AC/DC's Back in Black: The One and Only Proper Way to Rock

Author's Rating:

Pros: No wizards, warlocks, druids, medieval evil, dragons or midgets

Cons: Epinions doesn't have the choice Great Music to Play While: Rocking

The Bottom Line: 
The album cover, shockingly, is black.

Author's Review
When I was heading out last year to see, and potentially meet, Sammy Hagar, a friend reminded me to tell Sammy that a second way to rock had recently been discovered. I thought that was pretty damn funny, but I figured even when Sammy sang “There’s Only One Way to Rock” he knew that, really, there was only one right way to rock ... and then there were the many other, lesser rocking methods that Sammy and his ilk had been employing for years. I assume he knew this because I assume Sammy Hagar had, at some point, listened to AC/DC’s Back in Black. That, my friends, is the one and only way to properly rock.

What makes that fact freakishly unnerving is that Back in Black was produced by John “Mutt” Lange. The same Mutt Lange who produced such recent nut-busting rockers as Shania Twain’s Up! The Country Version and Shania Twain’s Up! The Pop Version. And lets not forget the mind-blowing rockitude of Shania Twain’s Up! The Bollywood Version.

AC/DC’s Back in Black reminds, in so many ways, of how good Led Zeppelin could have been if they hadn’t got all caught up in wizards and gnomes and hedge-rows and whatnot. It’s a brilliantly executed, blues influenced, barn burner – an unapologetic head-banging masterpiece of drunkenness, testosterone and crude objectification. Released in 1980, Back in Black solidified AC/DC as classic rock’s answer to the faux devil-worship of Marilyn Manson, and the frat boy sexual raucousness of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Except that AC/DC came first, by about a decade, so they weren’t so much an answer as a precursor, I guess is what I’m trying to say. Unrepentant hedonist drunkards, Brian Johnson and the Young brothers were a good time party band, and yet, they did things like poop on stage and put devils horns on their album covers. They had some pop sensibilities, yet they also had the scary hesher hair and guitar solos. They dressed in prep school uniforms, but sang about nothing so much as their big, swinging balls.

Back in Black’s got five – count ‘em five – different lame sexual double entendre songs. And I mean “lame” in the best possible way. From “Shoot to Thrill” to “Let Me Put My Love Into You” to “What do You Do For Money Honey” the Aussie bad boys were masters of the ode to weeners and spuzz. Come to think of it, maybe they were the Dave Matthews Band of their time.

Which isn’t to say that AC/DC couldn’t tone it down with a simple, sweet, love ballad when they wanted to. For instance, on “Givin’ the Dog a Bone,” Johnson (huh, Johnson) romantically croons: She take you down easy / Going down to her knees / Going down to the devil / Down down to ninety degrees / Oh, She's blowing me crazy / Till my ammunition is dry / Oh, She's using her head again ... I'm just a givin' the dog a bone

And I think it’s that sort of classic, Australian respect for wimmins, and sparkling insight into the nuances of love-making that really has always set the band apart. The excruciating tenderness and yearning of their lyrical content is perhaps no more evident than on “Let Me Put My Love Into You,” in which the narrator lovingly pleads with the object of his affection to let me put my love into you, babe / let me put my love on the line / let me give it all / to you after assuring her that Whoa ho / I’ll be guided in / we’ll be ridin’ / giving what you got to me

But it’s the music that ultimately moves you, and AC/DC really did have a feel for the raw, catchy, guitar-driven hook. Which is why the highlight of the sexual pentad, and of the album, is, of course “You Shook Me All Night Long”, a flat out shout-along rocker, and a staple of college keggers even 22 years after its release.

She was a fast machine / She kept her motor clean / She was the best damn woman I had ever seen / She had the sightless eyes / Telling me no lies / Knockin' me out with those American thighs / Taking more than her share / Had me fighting for air / She told me to come but I was already there / 'Cause the walls start shaking / The earth was quaking / My mind was aching / And we were making it and you / Shook me all night long

Admit it! You’re singing out loud, aren’t you? Don’t try to deny!

Only slightly less known than “You Shook me All Night Long” and “never get involved in a land war in Asia” is the titular classic-rock staple “Back in Black.” I have no idea what the song means, though I assume it’s some reference to accountancy and being out of debt. But that’s really beside the point; the point being the irresistible, and unmistakable, seven musical syllables that bring the song to a crashing start, and the playful picking through a single octave that acts as a counterpoint to those seven notes throughout the song. The chords are so primordially right that they should be considered a scientific discovery instead of a nominal work of art. The way Ella Fitzgerald’s voice can break glass, the opening strains of “Back in Black” are a natural force that compels head-bobbing. Which is why every band in the world knows that the easiest way to guarantee a radio hit is to steal or sample from “Back in Black.”

But it’s not just the rockin’ and the sex that makes AC/DC’s Back in Black a classic. It’s also the satanism! ‘Cause any rock band worth its salt has got to embrace the dark side, man. And the smart ones do it by avoiding reference to druids, which, let’s face it, nobody really knows it druids were all that evil. A few carefully chosen references to the devil will usually do the trick. And AC/DC’s dark side references come mainly in the pretty darn good opening number, “Hell’s Bells,” which starts with a spooky and, um, medieval, church-bell ringing thing, then busts into some Johnson-led rant that’s kind of hard to understand, except for the parts where he says he’s gonna take ya ta hell.

And it’s not just the rockin’ and the sex and the satanism and the lack of druids that made AC/DC the standard bearers of the one way to rock. It was also the vocalists. Brian Johnson (and before him, Bon Scott) flat out can’t sing. I mean, they can sing, pretty much in the same way that you and I can sing if we scream our freaking lungs out. But they couldn’t sing, the way so many of the front-men of the 80s hair-metal bands could sing. And that’s a good thing, as far as I’m concerned. Van Halen with non-singer David Lee Roth? Rocked. Van Halen with singer Sammy Hagar? Puss!es. You see what I’m saying, right? David Lee Roth in 1980 might kung fu me, bone my girlfriend, then make me enjoy having a drink with him. Sammy Hagar is forever fetchin’ my latte. And latte fetchin’ doesn’t make for much rockitude.

Brian Johnson sings like somebody just punched him in the neck (and if you’ve ever seen the Joe Cocker-esque contortions his face twists into when he sings, you might actually believe that he was punched in the neck). I appreciate a man who can take a punch in the neck, then still go out and sing for me. I think it’s kinda bad-a.ss. It makes me want to help him out by singing along.

For about a decade, AC/DC was the closest thing to punk rock that heavy metal ever came. Their songs were unpretensiously brilliant in their execution and utterly, brainlessly stupid in their message. They lacked the requisite ennui for anyone to ever think about considering them punk, and they did have that annoying penchant for solos. But they were so droolingly drunk and retarded, and having such a very good time of it, that it’s hard for me not to consider them as much the children of the Ramones as of Zeppelin. And Back in Black is, by far, their most drunk and retarded album. How can that be a bad thing?