the band, and how their own high standards ultimately guaranteed their success in the long run.
As Angus Young later explained, the song summed up that period of time for the band while also reflecting on how it was their fans who helped them to sustain themselves to begin with, but that’s not the only reason why it became popular. The song is one of their most career-defining anthems thanks to the familiar rock ‘n’ roll features it adheres to, the ones that immediately get the blood pumping and the adrenaline rolling in. It’s also just the right amount of unique, swapping out other familiar hard rock features, like a guitar solo, for an extended segment that sees Angus Young on lead guitar and Bon Scott on the bagpipes.
In this section, which is the call and response section, it works like a conversational feature, in which there’s a back-and-forth between the instruments, highlighting the interactional element of the song and the fun element of AC/DC’s flavour of rock ‘n’ roll. In music, the call and response technique is usually used in this way, creating a more immersive dynamic either between the singers or instruments, which is especially charming during live music, making it feel like more of a shared moment rather than a spectacle.
It’s also one of the reasons why songs like ‘It’s A Long Way to the Top’ become their own beast beyond the legacy of the band itself, sparked by that distinctive unification that makes people feel more involved in the music than they actually are. Across rock ‘n’ roll, there are a few examples of this, particularly with those who arrived from the same or overlapping eras, like The Who’s ‘My Generation’, Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’, Aerosmith’s ‘Walk This Way’, and others.
More recently, however, it’s becoming something of a dying art, with fewer artists opting to include it in modern music, reverting back to the alternative means of experiencing material where the immersive element either comes from elsewhere, or it’s not there at all. There could be a few reasons for this – like the style of music, or its intentions with the listener. For instance, more acts are now opting for an intimate feel, or something more meticulous that places focus on thought provocation rather than unification.
It’s also possible that cause and response have become more heavily associated with the simplistic versions of music, or anthemic rock, specifically, and with tech advancements and the current focus on production, it seems, to some people, to be some sort of regressive feature that makes things appear a little dated. Or, in other cases, it’s evolved into something more subtle, replaced by different sounds that aren’t as cut-and-dry as the back-and-forth you hear in older classic rock.
That’s not a bad thing, per se, but it certainly explains why it’s become less of a common feature of modern music, even though most audiences still enjoy it as much as they always have. It also proves that, with the odd exception, more artists are solely focusing on the solitary nature of storytelling and recording rather than the live element, creating music independent from those other influencing factors. And when it’s just a singular artist rather than an entire band of players, those sonic dynamics are naturally achieved through different means.
