AC-DC shocks

Press, 14 January 1982, Page 10

AC-DC shocks

By STEVE MANSE, of the “Boston Globe,” through NZPA In the last two years the Australian group AC-DC has stunned the rock world by selling more albums than any other band, including Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, and The Who. AC-DC has become the new rage of teen audiences. Yet they claim to have retained their business-as-usual, nose-to-the-grindstone roots.

“We don’t know what people are saying about us. We just like being in the womb of the road. That’s the greatest thing for us — just going from gig to gig,” said AC-DC's guitarist, Angus Young, after finishing two blistering shows at the Boston Garden that left listeners in a state of high-voltage shock. AC-DC has stuck to hard rock since starting eight years ago in Australia. The Young brothers, who were born in Glasgow. Scotland, but moved to Australia in early childhood, started the band before moving it to England in 1976. the year

they recorded the “Dirty Deeds” album. That album featured their original lead singer, Bon Scott — who died two years ago from an alcohol overdose — but was unavailable in America until the band released it last year, “partly to help Bon’s family,” Angus said, since AC-DC had never made much money while he was alive.

The new vocalist, Brian Johnson, the son of a coalminer from Newcastle, England, has been criticised for not measuring up to Scott. ' Although Johnson sang on the highly successful “Back in Black” album, there “still were terrible things written about him,” Young said.

“That’s one reason we stopped doing interviews. Everybody kept asking me, ‘What do you think of Bon’s replacement?’ Well, I don’t think of Brian as a replacement. I think of him as his own person, his own character . . . He’s had a tough time.”

AC-DC’s eye-opening sales started in 1980 when their “Back in Black” album sold eight million copies world-

wide. Then “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” a live recording made in Europe in 1976 but only released in America in 1980, sold three million. Now their new album, “For Those About to Rock We Salute You," released early last month, already is over the million mark and is the No. 1 record in the United States.

The new album, designed to expand the band’s image as a "heavy metal” band (a term Young hates), has, however, more chest-beating lyrics than usual — in songs such as “Let’s Get It Up” and "Inject the Venom” — which would seem to indicate standard heavy-metaL

“Yeah. well, we do have our less-than-serious side," Young said.

“We don't want to be serious all of the time, like Led Zeppelin was.” But in truth, AC-DC seems to care as little about their image as their sales figures. “Let Mick Jagger worry about image and all of that stuff,” Young snapped. “We just want to play rock ’n’ roll.”