Book Coming September to AC/DC

AC/DC rock band will be getting their legacy on print come early this September. By journalist Jake Brown the book was put together who has had access to exclusive interviews and information from engineers, producers and everyone else who had a hand in the recording of some of rock musics most righteous, heavy and memorable jams. AC/DC themselves also great never before announced information of these boys. The book will be entitled AC/DC In The Studio: The Stories Behind Every Album and according to Ultimate Guitar News as well as a press release is fit to be:"the definitive account of the making of the greatest hard rock anthems of all time," The book is due out via John Blake Publishing on September 5th and covers the behind the studio accounts and stories behind every album in the AC/DC discography from High Voltage to Black Ice.

New Orleans Arena, AC/DC packed a formidable and familiar punch

In an unstable world, it is good that some things never different. AC/DC is one such thing.
For counting and 36 years, the quintet has trafficked in a blues based form of hard rock ‘n’ roll served up with a naughty wink. They do not pander with power ballads. They do not experiment with drum loops. And they most certainly do not rap.
The band’s 1980 masterwork “Back In Black” is, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, the fifth best selling album of all time in the United States, at 22 million copies and counting. Many of the songs on that album would work just as well on any other AC/DC album – except, perhaps, a couple of lame late-‘80s efforts – and vice-versa.
As evidenced by AC/DC’s Wednesday night show at a not-quite-full New Orleans Arena, not only does the song remain the same, but the presentation as well. Lead guitarist Angus Young, at 54, still vamps in his crushed-velvet schoolboy uniform. Vocalist Brian Johnson still wears his working-guy tight jeans, motorcycle boots, sleeveless shirt and flat cap.
As for the rest of the band, drummer Phil Rudd, bassist Cliff Williams and guitarist Malcolm Young look like guys who collect tickets at a traveling carnival’s Ferris wheel. They could easily pass for members of their own road crew.
But collectively, they rank among the tightest, most dependable rhythm sections in rock. They are why AC/DC songs are so popular in strip clubs; their groove speaks directly to the hips.
They formed three legs of a tripod. Malcolm Young and Williams stood rooted in place on either side of Rudd’s kit, except when they ventured forth in unison to add backing vocals. Vocal chores complete, they retreated to their stations. During Angus’s finale of a solo, they stood patiently, arms folded across their instruments, until their contributions were again required. As usual, they resumed exactly in place and in time.
So it went for two hours. Hundreds of souvenir red devil horns flickered red throughout the arena; one could also purchase an Angus Young school boy tie for $35. An opening cartoon starring our heroes in a PG-13 adventure aboard a “Rock ‘n Roll Train” gave way to the song of the same name and a smoking, life-size locomotive that served as the stage backdrop.
As far as arena rock props go, the train managed to walk that fine line between awesomeness and Spinal Tap-esque excess. So, too, the giant inflatable floozy – her bosoms were taller than the Young brothers – that straddled the locomotive during “Whole Lotta Rosie.”
During his traditional striptease in “The Jack,” Young dropped his shorts. In years past, he flashed a full moon. In his only concession to advancing years, this time he revealed only a pair of AC/DC boxers.
Otherwise he was his manic old self, a perpetual motion machine whose solos in “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” and elsewhere were spot on. Happily, he is a rock guitarist who still remembers how, and why, to solo. His sources go back to the dawn of rock ‘n’ roll and beyond. The hard blues that cranked over the P.A. as the pre-show music is an obvious influence. His duck walk is straight-up Chuck Berry.
Unlike, say, Eddie Van Halen, Young remains in full possession of both his abilities and the willingness and focus to deploy them. “Let There Be Rock” ended the regular set with an epic Angus guitar excursion. Camera operators had the good sense to project a close-up of his fingers on the 30-foot-tall center screen, so all could bear witness to the details.
Johnson was, as usual, the whole arena’s best mate. How, at 62, he sustains his voice – it is the sound of gravel being gargled – for two hours a night, let alone a months-long tour, is a mystery. He ranged back and forth across the stage and the runway that extended halfway across the arena’s floor, grinning, enjoying himself and making sure those in attendance did as well.
With few exceptions – the sleazy, slow-blues bump ‘n grind of “The Jack,” the bombast of “For Those About to Rock” – AC/DC sticks to a familiar tone and tempo. Material from 2008’s “Black Ice,” the band’s first studio album in eight years, coexisted amicably with the classics. “Thunderstruck,” questionable in its studio version, benefited from a live treatment.
No one does AC/DC better than AC/DC, and they are as potent as ever. The staggering riffage of “Hell’s Bells,” the nearly-tipping-over-the-side-of-the-freeway rush of “Shoot to Thrill,” the curt, snarling guitars of “TNT,” the dirty boogie of “Whole Lotta Rosie” – it’s all still intact.
Early on, in “Back in Black,” Johnson changed the “I’m back” line to “we’re back.” But AC/DC has never really gone – or faded -- away.

Why less is always more the genius of AC/DC?

One note amazement abound in rock ‘n’ roll, and the leering king of them all is headlining Friday at the United Center. I say this with all due respect and affection: AC/DC is one of the best rock bridle of all time.
But leader they are not. They are what they are, and they really haven’t changed a whole lot since they started raising a ruckus in Australian biker bars in the early ‘70s. Angus Young wore his trademark schoolboy knickers and beanie back then, and he does now. Brother Malcolm Young and his rhythm guitar still tend to the almighty groove like a hawk guarding its young against beast of prey. And singer Brian Johnson (and before him the great Bon Scott) still screams and struts like he’s Jack the Ripper on the hunt. They mix juvenile humor with pithy (and sometimes abstruse) observations about sex, death and drinking. They come apposite it as regular, blue-collar guys because they once were (and still are to a large amount, despite their multimillionaire status). Their accomplishment has come on the back of hard work and on one of the most reliable, bang for the buck agreement experiences anyone could wish for. No posh rock star attitude for these guys. Just a party that swings like a wrecking ball.
Now Johnson’s voice is pretty much shot, and Angus Young isn’t the active kid he used to be when he band down to his shorts and does whirlybirds on his back while soloing. But beauty and youth was never the point. These guys always looked like they belonged in a alley gang alternately of a band. What endures is their sense of fun, their unrepentant love of blues-based rock ‘n’ roll, those titanic riffs, and Malcolm Young’s undeniable sense of groove and grind. With any justice, he’d be as big as Keith Richards, but Malcolm has always chosen to remain in the shadows, content to toil in the band’s engine room alongside chain-smoking drummer Phil Rudd and bassist Cliff Williams.
So what if every AC/DC song more or less sounds the same (admit it, it’s not absolutely a broad palette these guys play with)? Angus and Malcolm Young learned to play listening to Chicago blues records, which in turn drew upon the oral convention and one chord songs of the Mississippi Delta blues. This was not an art form that celebrated formal design. This was a language based on nicety and personality much more so than complex arranging and songcraft. The art is in how it simultaneously celebrates and reconfigures the source material; the sound loses allure and power the farther it isolated from that fundamental feel (think of all the really bad tourist blues bands you’ve seen play in motel concourse across the land; same chords, same words, but still sadly lacking the brio and bravado of greatness). And so AC/DC sticks to what it does best. It scraps to change, to adapt, to ride the chir style.
They are matched in their resolve by only a handful of bands. The Ramones and Motorhead spring quickly to mind. So do the Cocteau Twins and Bad Religion. All these bands developed iconic, signature sounds and made at fewest a dozen (if not more) records that as the matter of fact refined it, but especially strayed from the source. Critics tend to beat up bands for not innovating, but in the cast of these outfits, it’s like they made up their own language, and speak it like no one else. They’ve achieve their sense of unwavering style.
It’s also difficult to complain about truth in packaging. Whenever you got an AC/DC or Ramones album, you often knew what it was going to sound like before you even played it. At their performance, you’d go in knowing how you were going to come out three hours later: with a giddy, satisfied smile on your face.