Showing posts with label malcolm young. Show all posts
Showing posts with label malcolm young. Show all posts
Monday, May 11, 2015
Unforgettable Riffs
AC/DC isn't known for expressing or inspiring a lot of sentimentality (remember: these guys honored their dead lead singer by unleashing Back in Black). Yet my heartstrings were tugged by this sweet video put together in tribute to the legendary Malcolm Young, who just left the band after 40 years due to dementia. Brazilian radio station 89 FM released this short video below of fellow dementia patients discussing how much rock n' roll means to them before listening to some of Malcolm's immortal riffs. Their reactions almost made me cry. For those about to rock, we salute you.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
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.
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.
Monday, October 29, 2012
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.
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.
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