by Fink, Jesse
“A group of marines [sic] were standing at the foot of a gigantic loudspeaker, the kind used at rock concerts,” he wrote. “It was AC/DC … I recognized the song immediately: ‘Hells Bells,’ the band’s celebration of satanic power, had come to us on the battlefield.”
Filkins, a writer for The New Yorker, didn’t want to be interviewed for this book. But Australian photographer Ashley Gilbertson, who was with Filkins and won the Robert Capa Gold Medal from the Overseas Press Club for his images of the battle, was happy to talk.
“The US military—the Marines and the Army—often uses AC/DC, particularly ‘Highway to Hell,’ ‘Back in Black’ and ‘Thunderstruck,’” he says. “But the first two are the favorites. So I’d been at a couple of battles in which that had taken place. Fallujah was a little stranger than all the rest because the minarets, which are kind of like a belltower in a church where they call to prayer, were playing a call to arms for the insurgents at the same time. So on one side you had the American Marines playing AC/DC and on the other side you had the insurgency playing the Islamic call to arms.
“It was the first night of the actual attack. After that it was really all on foot and the only vehicles we would see were to resupply the Marines. Otherwise it was all house-to-house combat. So when Dexter and I were with 1-8 Bravo and we crossed into the north side of Fallujah that was the last time we had vehicles around us. Of course, we had tanks for the first half-day but they disappeared pretty quickly. So it was all the more eerie. There was white phosphorus coming down illuminating everything. It was the soundtrack to one of the strangest and most unlikely scenes you ever want to be in.”
Why did the US military choose to use AC/DC?
“It motivated the Marines. They love music. It pumped them up. Inside the Humvees it was more American punk-rock and rock but on a PSYOP vehicle the band I can only really remember is AC/DC.
“The weird thing is I actually came to love the band. I used to hate them with a passion. I thought it was bogan music. But now I will actually often put it on in my office [in New York]. It’s really bizarre. Now the music motivates me. I feel like PSYOP worked on me. It might not have worked on anyone else but it worked on me. Now I enjoy it. So many of those memories are not happy so I should really despise it all the more. But it has the opposite effect. I think part of it is the fact that I made it home.”
Mogadishu, Fallujah … it doesn’t end there. In 2009 “Hells Bells” was also revealed as having been highly favored for interrogation purposes in US military prisons, including the notorious Guantanamo Bay. A Pentagon spokesman called it a “disincentive” rather than torture.
Which is ironic, given that in a Rolling Stone interview with David Fricke in 1980, Brian Johnson made it plain what he’d like to do to reviewers, who were then scathing of the band: “I’d like to lock ’em up in a cell with AC/DC music for a week. They’ll be crying, ‘Let me out, let me out!’ Then I’ll put on a week’s worth of disco music—and I’ll bet you a pound to a pinch of shit they’ll be hung by their own belts. With AC/DC, at least they’ll come out singing the choruses.”
* * *
With its foreboding tone and dark imagery, “Hells Bells” was the starting point for more than three decades of a very different AC/DC, one that had only been hinted at by “Night Prowler” off Highway to Hell. The old standby themes of sex, alcohol and rock ’n’ roll were rapidly superseded by sex, guns and the National Rifle Association’s brand of liberty: “Shoot to Thrill,” “Guns for Hire,” “Big Gun,” “Fire Your Guns,” “Heatseeker,” “War Machine.” With Scott missing from the line-up, Huerta’s sharp-edged logo has never seemed more sinister or militaristic. It’s no accident that AC/DC was considered a perfect fit for Iron Man 2. Tony Stark’s full body armored superhero is probably the most martial and seriously packing figure in the Marvel Universe.
Explained the film’s director, Jon Favreau, before its release in 2010: “When I was watching AC/DC with my wife and my son and they were playing ‘Shoot to Thrill’ at The Forum [in Los Angeles], I thought, ‘You know, this is how he should show up, right in the middle of this and take the armor off. That’s the Tony Stark version of doing things.’”
Yet to be fair to the Youngs, who never would have intended for their songs to have such negative associations as violence, torture and death, AC/DC is frequently played at American, Australian, British and European sporting venues and used as entrance or celebration music by athletes and teams.
“It really does go beyond the military,” says Durant. “I’ve often remarked at how many times you’d hear ‘Hells Bells’ being played during sports venues over the years. It’s just good, hard-driving rock ’n’ roll. Not so much today, but in years past, we lived by the ‘work hard, play hard’ rule. I think the band symbolizes that same mentality. I’ve always liked their music and still listen to it today. Like many people, for me it brings back memories of good times and good friends working hard and playing hard.”
Stevie Wright, no Johnson man, even considers it his favorite AC/DC song: “I love ‘Hells Bells.’ The whole thing. The atmosphere. Brian sings really well on it, as he did on ‘You Shook Me All Night Long.’ Johnson did some really good songs.”
But is it, as Filkins flippantly suggests, a “celebration” of Satan? Pull the other one.
* * *
While AC/DC has long been harassed by “God botherers,” scrutinized by paranoid loons convinced its name and song titles have hidden codes and nefarious meanings, targeted by Pope Benedict XVI (in 1996, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he reportedly described their music as “an instrument of the devil”) and unapologetically appropriates infernal iconography and themes in its music, album art and concerts (Angus Young is well known for sticking two fingers above his head while playing live), the band’s association with the netherworld is nothing but a harmless lark, a fun prop.
If anything, thematically it’s simply a bridge to the album that preceded Back in Black.
“‘Hells Bells’ has ties to ‘Highway to Hell,’” says Joe Matera. “Bon Scott was singing he was on the road there. Then, with the next release, there’s this eerie connection. When you listen to the song there’s this bridging of the spirit of Scott and the old AC/DC to the new AC/DC with Johnson: a revitalized band though in no way a better one. Both are the first songs off the respective albums. Highway to Hell, the last with Scott. Back in Black, the first with Johnson. It’s like this connecting thread musically, as it has all the hallmarks of AC/DC though with a new voice.”
As Robert Hilburn wrote in the Los Angeles Times in 1985: “You won’t find people at AC/DC’s shows wandering around in hooded robes and sacrificing small animals. You’ll probably just see 10,000 kids having a good time.” Back in Black’s opening track, he goes on, is “a song about youthful bravado … the message is rebellion, not devil worship.”
Tony Platt, who was lumped with the responsibility of recording a four-tonne bell in a church tower in England, only to find it was full of birds that ruined every attempt he made (the bell that ended up being used was custom-made in a foundry), won’t hear of it being Satanist either. He follows the Young script: that the whole album was their tribute to Scott and that the brothers’ only concerns were to make the songs as good as they could be; good enough that Scott would be proud of them.
“There’s no hidden agenda,” he says. “A good song and a good lyric is one that enables people to make their own interpretations. But those interpretations come from the person who’s listening. They’re not necessarily the interpretations that were put on it by the person writing it. And the better a song is the more interpretations that can be put on it. It’s a very positive thing about a song if lots of people can come up with interpretations, but once they start putting words into the mouth of the writer then I think it’s a very wrong thing to do.”
* * *
Platt worked for the last time with the Youngs on the cursed Flick of the Switch, as engineer and co
-producer, and has had only fleeting contact with them since. After Dirty Deeds had been cynically exhumed from the Atlantic crypt and the uneven For Those About to Rock had failed to do the business that was expected of it despite going to #1 on the American charts, the critics were sharpening their knives for AC/DC.
“It wasn’t the happiest of albums. There were all sorts of tensions within the band,” he says, skirting over Malcolm Young’s bust-up with Phil Rudd that saw the drummer abruptly leave the sessions and AC/DC altogether for a decade. “They were all pretty knackered by that point. It was the album that copped the backlash, really. I don’t think it was nearly as bad as a lot of people made it out to be.”
Why did Platt’s relationship with the Youngs come apart?
“I don’t really know. I’ve never actually managed to get to the bottom of that. I’ve always wondered why it’s not been a close thing, because I considered them to be good mates. Malcolm and I always got on extremely well, as did Cliff and I. It wasn’t just my working with them. I really liked them a lot as people. We had a lot in common.”
Phil Carson is another key figure from that period who can’t understand what went wrong for the band with Flick of the Switch. He sheets home the blame to Atlantic’s president and Jerry Greenberg’s replacement, Doug Morris.
“I thought it was a very good record, too,” he says. “I am convinced things could have been different if Dirty Deeds had been held for a much later release. There is no doubt in my mind that For Those About to Rock would have been a much bigger album and the momentum generated by that would have helped Flick of the Switch, and indeed subsequent albums.”
AC/DC, he contends, were never quite the same afterward.
“After an interim period with their accountant managing their career, the band hired Stewart Young, who is a consummate professional. Unfortunately, even he couldn’t undo the damage that Doug Morris and other peripheral people had done.”
Stewart Young wouldn’t agree to a full interview though did say the business relationship began inauspiciously but ended up becoming something close and personal. Did he have any misgivings about the band when he signed on to be their manager?
“Yes, I did, and so did they about me,” he says. “Therefore we started with a trial for three months so both sides could get to know each other. We worked together for around 10 years. I love the Youngs. They are great and always treated me, my staff and my family with the utmost consideration.”
* * *
Jerry Greenberg vacated the president’s office at Atlantic Records in 1980, around the time of Back in Black’s release, when he got a big outside offer to start his own record label.
“I remember when I was leaving we had five of the top 10 albums,” he boasts.
Atlantic’s response was to give him an in-house label, Mirage Records, and have him stay on as a consultant. He eventually left for MGM/United Artists in 1985, but not before trying to help another bunch of rock ’n’ roll outlaws from Australia break the big time: Rose Tattoo.
They were his fourth signing at Mirage and part of the thinking behind the deal, he says, was to maintain good relations with George Young, Alberts and AC/DC. The response from the American trade press was an odd mix of excitement and bewilderment. Billboard, reviewing the US release Rock ’n’ Roll Outlaw in October 1980, said they were “more primitive and raucous than AC/DC” and made The Ramones and Van Halen “seem like the pinnacles of restraint.”
“A great, great band,” says Greenberg. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t break them here in America. At that time FM radio wasn’t playing a lot of that kind of music. That’s why it took so long for AC/DC to happen.”
Rob Riley says that since then the situation hasn’t been much better for the Tatts, who now bear little resemblance to the band Greenberg signed all those years ago.
“Rose Tattoo has been ignored by the Australian music business, criminally,” he rails. “Guns N’ Roses coming out and saying we inspired them was a beautiful thing but fucking nothing got done about it.”
Does he see a time when the era that produced iconic Australian bands such as AC/DC, INXS, Men At Work, Cold Chisel and Rose Tattoo will return?
“That’ll never come back—at least not in my lifetime. Eighteen- and 20-year-olds on television talent shows: that’s the future of Australian music. It’s not only depressing but it’s fucking disgusting. Back in our day, you wouldn’t dare get on stage if you were half-baked or average. You had to be really good. That’s why all the stuff you hear back in the old days is really good.”
AC/DC meanwhile, Greenberg maintains, “didn’t feel the love” from Atlantic when he left the company. But in November 1996, while running Michael Jackson’s label MJJ Music at Sony, he saw AC/DC again in Melbourne. With the backing of Epic Records president and later chairman David Glew, Greenberg’s former general manager at Atlantic and “a very big supporter of AC/DC,” the old stager unsuccessfully tried to woo the Youngs from Warner Music Group, the parent company of Atlantic, Atco and AC/DC’s temporary new home, East West. Glew eventually signed AC/DC to Epic, another label of Sony, in 2002.
“To set the record straight, Steve Barnett and I were the ones who made the deal to bring AC/DC and their catalog to Epic,” says Glew.
Barnett, formerly AC/DC’s co-manager with Stewart Young, was executive vice-president/general manager and became president of Epic in 2004. He has since left Sony to head up Universal’s Capitol Music Group.
“The reason [we got AC/DC to sign] was Steve’s longtime relationship with Angus and the band and his belief in the band,” he continues. “The catalog was always and will always be strong. It passes from generation to generation of kids. We repackaged all the catalog and remarketed the catalog, which was incredibly successful for the band and for Epic.”
* * *
The catalog. Two words that in modern record-industry parlance have become synonymous with “cash cow.”
The Wall Street Journal spelled it out plainly in 2002: “While AC/DC will record new music for Sony, the crux of the deal is the rights to a valuable catalog of 16 of the band’s 18 albums that have been released since the mid 1970s by AOL Time Warner Inc’s Warner Music Group. That is somewhat different from many previous megastar deals—such as Sony’s 1991 deal with Aerosmith— which are much more geared toward profiting from new music and don’t include an act’s prior music.
“Signing AC/DC demonstrates again that, in today’s music industry, the past is just as important as the future. Big music catalogs don’t often come up for sale. And when they do, record labels eager for market share and revenue growth are willing to pay a high price for proven hits … Sony seized on an unusual opportunity. Record companies typically own catalogs of their biggest selling classic rock acts. But in a renegotiation of its contract with Warner Music more than a decade ago, AC/DC got back ownership of their master recordings and has licensed them to Warner Music ever since.”
The controversial Morris, meanwhile, became head of Sony Music in 2011. For a man whose handling of Dirty Deeds would have done much to convince the Youngs to leave Atlantic, it’s extraordinary that they’re now under his purview again. But, to borrow the title of one of their songs, money talks.
Looking back on the years that truly shaped the band—1975 to 1980—and saw the Youngs at their most inspired and creative, Jerry Greenberg credits the promotion department at Atlantic as the unsung hero of the AC/DC story. A group of people, led by Michael Klenfner and Perry Cooper, who rallied behind the Australians, even though a lot of their workmates didn’t get the band and found them a nuisance because they didn’t fit into narrow radio formats. But he saves the last word for himself.
“The whole company really got behind AC/DC,” he says. “I will tell you, that as the president who had to make the decision when Michael Browning would sit across from me, and tell me he needs $25,000 more to keep the band on the road, and I’d say, ‘Okay, you got it,’ I think I was one of the most importa
nt people to contribute to their success. I feel very much a part of their success by bringing in Mutt Lange and making that shot happen. I’m proud of watching AC/DC go from the fucking Whisky A Go-Go to The Forum to a stadium.”
For a guy who says he gave a whole lotta love to and wrote a whole lotta checks for AC/DC, he hasn’t got much back. The Youngs—publicly at least—have said nothing about Greenberg.
But, if it ain’t plain by now, that’s how these brothers roll.
11
AC/DC
“Thunderstruck” (1990)
In July 2012 an extraordinary news item made headlines around the world: a malware virus had crippled Iranian nuclear stations at Natanz and Fordow by getting their computers to play the AC/DC song “Thunderstruck” at high volume.
A nuclear scientist at the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), which was already reeling from attacks by the American- and Israeli-developed Stuxnet and Flame viruses, had sent an email to Finnish IT security firm F-Secure, clearly befuddled about what to do: “I am writing you to inform you that our nuclear program has once again been compromised and attacked by a new worm with exploits [sic] which have shut down our automation network at Natanz and another facility, Fordo [sic], near Qom. According to the email our cyber experts sent to our teams, they believe a hacker tool, Metasploit, was used. The hackers had access to our VPN. The automation network and Siemens hardware were attacked and shut down. I only know very little about these cyber issues as I am scientist [sic] not a computer expert. There was also some music playing randomly on several of the workstations during the middle of the night with the volume maxed out. I believe it was playing ‘Thunderstruck’ by AC/DC.”
