#powerage

Friday, August 16: AC/DC, "Kicked in the Teeth"

R.I.P. Ronald Belford "Bon" Scott (1946-1980), Malcolm Young (1953-2017)

HIGH VOLTAGE AUSTRALIAN HARD ROCK RISING IN THE UK -- SOUNDS OF THE SUPER-SEVENTIES.

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on an AC/DC "Powerage" era UK concert tour programme, c. 1978, promoting the band's then-newly released fifth studio album.

PIC #2: Cover page to an original AC/DC Concert Tour Programme for the band's "Let There be Rock" 1977 UK tour.

Powerage, 1978.

Worked all day, spent most of it thinking about how to articulate what I want to say about this album.

This is the album where Cliff Williams joined the band as the bass player, and Phil Rudd solidified himself as the third piece of the band’s bedrock: the rhythm section. Malcolm Young is regularly called the greatest rhythm guitarist of all time. Just a brilliant, brilliant player and a riff-writing machine. Phil Rudd’s drumming has a swing to it that perfectly matches what the band does when they’re at their best. And Cliff Williams on bass just locks in with Phil and Mal. Mal, Angus, Phil, and Cliff are the best AC/DC lineup. All of them just seem to know exactly how to play with each other in perfect lock step.

Now, for Bon’s work on Powerage, I am gonna talk about the lyrics.

Let There Be Rock, lyrically, exemplified everything enjoyable about Bon Scott. He was a wild-eyed, mischievous good time at his best. Powerage exemplified the dark side of that personality. It has the most personal, emotional, and directly confessional lyrics of their entire catalogue. For a band that is defined by seeking commercial success, an album comprised of almost entirely first person accounts of heartache is noteworthy. Bon was beloved for being a lewd, lascivious, rabble rousing ring-leader of a band of miscreants.

But Powerage was Bon as a broken hearted poet.

When an interviewer asked Angus what Bon was like, he said “what you see is what you get”. That is what Angus remembers about Bonny: that you could absolutely judge that book by its cover. In another interview, Angus was asked about why Bon drank himself to death, Angus answered in his typically terse style again, “it’s in the songs, mate.”

The songs on Powerage, to be specific.

From “Rock and Roll Damnation”:

-you say that you want respect, honey for what? for everything that you’ve done for me, thanks a lot. you say that I act the fool, well honey I’m a fool for you.

From Brian Johnson’s favorite song, “Down Payment Blues”:

-feeling like a paper cup, floating down a storm drain

From my favorite track, “Gimme a Bullet”:

-she had the word, had the way, the way of letting me know. She said ‘you go your way, and I’ll go mine, and that’ll be the start’. Come tomorrow, come to grips with being all alone. Give me a bullet to bite on. Something to chew. Give me a bullet to bite on and I’ll make believe, I’ll believe it’s you.”

From, “What’s Next to the Moon”:

-it’s your love that I want (background: your love that I need)

From, “Gone Shootin’”:

-Bought a ticket of her own accord… …I stirred my coffee with the same spoon… She never made it past the bedroom door, what was she even for? I took a lover in another town, she took another pill. She was runnin’ in an overdrive, a victim of overkill. My baby’s gone Shootin’… I used to love her so.

According to what I’ve read, Bon once had two separate women in the maternity ward, and they were unaware of each other. Bon was not a guy that would have done well in the age of social media and cellphone cameras. His point was that he found a girl who loved him for being a rock star, and he was not gonna quit being a rock star for her. He was a gross, lascivious and carousing womanizer. And she knew it. When she did the same things back to him, Bon didn’t like being on the receiving end. He was drunk and high most of the time, living out of hotel rooms and the beds of welcoming lovers in every town.

The end was coming, and his family and friends all knew it. No one that knew Bon was shocked when he drank himself to death. The tragedy was how inevitable it was at this point in life.

Powerage was the last of the Aussie made albums. The finale of their time as a bar band. And it’s their most personal, most poignant, and most heartbreaking.

Sad lyrics aside, Powerage is the album that every rockstar that grew up with AC/DC cites as the band’s best. Slash, Joe Perry, and basically every guitar player that was in a band formed after 1983 says the same thing. Powerage is packed with virtuoso performances from every band member. Every track is an all time favorite guitar riff.