Times change, tastes change, but AC/DC don't ... 35 years and 200 million albums after he first started playing Chuck Berry covers, iconic guitarist and perennial schoolboy Angus Young tells Brian Boydabout the merits of never growing up
WE PITCH up at a snooty Dusseldorf hotel after little sleep in Berlin the previous night and a hangover from the lower levels of hell. Angus Young, a man who looks like he's had the odd sherry, breaks into a knowing smile. Talk, predictably, turns to hangover cures.
"Alka-Selzer," says the 53-year-old Australian guitarist authoritatively. I regale with him tales of new-fangled discoveries such as Berocca and Neurofen Plus, but he won't countenance such revisionism. "No, it can only be Alka-Selzer."
Young's "there is no alternative" adherence to an unfashionable 1970s-era concoction speaks volumes. For what are AC/DC but an unfashionable 1970s hard- rocking outfit who sound the same in 2008 as they did when they first began as a covers band playing in Sydney bars some 35 years ago? While other bands from that era have incorporated new ideas, developed their sound and had creative makeovers, AC/DC have remained fixated on the heads-down, no-nonsense rock'n'roll approach. It was great then and it's still great now.
This may be prelapsarian rock'n'roll but, in their own perverse way, AC/DC are as radical as any two-step grime artist or the newest electro-bleep kid on the block. Every other latest rock act you talk to these days drones on interminably about "creative challenges" and "growth", as if they're confusing a few guitar chords with a self-help book. We know this much to be true: Brian Eno will never be asked to produce an AC/DC album.
Prior to the interview, I am escorted to a faraway room where a man with a suitcase is waiting. I'd like to think that he is handcuffed to the suitcase but he isn't. He delicately removes Black Ice, the new AC/DC disc, from the suitcase and informs me that I must listen to it three times in a row. He turns the volume up to 11 and, before they've reached the middle eight on the first track, I feel one of my back molars loosening under the sonic assault.
Listening session finished, the man solemnly places the disc back in his suitcase and walks briskly away.
The security in these file-sharing times is understandable. This is Sony's biggest release of the year (actually, make that the past five years). Corporate Christmas bonuses depend on how Black Iceperforms. To date, AC/DC have sold an eye-watering 200 million albums. And you just know that at least 199 million them have been bought by spotty, white, 17-year-old males.
Black Icewas never going to contain swirly, atmospheric synthesisers or gentle chords picked out on a flamenco guitar. There would never be any dramatic key changes or sudden shifts in time signatures. Norah Jones was never to going to appear as a guest vocalist. With such song titles as Smash'n'Grab, Spoilin' for a Fightand She Loves Rock'n'Roll, lyrics about existential angst, world poverty or climate change were never really a runner.
From the first power chord to the last, Black Iceis an expert study in how to harness the sound of Beavis-and-Butthead riffs to a bricks-and-mortar rhythm section with a lead singer screaming his tits off about nothing of any importance. It's a palate cleanser from so much of the experimental, indulgent rubbish out there. There's a purity and integrity to the sound that the furrowed brow of a Thom Yorke could never hope to replicate.
OUTLIVING PUNK
"The misunderstanding out there," says Angus Young, "is that we are a 'hard rock' band or a 'heavy metal' band. We've only ever been a rock'n' roll band.
"Go back to the very beginning, when we first started playing in local pubs. We used to play Chuck Berry covers. Every now and then we'd slip in one of our own songs and we found that we were getting away with it - nobody seemed to know these were original tracks. So we just started putting in more of our own stuff and reducing the amount of covers. And soon we were playing clubs, then playing theatres. Then it was on to the arenas and all of that. But the core is still rock'n'roll. And even though it may not seem this way, there's always a melody.
"Okay, it's not a pretty-boy or girl type of melody. And if it ever sounds a bit too smooth, we rough it up. We do work on our songs. We don't just turn up at the studio and go 'here's a few riffs, let's make an album'. And we don't care much for producers coming in with their own ideas. This time we had Brendan O'Brien [the knob-twiddler for Bruce Springsteen, among many others]. We just played him the songs and he said 'great, let's record them as they are', which is the way we like it."
"We've always been quite clear about how we want the songs to sound. If we can imagine the song being played at a party and it gets people tapping their feet, then it's in. We've heard so many different opinions over the years: we've had people from the label saying 'I'm not sure there's a single on the album'. We've had people suggesting a more commercial approach. But we never listened. When the world was playing punk rock music, we were a rock'n'roll band. When the world was playing disco music or whatever, we were still a rock'n'roll band.
"I have this theory about us. When we started writing our own songs we were 17 years old. When you're 17 you write songs for other 17-year-olds. We stopped growing musically when we were 17. We still write songs for 17-year-olds."
iTUNES REFUSENIKS
The hordes of male 17-year-olds who go looking for Black Iceon its release next week might be a tad puzzled that they can't buy it from iTunes. Along with The Beatles, AC/DC are the music world's most famous iTunes refuseniks. Unhappily for iTunes, these are both also the two biggest-selling back catalogue artists in the world - each sell a couple of million of their old albums every year.
"We don't make singles, we make albums," declares Young. "iTunes refuses to allow us to sell us our albums as complete works, so we're not up there. I remember, way back in the 1970s, we drew these figures on the back of an envelope for our record company. We showed them how much they earned from us if we sold one million singles and how much they earned if we sold one million albums.
"We honestly believe the songs on any of our albums belong together. They represent us at a certain time and a certain place in our career. They are not a bunch of individual downloads.
"Here's the funny thing: since iTunes came into existence, we've actually increased our back catalogue sales without being on the site - and at the time we were sternly warned by our management team and our record label that the complete opposite would be the case."
Young is all too happy to point out that AC/DC's Back in Black(1980) will soon become the biggest selling album of all time. (Currently it is merely the biggest-selling album of all time by a group.) Back in Blackcurrently stands at about 42 million copies shifted, but there are no reliable figures for the current best-ever seller: Michael Jackson's Thriller. Estimates place it in anywhere between 47 million and 90 million.
OUTSELLING WACKO
If you take the lower Thrillerfigure, then Back in Black will overtake it within 12 months. This is because a release of a new AC/DC album always gives a considerable boost to catalogue sales. If that were to happen, then the world's biggest selling music album would not be available on iTunes.
Thanks to Black Ice, the footfall expected in high street record shops next week is so high that music trade papers are reporting that stores may have their best sales figures outside of the week before Christmas.
In the US, Young says, they had to come up with a different solution. iTunes is now the biggest music retailer Stateside, so the band needed a bit of help with market penetration. The album will only be available in branches of Wal-Mart, which is the second biggest music retailer in the US.
"I remember when we first started touring in the US back in the 1970s, we'd arrive in these towns - and I'm talking about all these places in between New York and Los Angeles - and we'd always go straight to the local record shop. These are the places where people hung out; you could talk music, pick up a few albums and all of that. Now you go back to these places and they're all closed down."
DUNNES WITH GUNS
When asked if he "blames" iTunes for these situation, he just shrugs. "However there is a Wal-Mart in these towns, so we believed this to the best alternative to iTunes."
Wal-Mart is obviously thrilled to be receiving so many millions of AC/DC fans, and branches nationwide are busy setting up a special "AC/DC Corner" that will feature the new album as well as lots of band merchandise.
The chain store, which is a sort of Dunnes with guns, is not exactly a "cool" choice of outlet, but then AC/DC don't do "cool". You get the impression from Young that he regards site such as MySpace and the idea of Podcasts to be faintly ridiculous. This idea is reinforced when, later in the conversation, he tries to fix on an anodyne pop star name to illustrate a point; instead of Britney or Justin, he comes up with David Cassidy.
We take our leave as Young beamingly reports that the band are to get their firstever front cover of Rolling Stonemagazine.
"It seems to have changed a lot now. When we started selling albums, there were the rock'n'roll people and the boy-and-girl pop people. I remember doing a photo-shoot for a music magazine in the late 1970s, and they wouldn't use the photos or something like that because Bon Scott [their original lead singer, who died in 1980 from alcohol-related issues] had tattoos. Now even the pop boys have tattoos."
• Black Iceis released on October 17th. The DVD No Bull - The Director's Cut is reviewed in this section. For more, see www.acdc.com or www.acdcrocks.com
Where the streets have no slash
In 2004, Melbourne City Council voted unanimously to rename the city's Corporation Lane "ACDC Lane". Because of some arcane rule which forbid the use of the slash character in street names, the four letters of the band's name had to be combined.
In officially opening ACDC Lane, the city's mayor cut the tape with the words "As the song says, there is a highway to hell, but this is a laneway to heaven. Let us rock."
The street sign for ACDC Lane is reportedly one of the most stolen objects in Australian history. In Australia, the band are affectionately known as "Acca Dacca".
There were no such punctuation problems four years earlier in Madrid, when the city's mayor renamed a street in the Leganes area of the city as Calle de AC/DC.
Short pants and tie
Despite being 53, Angus Young still only ever wears a schoolboy's uniform when playing live - and has done so ever since the band formed in the early 1970s.
The story put out at the time was that he once had to dash from school to a band rehearsal and didn't have the chance to change out of his uniform. However, this means that he would have needed to have been born in 1959 and not 1955.
The real reason is that everyone in AC/DC used to wear uniforms when they first started (this was the glam rock era) and the schoolboy uniform was suggested by Angus's sister, Margaret.
