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AC/DC in the Studio
By Jake Brown John Blake Publishing Ltd
Copyright © 2013 Jake Brown
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78219-679-2
CHAPTER 1
BAND DOWN UNDER
From 1975 to 1977, AC/DC was the hardest-working band in rock 'n' roll, releasing four studio albums in two years: High Voltage (1975), T.N.T. (1975), Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (1976) and Let There Be Rock (1977).
All four were recorded at Albert Studios in Sydney, Australia and produced by former Easybeats members Harry Vanda and George Young. According to their official website, this writing and production partnership 'created one of the great rock 'n' roll bands of the 1960s – The Easybeats – and wrote a string of classic hits that have stood the test of time ... The Easys stormed to No. 1 in Australia in May 1965 and the ferocious phenomenon of "Easyfever" spiralled ... With their vital, urgent sound the Easybeats gave Australian music a new identity and confidence. The hits came in ceaseless cascade and overnight Australian pop and rock shifted from derivation and imitation to innovation.
'The song that still stands as the team's most admired, acclaimed and recorded piece, the working-class anthem, "Friday on my Mind" – a global hit for them – gave them the clout to begin writing and recording songs of sometimes extraordinary grandeur ... Returning to Australia they put to use all they had learned ... In a new state-of-the-art recording studio in King Street, Sydney they began a blitzkrieg of Australian popular music in a manner that has not been experienced since.'
As Angus Young, who grew up in the shadow of his older brother George's success, recalled in an interview with Guitar Player magazine, the Easybeats were 'definitely an inspiration. There was a hell of a lot that came from that band; they were the forerunners of a lot of things. They were at the time of the early stages, when people didn't know how to react.'
Brother Malcolm Young told Mojo magazine that 'all the males in our family played. Stevie, the oldest, played accordion. Alex and John were the first couple to play guitar, and being older it was sort of passed down to George, then myself, then Angus – like when you're kids and you get all your brothers' and sisters' hand-me-downs. We never realised that we were learning guitars – they were always just there. We thought that everyone was like that. Me and Angus would just fiddle – 12-bars mainly, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis.'
Elaborating on some of their musical influences as they began to develop as guitar players, Angus recalled in an interview with Guitar World magazine that 'my sister took me to see Louis Armstrong when I was a kid, and I still think he was one of the greatest musicians of all time. Especially when you listen to his old records, like "Basin Street Blues" and "St James Infirmary", and hear the incredible musicianship and emotion coming out of his horn. And the technology in those days was almost nonexistent – all the tracks had to be done in one take. I can picture him in that big football stadium where I saw him. He wasn't a big man, but when he played, he seemed bigger than the stadium itself!'
The blues was also a major influence. Angus told rock journalist Heather Mills that, growing up, he listened to 'a lot of the Chicago thing and a lot of different players. Elmore James. I very much like his style of playing ... And BB King is another one. Buddy Guy is a great player. And I like Johnny Winter. He's got a lot of power in his blues. For rock 'n' roll I like Chuck Berry's playing. His things are a bit of an art.'
For Angus, growing into his own style as a lead player was a natural evolution, as brother Malcolm told Mojo. 'Angus was the player, to be honest; he was always the showman of the two of us when we were kids.' As for his own influences, Malcolm recalled in an interview with Guitar Player, 'I got my ear into Eric Clapton with John Mayall's Blues Breakers, as well as the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and things like that. George was in London and I used to ask him, "Pick me out anything that you think is good at the moment," and he'd send me over a parcel of albums. He was a good help to us.'
In spite of their development as players, Angus revealed in the same interview, 'Mal and me were kept away from [guitars]. In school, you got frowned upon because obviously your brother and your family was an influence to rebel. At that time, it was better for us not to be sort of pushed at it. My parents thought we'd be better off doing something else.'
But, despite his parents' efforts, Malcolm recalled with a smile that they couldn't keep the family free of the rock 'n' roll mania that followed the Easybeats everywhere. 'We were getting all these screaming girls, a couple of hundred of them, hanging outside our house for a glimpse of the Easybeats, who were like Australia's Beatles ... Those were great days. I was just going into puberty ... [and] me and Angus used to hang out there with them thinking, "This is the way to go!" That planted the seed for us and made us play more, try harder.'
While big brother George was definitely an influence on Angus, it was actually rhythm guitarist/songwriter Malcolm who first recruited Angus into AC/DC. 'Malcolm was putting together a band,' Angus recalled. 'He found a condemned building in Newtown and said he could get it for a couple of bucks. He was just auditioning guys and telling people to come down and try out. A week later he said to me, "Why don't you bring your guitar down and try out?" I thought, "Great – anything but a day job."'
After working through several singers (including original singer Dave Evans), they encountered Ronald Belford 'Bon' Scott, who had also previously sung for The Valentines and Fraternity. Strangely, it wasn't a musical context that provided Angus with his first impression of Bon, but a talk show on Australian television. 'Something to do with some pop bloke nicking one of his songs and the interviewer was being totally condescending thinking he was this stupid rock 'n' roller,' Angus told Mojo. 'All of a sudden Bon was yelling, "Fucking cunt!" and leapt across the studio, diving on top of the pop bloke. I thought, "Hmm, pretty lively."'
Recalling his first actual meeting with the singer in September 1974, Angus told rock journalist Paul Stenning that, when 'Bon first came along and saw me and Malcolm, he sat behind the drums and started bashing away. We said, "We know a good rock 'n' roll drummer – what we want is a great rock 'n' roll singer," hence the song we recorded. This is what we wanted. For us, it was great – he was a striking person, he did have the stuff legends are based on.'
For the band's first gig with Bon, for example, Angus recounted to Masino, 'the only rehearsal we had was sitting around for an hour before the gig, pulling out every rock 'n' roll song we knew. When we finally got there, Bon downed about two bottles of Bourbon with dope, coke, speed and he says, "Right, I'm ready" – and he was too. He was fighting fit. There was this immediate transformation and he was running around yelling at the audience. It was a magic moment.'
Offering his own assessment of why Bon fitted so perfectly into the band's musical fold, drummer Phil Rudd told Modern Drummer magazine that the singer knew 'you don't come across guys like Malcolm and Angus very often ... Bon wanted to be the drummer, but he was too good a singer.'
As for what the singer brought to the table in rounding out AC/DC's official line-up, Malcolm told Masino, 'Bon was the biggest single influence on the band. When he came in it pulled us together. He had that real "stick-it-to-em" attitude. We all had it in us, but it took Bon to bring it out.'
Angus took that assessment even further, saying to Miller, 'I don't think there would have been an AC/DC if it hadn't been for Bon. You might have got me and Malcolm doing something, but it wouldn't have been what it was. Bon moulded the character and flavour of AC/DC.'
Equally, Bon felt that AC/DC allowed him to discover his true soul and spirit as a lead vocalist. 'In the early days when I sang,' he explained to a British music journalist, 'I always felt that there was a certain amount of urgency to what I was doing. There was no vocal training in my background, just a lot of good whisky ... I went through a period where I copied a lot of guys and found when I was singing that I was starting to sound just like them. But when I met up with [AC/DC], they told me to sound like myself, and I really had a free hand doing what I always wanted to do.'
With singer and band instantly kindred spirits on both musical and personal levels, Angus told Stenning that 'we saw more of Bon than his family did, especially us three. It was always me, Bon and Malcolm.'
So excited about the new sound they had discovered together, the band quickly set their sights on the recording studio, which for the newly installed singer turned out to be a doubly thrilling experience. 'Bon's biggest idol was actually George, going back to when he was in the Easybeats,' Angus told Masino. 'And when he came to see us for the first time, he said, "Well, I get to work with these two guys, and I get to work with their brother!"'
In an interview with Brave Words/Bloody Knuckles magazine years later, Malcolm explained that – even more than their excitement about the album – the band took most satisfaction in the fact that the dream they shared with thousands of other aspiring musicians was actually coming true: they didn't have to work for 'the man' any longer. Reflecting on their starting days, he recalled 'working our butts off, getting covered in oil and all the shit that goes with it, and when we got to play club gigs, luckily enough, we thought, "This is it! Don't have to work! Angus, we can make 50 bucks a week each here. We can survive without a day job." That was our big plan. So everything outside of a club gig is a bonus to us. We made it 25 years ago, as far as we're concerned!'
CHAPTER 2
HIGH VOLTAGE (1975)/T.N.T. (1975)/DIRTY DEEDS DONE DIRT CHEAP (1976)
'From the beginning people dismissed us as a bar band' ANGUS YOUNG
So inspired were they by their new musical union that, as Malcolm Young told Mojo, 'within three weeks of Bon being in the band we had written all this new material and we were ready to record the first album'.
Quickly signed by brother George and his writing/production partner Harry Vanda, AC/DC entered the studio in November, insulating themselves from day one from outside influences. Having dealt with the corporate record industry machine for years as a member of the Easybeats, George Young seemed to relish the freedom he and the band had from any corporate pressures as they set about crafting the band's debut LP. 'It was great to turn around and say, "Excuse me, I'm just gonna play a bit of rock music here,"' he recalled to journalist Martin Aston, 'and it was the best thing we've recorded for a while ... We just ignored the influence of the record company and any producers.'
Shortly afterwards, the band signed with Albert Records, a sister company to Albert Studios. According to the band's number-one fansite, crabsodyinblue.com, the company was founded by Jacques Albert, and to this day it stands as the oldest independent publishing house in Australia. 'Jacques Albert migrated to Australia from Switzerland in 1884 and set up as a music publisher. Jacques' son Sir Alexis Albert carried on the business and it would be one of his three sons that would help shape the fortunes of the Easybeats and AC/DC. Ted Albert, the middle son of three, helped form the offshoot record company Albert Productions. Ted set about signing the musical talent of Australia in the early 1960s. It was through a friend called Mike Vaughan that Ted first met an up-and-coming band by the name of the Easybeats. First impressions of the Easybeats stirred Ted and he promptly snapped the band up on a contract and Easyfever was born.
'After the short-lived success of the Easybeats on the international scene Ted Albert lured the mainstays of the band, George Young and Harry Vanda, back to Australia in 1973. The artist, however, that would consolidate the rebirth of Albert Productions as a force in the Australian record company industry would prove to be the signing of John Paul Young (no relation). John Paul Young had a minor hit with the Vanda/Young composed track "Pasadena" in April 1972. It was this success that enabled Ted Albert to persuade George Young and Harry Vanda to run a recording studio for Albert Records. John Paul Young would later go on to be more remembered for the hit single "Love is in the Air".'
'Harry Vanda and George Young would go on to produce records for numerous Australian acts as well as working on various side projects themselves. It would be through Vanda and Young that Angus and Malcolm Young would have their first taste of the recording industry while working on the Marcus Hook Roll Band [a Vanda-Young studio project]. This early experience would prove valuable when AC/DC went on to record the early albums and singles for the Albert label under the guidance of George Young and Harry Vanda.'
The band set up shop with brother George and his partner Harry Vanda in the famed Studio 1 at Albert Productions, which Studio Connections magazine described as being 'one of the major recording studios in Australia from 1973 through to 1986. Originally known as Studio 139, Studio 1 was the rock 'n' roll recording studio in Sydney, with the likes of AC/DC, The Angels, Rose Tattoo, John Paul Young and many other famous Alberts artists recording there. As time went by and Alberts built more studios, this studio became used almost exclusively for in-house work only. It was the home of Vanda and Young ...
'The walls and ceiling of the control room were black. The recording area was a large relatively live room with moveable curtains. Mirror tiles on the walls near the drum area made for a bright drum sound. One wall of this room was covered in the graffiti of many famous artists who recorded there. A second smaller room housed a Yamaha grand piano.'
When it came to deciding which songs passed muster for recording, Angus explained to rock journalist Susan Masino that George would take 'our meanest song and try it out on keyboards with arrangements like 10cc or Mantovani. If it was passed, the structure was proven, then we took it away and dirtied it up.'
Where attention turned to crafting the album's lyrics, Angus told rock journalist Murray Engleheart that Bon Scott was a team player in the course of the band's creative process. If he presented the band with a lyric idea they thought could be improved upon, 'you'd say to him, "Bon, you can do better than that," and he would. He'd go away and really work on it, or if he got stuck he'd come and get Mal and say, "Mal, come and bail me out." Mal would help him, give him a few lines or an idea and then he'd flow away or he'd ask me if I had any dirty poetry anywhere! Some inspiration.'
In laying down the album's lead and rhythm guitar tracks, Angus revealed to Masino that, unlike on future albums, 'Mal played solos on four tracks from our first album, when the two of us had traded off. Mal is a good soloist. He can probably do what I do quite well. He plays lead like he would play rhythm, and that doesn't sound like someone else. When we used to trade licks, it was always the same way. He's a very good performer, the heart of the band. I sit and watch him play rhythm, and I go, "Ah, I'll play that now." I'll try to copy what he is doing.'
Even so, when it came to defining the brothers' roles within the band, Angus told Guitar Player that, from day one, 'Mal has always pushed me out there in the front. He has always been supportive of what I do and my playing. He would be the first to turn around and say, "Ah, Angus can play. He can do that."'
In refining the album's songs, Angus explained to Guitar Player that 'in the early days, if you were playing an A chord, you might play a solo in A; but then again put in progressions or notes in there that don't sound right. It sounds like you're playing in the wrong key or something, and sometimes it works.'
Original AC/DC bassist Mark Evans added to Undercover Media that, once Angus, Malcolm and Bon had the basics of a song tracked, 'George Young fine-tuned things. George is an absolute genius. I have never met a more astute person in the studio than George.'
Where drums for any album's songs were concerned, beat-keeper Phil Rudd – in an interview with Musician magazine – recalled that right from the start the band kept to a basic formula where 'simplicity has always been the most important thing. The attention to getting everything out of that simple thing ... When I get down to business I always revert back to the style that I prefer, which is straight-ahead. Someone said once that I get to play the way that every schoolboy wishes he could play. I don't know what that means, but I agree with it. It is just a foot-tapping thing. I am not out to impress anyone. I am just out to get the job done.'
(Continues...)
Excerpted from AC/DC in the Studio by Jake Brown. Copyright © 2013 Jake Brown. Excerpted by permission of John Blake Publishing Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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