Why Angus Young blamed AC/DC’s worst song on “bad pizza”
Rock and roll wasn’t a high-brow concept in AC/DC‘s mind.
In fact, as their second frontman Brian Johnson once said, “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“.
It was as simple as that for the great Australian band: powerful chords, rolling drums and vocals that make you feel alive in the bright worlds of rock and roll. While on paper it sounds like some musicians’ worst nightmare, for its rudimentary approach limits how abstract an artist can get, for AC/DC, it was the perfect model.
It was about filtering in their own live experiences and making music from it. Take ‘It’s A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘N’ Roll)’ for example: an autobiographical tune that simply relayed the experiences of getting by with nothing but a penny and a dream. The soundscape was injected with the venomous resilience of that feeling, and everyone across the world, from artists to labourers, could understand the essence of that feeling through the song.
So this simple model of songwriting rarely let them down, and that was never more apparent than when they tried to blend it with a bizarre attempt at ambiguity. On their epic 1979 album Highway To Hell, Bon Scott tried to blend his urges for love with that of his desire for drinking and sex, making a confused song of carnal desire that had fans wondering for the first time, ‘What are AC/DC on about?’
Bon Scott was sadly never around to explain the origin story of the song, but his old bandmate Angus Young stepped in and gave a relatively straightforward answer to the question, “What’s the worst record you’ve ever made?”, with “There’s a song on Highway to Hell called ‘Love Hungry Man’ which I must have written after a night of bad pizza, you can blame me for that”.
Considering it was AC/DC’s self-proclaimed ‘worst track’, it still had the full-blooded rock and roll soundscape bands wanted. Scott’s vocals were suitably powerful, and Young’s guitar playing was as rousing as ever, despite the lyrics.
Sadly, though, ‘Love Hungry Man’ came on a record that served as something of an ending for AC/DC. Their inner circle was ripped to shreds, with Michael Browning having been dismissed as their manager to be replaced by Peter Mensch and more crucially, Bon Scott passing shortly after its release and ending the band as the world then knew it.
It could have served as their swansong, but they knew that their rock and roll brand was needed as the genre swung into a new, uncertain era. Proud purveyor of what he called rock and roll simplicity, Johnson stepped in and steered the band back on course with their triumphant 1980 follow-up, Back In Black, which ditched the lyrical sleaze and returned to songs for the people.
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