Ozzy Osbourne on AC/DC

"By the time the fire engines arrived, the flames had already burned themselves out. Randy was gone. Rachel was gone. I finally put on some clothes and took a beer from what was left of the fridge in the bus. I couldn't handle the situation. Sharon was running around trying to find a telephone. She wanted to call her father. Then the cops arrived. Good ol' boy types. They weren't too sympathetic.

'Ozzy Ozz-Burn, huh?' They said. 'The bat-eating madman.'

We checked into some shithole called the Hilco Inn in Leesburg and tried to hide from the press while the police did their thing. We had to call Randy's mum and Rachel's best friend Grace, which was horrendous.

All of us wanted to get the fuck out of Leesburg, but we had to stay put until the paperwork was done.

None of us could get our heads around the situation. Everything had been magic one minute, and the next it had taken such an ugly, tragic turn.

'Y'know what? I think this is a sign I ain't supposed to do this anymore,' I said to Sharon.

By then I was having a total physical and mental breakdown. A doctor had to come over and shoot me up with sedatives. Sharon wasn't doing much better. She was in a terrible state, poor Sharon. The one thing that gave us some comfort was a message from AC/DC saying, 'If there's anything we can do, let us know.' That meant a lot to me, and I'll always be grateful to them for it. You learn who your friends are when the shit hits the fan. In fact, AC/DC must have known exactly what we'd been going through, 'cos it had only been a couple of years since their lead singer Bon Scott had died from alcohol poisoning, also at a tragically young age."

From I Am Ozzy.

AC/DC, "Jailbreak"

I can't believe AC/DC is turning 40 this year. They still seem like the youngest classic rock band, eternal teenagers to grizzled old Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, every new hard rock band's cooler older brother. Never going to make an album with Allison Krauss, never going to be on reality TV, never even going to release a Greatest Hits album. If the past four decades are any indication, the upcoming studio album will sound much like the last 15, and the proposed 2014 tour will be as mind-blowing as anything you can experience in an arena.



It started back in1974, when a band called the Velvet Underground (Malcolm and Angus Young already knew there was another band called the Velvet Underground--they just didn't care) met professional miscreant Bon Scott and renamed themselves AC/DC. Their earliest recordings would take years to get released in America (probably because, like the first Motörhead albums, someone thought the music was too much for us to handle,) and by the time we got "Jailbreak" in 1984, AC/DC had already surpassed it with albums like Highway to Hell and Back in Black. But I still love hearing it today as one of the best ever rock bands on the long way to the top.

Bob Dylan once said of Elvis Presley, "Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail." It's a sentiment that AC/DC cembodies on "Jailbreak," and one they still carry today.

Pantera, "Hellbound"

"Hell ain't a bad place to be," the polemicist Bon Scott tells us in his Let There Be Rock dissertation. As usual, he was being understated. Hell is the most metal place in the universe, as emphasized by Slayer's waiting, Venom's welcome and Stryper inviting the Devil there. Ozzy and Lemmy both went a-raising, right on the same song. Some of metal's finest documents start in the underworld, or at least right next door, including AC/DC's two best albums, Megadeth's most violent junkie dream and Guns N' Roses two-CD loose cannon. But no one ever made it sound louder or angrier than Pantera.

Pantera dominated the '90s as the world's best and biggest metal band, just as Black Sabbath ran the '70s and Metallica owned the '80s. They kicked off the decade by introducing themselves as the Cowboys From Hell, but bookended it by dragging us back home with them on their final album.



Even when Dimebag was still alive, there was much uncertainty as to whether we'd ever see another Pantera album. Every Pantera fan who read about them in metal mags (and if you were a Pantera fan, you absolutely read metal mags) knew that there was infighting between Phil Anselmo and the Brothers Abbott. It had been four years since The Great Southern Trendkill, years in which mainstream metal had been reoccupied by Korn and Limp Bizkit. But on the wonderfully preposterously-titled Reinventing the Steel, Pantera outsavaged not only the nu-metal legions, but more importantly their own storied career.

"Hellbound" is a band at their most ruthless, throwing all of their brutality into their last testament while still hanging on the the grooves. Phil Anselmo's banshee scream in the chorus is the stuff of immortals. He couldn't keep it much longer, as his voice settled into its present-day baritone, and the band couldn't even stay together after the Reinventing the Steel tour, with Phil Anselmo famously telling Metal Hammer "Dimebag Darrell deserves to be beaten severely." That quote was run on the magazine's cover one week before Darrell was killed by a gunman.

Pantera may have no longer been friends on Reinventing the Steel, but by Satan's graces they were still a band. If Hell really is other people, than I'm glad Pantera chose to leave the tape rolling.

Ten Metal Bands to See Before You Die: AC/DC

If AC/DC just sat there onstage while a tape played "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap," "T.N.T.," "You Shook Me All Night Long," "Back in Black" and "Highway to Hell," they'd still earn consideration for this list. But as anyone who has seen The Who this century can tell you, playing great songs does not make you a great live band.



40 years into one of the most incredible careers in audio history, AC/DC are still claiming metal's greatest dancer, swinging from the clappers of Hell's Bells, giving us a Whole Lotta Rosie and leaving everything in their wake Thunderstruck. Getting had, getting took and telling folks it's harder than it looks.

By working their way into the 200 Million Sold club without ever deviating from the harder-than-hard rock formula that made them famous, AC/DC makes success look as easy as "The Jack." Then again, nobody has ever played those three chords with the kind of gleeful punch that Angus gives them, not to mention the wildman blues-metal freakout solo that often takes over "Let There Be Rock." The most famous Keith Richards quote about his guitars ("Give me five minutes and I'll make 'em all sound the same") can be applied to Angus Young. But give his admirers four decades, and none of them will sound like him.

No great guitarist this side of Prince has made his instrument such an enthralling part of his performance, without taking away from the playing. Watching Angus Young with a Gibson is akin to watching James Brown with a microphone stand. "I'm a rotten guitar player if I'm standing still," Angus has said, and while I don't believe it, you can tell that he does.

AC/DC does not have many of peers, but even the ones who come closest are put to shame by AC/DC's show. They're not pretending to like each other (Aerosmith, Van Halen,) physically ravaged by their decades of drug abuse (Black Sabbath, Mötley Crüe) or dressing up their guitarist to look like the guy they kicked out (KISS, Guns N' Roses). AC/DC prefer to keep their drama beneath them, where it belongs. They continue to set examples for all younger artists, meaning nearly everyone, and meaning nobody who puts on a show like these guys do.

G N' R Lies: "Nice Boys"

Great songs can happen to mediocre bands. We hear it all the time in music, less so often in metal, where "hits" are scarce and most metal bands with one actual high-charting single (Faith No More, Living Colour, Queensrÿche) support their place in history with a few great albums. But near the top of the mediocre band/great song heaps sits Rose Tattoo, barely remembered today as the Australian metal band that isn't AC/DC.

Most of Rose Tattoo's songs are routine hard rock fare without the leery charm of Bon Scott and the Young brothers. However, on "Nice Boys," they hit it out of the park, with the band's usual slide guitar riffs and badder-than-thou lyrics coming together for one solid jukebox anthem.



Rose Tattoo's version isn't all too different from Guns N' Roses' more famous cover on G N' R Lies. But why is it inferior?



To these ears, Rose Tattoo are trying too hard. The guitar playing feels labored next to Slash's, the vocals sound strained vs. Axl's feral interpretation. Both versions are great, and both bands have chemistry, but only one of them is iconic.

Chuck Klosterman, the literary world's most vocal GNR fan, might agree. "Because rock is so tied to the abstract concept of 'cool,' it seems distasteful when anyone tries too much," he once wrote in Spin. "Bands that are unpolished and lazy (the Replacements, Pavement, Motörhead) are always more likeable than groups that do 'whatever it takes' to achieve a modicum of success (Bon Jovi, Jimmy Eat World, Flickerstick)."

Now that we know that Axl can spend decades working on a song, it's clear that Guns N' Roses are neither unpolished nor lazy. But on "Nice Boys," they played the part with the finesse of a Scorsese cast.

Song of the Day: AC/DC, "Hell's Bells"

Here's a better hurricane song than anything that the Scorpions ever came up with.



It's hard to imagine in 2012, but picture one of the biggest bands in the world also being one of the best. Imagine that band losing their lead singer right at the peak of their success--i.e., Radiohead following up OK Computer without Thom Yorke. That's the position that AC/DC were in months after Highway to Hell's release, when Bon Scott succumbed to "misadventure" (the coroner's words.)

The band found a flat-capped Englishman named Brian Johnson and put him in the unenviable position of replacing the guy who sang "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap." He rose to challenge on the first song on his first album with AC/DC, introducing himself thusly: "I'm rolling thunder, pouring rain/I'm coming on like a hurricane."



Every AC/DC song is famous for sounding just like every other AC/DC song. But this one doesn't. Angus and Malcolm Young almost never play at this subdued a pace, but even at their slowest they have that signature AC/DC explosiveness. I also wonder if bell in the intro (presumably belonging to the Inferno) inspired Metallica's "For Whom the Bell Tolls."

Brian Johnson left one of the best first impressions in rock history by kicking off Back in Black with "Hells Bells." He also set a bar that Ronnie James Dio, Sammy Hagar, Blaze Bayley, Ripper Owens and Paul Rodgers never lived up to. Or nearly anybody else.