Youngs : The Brothers Who Built Ac/Dc (9781466865204) (24 page)

The old Atlantic Studios, where that December
AC/DC
recorded
Live from the Atlantic Studios
(a promotional-only release for radio stations that was included in the 1997
Bonfire
box set), are also long gone, though Electric Lady Studios, where guitar and vocal overdubs for
Back in Black
were recorded in June 1980, survives in Greenwich Village.

Live from the Atlantic Studios
, introduced by Ed Sciaky from Philadelphia radio station WIOQ, is a classic example of the quiet but important behind-the-scenes work Atlantic did for
AC/DC
. The key people behind it were Michael Klenfner, who died in 2009, and Judy Libow. The late Perry Cooper, who was in charge of artist relations, is credited in the Wall, Masino and Engleheart biographies with having coming up with the concept on his own. Indeed, in Susan Masino's book he personally takes credit for it: “I had come up with the idea.”

But perhaps not on his own.

“Perry helped coordinate the events with the artists we selected and was credited as a co-producer with me,” says Libow. “We sent these albums out to radio and press. It was a series of releases that we initiated as part of the promotion that Atlantic was doing with a lot of these bands. It was great. We would get a different radio station involved. The band would go in. We'd press it onto disc. They would do a broadcast of the show.

“You have to look at these things as having a cumulative effect on a band's career. Everything that we did over the years and the evolution of the band musically, it was like a perfect wave. It all came together with
Back in Black
. The [
Live
] series was very successful. The radio stations loved being a part of it. It really brought the band very close to the process of what we did to help promote their music. They understood the value in it. At the time it was sort of cutting edge because no other labels were really doing that kind of thing.”

Jimmy Douglass was Atlantic's in-house engineer.

“It was one of the greatest experiences of my life,” he tells me from Miami. “I was the guy doing all the rock stuff. Foreigner. The Rolling Stones. That was me. Working with
AC/DC
was amazing. The band speaks for itself. And it was before they really broke big. As a matter of fact we had such a great time on that album that when I went to LA I met with [
AC/DC
] for quite a bit and they were considering me to actually make their next record. We did do a lot of ‘shit' back then. I'm pretty sure I had one night with them at a club in LA and we saw Blondie.

“They hadn't really created that [Mutt Lange] sound yet. Something happened between my schedule and theirs and it just didn't happen. There was an honest synergy within them that was just pure energy fire. Straight ahead, right up, fastball,
right down the fucking middle
. I'm talking serious heat. I remember the feeling of standing and just looking at the speakers, listening and going, ‘
Hooooly shit
.'”

On radio, though, America was only just waking up to
AC/DC
's “pure energy fire.”

“We saw a reaction with every release,” says Libow. “And the fan base was growing long before radio even got hip to their music in terms of really hitting the charts and getting behind the band musically. It was just a word-of-mouth thing. It was a combination of the press and their live shows. Wherever they played you heard about it. There was a buzz about this band. Even if the radio stations weren't yet playing their music by the time
AC/DC
came through their market it wasn't long after that they were playing whatever was available at the time.

“If you had a graph, it just kept moving up: the level of awareness, the support that they were getting from radio and the sales that they were generating with their music. It was the ideal pattern you would want to see with any band you're working with. The incline was just straight up. That's how it was once they really focused on the States.”

However,
AC/DC
still hadn't recorded that breakthrough album to get them over the top. It was about to come in short time but it wasn't to be the one they were expecting.

 

6

AC/DC

“Riff Raff” (1978)

It's Keith Richards's, Eddie Van Halen's and Gene Simmons's favorite
AC/DC
album, a good indicator that the Youngs must have been doing something right with their guitar playing. But it was also a triumph for the band's unheralded rhythm section. Says Georg Dolivo of Rhino Bucket: “Every drummer and bass player I know loves
Powerage
.”

Armed with their best ever collection of songs, the recording sessions for
AC/DC
's fifth studio album were fueled by endless cups of tea, a steady supply of Benson & Hedges cigarettes and Drum tobacco, and a ton of ambition to properly crack America outside of the drudgery of touring and make inroads where it really mattered: record stores.

“In a way it was
AC/DC
's
Sgt. Pepper's
,” says Mark Opitz, defining
Powerage
as a transitional moment for the group. “When we came to do
Powerage
, George, Harry and the band did serious rehearsals at Studio 2 in Alberts. George playing bass with the band just out in the studio, Harry and me in the control room. Doing rehearsals, basically writing rehearsals, where you have all sorts of riffs. Malcolm was certainly constructing. Angus was too. But you could see Malcolm taking a stronger hand then. They were maturing: songs like ‘What's Next to the Moon,' ‘Gimme a Bullet,' ‘Riff Raff,' ‘Sin City,' ‘Rock 'n' Roll Damnation.' It was different. We rehearsed at night, followed by midnight-to-dawn recording sessions. Eight o'clock in the evenings we'd start. We'd finish early in the mornings, to the point where Malcolm, Phil Rudd and I would hire a tinny at Rose Bay and motor out into Sydney Harbour with a six-pack of beer and a couple of joints and do a bit of fishing while people were catching a ferry to work.

“I'd spend the days testing the Marshall amps till I could find two really good-sounding ones that were the best to record with. They're all sort of different, amps. In the studio, particularly during
Powerage
, it was like a family. It wasn't a normal recording session. It was a project.”

AC/DC
having styled themselves as an album band, Atlantic now wanted them to deliver hits, and they were happy to oblige: “Rock 'n' Roll Damnation” was belatedly cut for that very purpose after the first edit of the album had received a lukewarm response from New York and it was suggested they record a radio-friendly track. But
Powerage
was also the album where Malcolm began asserting executive control.

“Malcolm no doubt was the leader of the band,” says Opitz. “George had had his day with The Easybeats. Not strongly, not overtly, but you could feel during
Powerage
Malcolm was starting to stake his ground a bit [in the brothers' pecking order].”

Family intrigues put aside,
Powerage
was a high point creatively for the three Youngs, an album arguably superior to the commercially successful Mutt Lange circuitbreakers that followed,
Highway to Hell
and
Back in Black
. After
Powerage
, the boogie and groove largely disappeared. What was left was still great—Lange amplified so many of their strengths—but at the expense of leaching Vanda & Young's deft touches. Out went the handclaps and the maracas and so much of the rawness. The change of singer had an effect too. Bon Scott's cheekiness and fun was superseded by Brian Johnson's heaviness and malevolence.

If you want an aural marker of how much the band altered its sound between 1978 and 1983, listen to “Landslide” off
Flick of the Switch
against
Powerage
's “Riff Raff.” The songs are both foot-to-the-floor numbers, but don't compare in quality. It's hard to ignore the feeling that something was lost in the changeover, even if the Youngs' good friend John Swan doesn't agree.

“I never teach my granny how to suck eggs, you know,” he tells me. “Fuck that; I'm not getting involved in that one. To me, it's still the same recipe. The basic content is so fucking strong, it still comes through for what it is.”

*   *   *

Ever the innovator, and mindful of the positive effect a modicum of aggression had had on the band with
Let There Be Rock
, George played on the cabin fever inside the studio by working everyone up to the point where sparks were flying.

“He'd be like, ‘Did you see
The Don Lane Show
last night? That
bloody
hypnotist!'” says Opitz of one George's psychological techniques. Dissecting the performance of a guest on a TV variety show might seem unusual, but
anything
was fair game to George when it came to motivating musicians. “It wound everyone up into a state of angst. Got the adrenalin pumping.”

But there was also a degree of personal anger in the room that the band had already brought in, without George's egging them on.

Anthony O'Grady had kept in touch with Bon Scott while they were touring overseas, Scott writing letters to him. According to O'Grady, by the time
Powerage
was ready to be cut in early 1978,
AC/DC
weren't as flavor-of-the-month as they used to be.
Let There Be Rock
had fizzled in Australia. Cliff Williams had encountered visa problems. Local shows were canceled.

“They weren't very popular then because they'd been out of the [public] eye; they hadn't had any hits,” he says. “Molly Meldrum and
Countdown
had gone off them. Bon was not bitter. He was actually very angry about the Australian music industry, which had turned their back on them.
AC/DC
just weren't on the agenda.”

All well and good, though, for
Powerage
. When the aggression was off the meter, the tape would roll.

Making use of the band's first remotes, Angus would take his guitar everywhere. As is well known, he did the solo for “Riff Raff” in the control room.

“An
unbelievable
riff,” says Opitz. “I sat there with Angus for an hour and a half learning it off him. You can trawl the world of
AC/DC
aficionados and see which album comes up best, and it's funny how
Powerage
has stood the test of time.”

Later, the band took the aggression-first approach George perfected on
Powerage
into their live shows.

“I'd hear stories from Malcolm and Phil about the way they'd sit around on their American tours, backstage supporting REO Speedwagon, and use the same tactic we used in the studio,” says Opitz. “They'd start ripping, talking about what a shit band REO Speedwagon is: ‘Let's go and blow them off the fucking stage. Fuck 'em. They're cunts with their fucking wussy, fucking long-haired, pop fucking music. They wouldn't know fucking rock 'n' roll.' All that sort of shit. They'd psych each other up in the dressing room, hit the stage and fucking go
bang
.”

*   *   *

Meanwhile Cliff Williams, now free to record with the band, was a bundle of nervous excitement. This “definitely helped with the rhythm tracks,” according to Opitz. Williams did what he was told and knew his place. He'd learned a few things from the fate of Mark Evans and has largely kept his counsel ever since.

Tony Platt says he heard some of Williams's songs recorded with Laurie Wisefield from Wishbone Ash when he visited the
AC/DC
bass player's house and home studio in Florida and they were “fantastic songs; really,
really
great songs,” but “it would have been a difficult thing for [Williams] to do anything outside
AC/DC
without it rocking the boat.”

In well over 30 years playing with the band but being a non-writing member, Williams, like Phil Rudd and Brian Johnson, has done very little outside it. Typically over such a stretch of time lower profile members of major acts do solo records. Bill Wyman, Ron Wood and Charlie Watts did so while being part of The Rolling Stones. But that freedom doesn't seem to extend to
AC/DC
's non-writing personnel much beyond benefit gigs and the odd guest appearance onstage or in the studio.

I ask Phil Carson if Angus and Malcolm ever placed restrictions or had control over what the band's other three members did outside
AC/DC
.

“As far as I am aware, the Youngs do not exert any particular controls on this except to set the
AC/DC
tone. They have never involved themselves in an outside recording project and everybody seems to follow that line.”

Asked how his own relationship is with them now, Carson plays a straight bat but, controversially, hints at discord within the band over the treatment of Johnson.

“That depends who you ask. In later years, I became particularly friendly with Brian and tried to help him with a musical he had written about Helen of Troy. I still believe there are some superb songs in there, along with a first-class script written by [
Porridge
creators] Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement. We took that one quite a long way, even making a deal with AEG [Anschutz Entertainment Group] at one point, but we never got as far as Broadway.

“While all this was going on, certain things came up regarding Brian's treatment by the band's accountant and the Youngs. I will leave that one alone other than to quote George Orwell: ‘All men are created equal, but some are more equal than others.'”

The band's accountant?

“I am not naming any names.”