15/10/2024
This week in 1979, the AC/DC LP “Highway To Hell” debuted on the Australian charts (October 15)
It was the first of three albums produced by legendary producer “Mutt” Lange, and was the last studio album featuring the one and only Bon Scott, who died on 19 February 1980.
The reason they went with Lange is that the American branch of Atlantic Records believed the band was poised to strike it big in the States if only they would work with a producer who could give them a radio-friendly sound.
Since their 1975 Australian debut “High Voltage”, all of AC/DC's albums had been produced by George Young and Harry Vanda.
According to the book “AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll”, the band was not enthusiastic about the idea, especially Angus and Malcolm Young, who felt a strong sense of loyalty to their older brother George:
“Being told what to do was bad enough but what really pi**ed off Malcolm and Angus was they felt that George was being treated disrespectfully by Atlantic, like an amateur with no great track record when it came to production ... Malcolm seemed less pleased with the situation and went so far as to tell Radio 2JJ in Sydney that the band had been virtually "forced" to go with an outside producer.”
But they soon warmed to him…
Malcolm Young said that Lange "liked the simplicity of a band. We were all minimalist. We felt it was the best way to be ... He knew we were all dedicated so he sort of got it.
But he made sure the tracks were solid…”
Angus Young added, "He was meticulous about sound, getting right guitars and drums.
He would zero in—and he was good too on the vocal side.
Even Bon was impressed with how he could get his voice to sound."
In AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll, Arnaud Durieux writes that Lange, a trained singer, showed Scott how to breathe so he could be a technically better singer…
Tour manager, Ian Jeffery recalled:
“I remember one day Bon coming in with his lyrics to "If You Want Blood".
He starts doing it and he’s struggling, you know? There’s more fu***ng breath than voice coming out.
Mutt says to him, ‘Listen, you’ve got to co-ordinate your breathing.’
Bon was like, ‘You're so f**king good, c**t, you do it!’
Mutt sat in his seat and did it without standing up! That was when they all went, "What the fu***ng hell we dealing with here?"
As far as the title went? As Angus explained:
“… all we'd done is describe what it's like to be on the road for four years, like we'd been.
A lot of it was bus and car touring, with no real break.
You crawl off the bus at four o'clock in the morning, and some journalist's doing a story and he says, "What would you call an AC/DC tour?" Well, it was a highway to hell. It really was.
When you're sleeping with the singer's socks two inches from your nose, that's pretty close to hell!”
The iconic riff that intros the title track has gone down as an absolute classic in Oz rock.
There were hundreds of riffs going down every day," recalled Malcolm Young. "But this one, we thought, 'That's good.'
It just stuck out like a dog's balls!”
The album became AC/DC's first LP to break the Top 100 of the US Billboard 200 chart, eventually reaching #17, also peaking at #7 in Germany, #8 in the UK, #13 in Australia, #14 in the Netherlands, #24 in Sweden, #38 in Norway, #40 in Canada, and #46 in New Zealand.
The album was ranked #200 on Rolling Stone magazine's 2012 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
The 2010 book The 100 Best Australian Albums included Highway to Hell in the top 50 (Back in Black was #2).
Click on the link below to watch the title track:
https://youtu.be/l482T0yNkeo
