Let There Be Angus

03/20/2000 2:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Darren Davis

After a long slumber, the beast known as AC/DC has appeared once again to reclaim the throne of straightahead rock 'n' roll. The Australian quintet's new album, Stiff Upper Lip, has already spawned a monster radio hit with its heavy, blues-influenced title track, and more are likely. But it's not like listeners had forgotten about AC/DC since the band's last album was released in 1995. The intervening years saw the certification of the band's Back In Black album for sales of over 10 million copies, as well as the release of Bonfire, a five-CD boxed set featuring rare studio and live takes with their old singer Bon Scott, a rambunctious rocker who died on Feb. 20, 1980 after a severe drinking binge.

On Stiff Upper Lip, the band's lineup is the same as it was in the years immediately following Scott's death: vocalist Brian Johnson, lead guitarist Angus Young, rhythm guitarist (and brother of Angus) Malcolm Young, bassist Cliff Williams, and drummer Phil Rudd. There are no drum loops, no samples, no synths. The result is a less metal-ish, more bluesy set of songs that closely resembles early releases like 1976's High Voltage and 1977's Let There Be Rock. In a clever marketing campaign designed to help the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy foundation (but which also slyly promoted the new album), a guitar lesson with Angus was auctioned off on eBay for over $28,000--proof positive that, going on three decades since its formation, AC/DC is still in high demand.

Angus and Brian sat down recently with LAUNCH to discuss the making of Stiff Upper Lip, why the band's style hasn't changed in more than 26 years, and why they refuse to release a career-comprehensive boxed set.

LAUNCH:
Why did it take so long to get Stiff Upper Lip out to the masses?

ANGUS:
We had come off the road in '96 from doing the Ballbreaker tour and we had had about a month off or so, and then it was into writing new material. We also had a boxed set that came out in that period and...you know, it was a bit of delay with that because we had to research it and stuff. And then after that, back to writing this. So we've been busy, you know?

LAUNCH:
The Bonfire boxed set was quite a collection.

ANGUS:
That took a lot longer than what we first thought. Because sometimes you got rewarded and other times you were thinking of something and you knew it was there and then they said, "Well, we can't find the tape," or it was recorded in bad or not great quality. And so on.

LAUNCH:
With AC/DC you know what you're going to get. Some other bands undergo huge changes and experiment a lot. You guys are consistent, almost a brand name.

ANGUS:
Well, if you're going to go to a butcher, you don't walk in and say, "Give me a beer," you know [laughs].

BRIAN:
"I want that lambchop cut differently because it may taste a little different." You're going to get a lambchop. I think if you stick to what you're good at...people like things that they're used to. They don't want everything to change all the time, you know?

ANGUS:
Somebody once said, "People know what they like, and like what they know." And I think as a band you spend all your early years defining your own style--and with us it was always, you're a hard-edged rock 'n' roll band--and you want to put on a record and go automatically, "That's them. That's AC/DC." And you do all of that and it's kind of weird that [then] they expect you to change into something else. So I've always found that strange when they say, "You've never changed or experimented with the current trends."

LAUNCH:
How are you going to mix songs from this album in with older classics on the road?

ANGUS:
It's a big pool to dip into, but with AC/DC, it's the same [as] when you make a record: You want to play what people expect. When I was young and I would go see someone, I wanted to hear my favorite tracks of people. I think it's the same for us. If I went to see the Stones I'd want to hear the "Jumpin' Jack Flash"-es, the hits, and I suppose it would be the same for the Beatles in their time. So I'd always viewed it as that. When I've seen...especially the time of the hippie-type thing, where bands would come on and tell you up front, "We're so sick of playing these songs, we're just going to play our new records"--hell, I was one of those kids who said, "Well, I'm on my way home." [Laughs]

BRIAN:
"Oooh, is that the time?"

LAUNCH:
Rap-rocker Kid Rock has covered "Back In Black." Any thoughts on him?

BRIAN:
Jeez, I haven't heard. Have you heard about any of the Kid Rock stuff?

ANGUS:
I haven't, really...

BRIAN:
We haven't heard. We've been a bit busy. Sorry, Kid. We'll get to hear it soon, I'm sure.

ANGUS:
I'm always out. My music thing sort of stopped when I was 14, collecting. I was still listening to older stuff like Chuck Berry and Little Richard and a lot of blues stuff. Still today, I plug more into the past than the future.

LAUNCH:
"For Those About To Rock" has to be the ultimate rock 'n' roll closer.

ANGUS:
It is. When we created it, it was a very anthem-minded type of track. The idea came about from the old Roman times, when the gladiators would get out to the Coliseum and the emperor would always say before the gladiator contest, "For those about to die, we salute you." We just thought it had a good appeal to it that way. For us, we probably feel that we're sort of in a battlefield, don't we sometimes?

BRIAN:
Yeah, as Ang is saying, you're hot, sweaty, and in the arena of rock 'n' roll, as it were. And it's the ultimate salute to the fans, as far as we're concerned. Instead of saying, "Goodnight, we love you," this is the one.

ANGUS:
And you definitely know nobody is going to go to sleep when those cannons come out...and they're certainly not going to walk out [laughs]. "Let's get to the car to beat the crowd." They never say that.

LAUNCH:
What's the story behind "House Of Jazz" off the new album?

ANGUS:
It was mainly [written by] Malcolm and myself. We were in rehearsal out in California once and we rented a place and just stepping in it was a bit like walking into the set of the old Batman TV series. We had those odd angled windows and everything was sort of topsy-turvy. It was just a strange place to be in, all the decor was like out of something Picasso dreamed up, and Malcolm's first words to me were "What do you think of this?," looking around the room. And I said, "Hmm, interesting." He said, "What would you call this?" And I said, "Heck if I know," and he said, "It's like a house of jazz, isn't it?" I couldn't stop laughing after he said that. Because that sort of summed up...we've been in a lot of places like that over the years, different environments, different recording studios sometimes, you know.

LAUNCH:
Has the interplay between you, Angus, and your brother Malcolm changed since the early days?

ANGUS:
Well, I was Malcolm's little brother, so it's probably the same as a lot of families [with] brothers and sisters. You know, you don't want the kid brother hanging around you all the time. But when we started [AC/DC], we got along better than we ever had--even as kids. Because as kids you're always scrapping and you've got different interests, and when we formed the band it was...I don't know, it's just something between the two of us, probably because of the music factor, you know? We seem to know exactly what we want on that side of life. We were both great rock 'n' roll fans. We still beat the sh-t out of each other [laughs].

LAUNCH:
Have you ever thought about releasing a comprehensive boxed set?

ANGUS:
What, like the Bible?

BRIAN:
I think it would cheapen it if you started putting things like that out now. I think that why you never see--in fact, I know that's why you never see an AC/DC track on [in American voice] "Rock Of The '80s: Ring 1-800...or get a set of Ginsu knives with this--that's a good idea, that's marketing, man." It's best not to cheapen it out. Keep it on the original album.

ANGUS:
As a band we never know what comes, and I suppose if you get feedback from your fans and if they were looking for something like that, then that would be the only reason. You would accommodate them if they were looking for something like that, you know? I'm sure we could knock up a good party album...Neighborchaser [laughs].

BRIAN:
I tell ya, people who didn't even listen to rock 'n' roll would buy that one! [Laughs]