Just to get the namedropping out of the way, I've never met any members of AC/DC and nor am I knowingly related to any of them, but I briefly delivered mail to the house in Overhill Road, East Dulwich outside which Bon Scott breathed his last following an evening of partying with unusual vigour back in February, 1980. You could tell it was the place from the memorial graffiti which sporadically appeared on adjacent municipal surfaces. This was in the nineties which, by happy coincidence - at least for me - was the point at which I finally began to understand AC/DC, the key to which is that if you feel you need to understand AC/DC then you're probably thinking about it too hard.
They were one of those groups beloved of everyone except me in the town in which I grew up, and the reason they weren't beloved of me was because everyone else liked them, which meant they must be crap; and also that I hadn't actually heard any of their records. Someone or other lent me the 7" of Whole Lotta Rosie but all I can recall is thinking that it sounded a bit sexist.
With the benefit of hindsight, I can appreciate that AC/DC were basically punk for anyone who didn't live in a big city, as were most bands associated with that whole hairy scene of the time. All I could see were five blokes who looked like everyone at my school and who probably would have regarded Joy Division as poufs, and all the emphasis on guitar solos seemed designed to appeal to shitheads; but, I was a bit up myself - as they say - and doubtless annoyed that everyone seemed to be having sex with girls except for me, which wasn't actually AC/DC's fault, not directly. They seemed stupid, and apparently I wasn't able to work out that stupid was sort of the point, although raw, rootsy and basic would be a better way of putting it.
Years passed and I heard bits and pieces, and it became increasingly hard to deny the power of those choppy bluesy guitar riffs - just chords, but there was something special there, some sound they had in common with the finer end of Led Zeppelin, just more direct. There's a reason that the opening bars of Back in Black score that scene in Iron Man, as opposed to something by Ed Sheeran.
I eventually bought this because a record store had opened on Lordship Lane, but they didn't have much stock and Highway to Hell was about the only thing I could find which seemed like it might at least contain a few surprises. Specifically it contained one surprise, namely that it's a fucking masterpiece contrary to what I had believed at the age of seventeen when I knew everything. AC/DC do one thing and that's rock, which would be stupid but for how well they do it, almost better than anyone else ever; and they rock like few have rocked before or since because they have a vision.
Nobody's playin' Manilow,
Nobody's playin' soul,
And no-one's playin' hard to get,
Just good old rock 'n' roll.
I know. They really didn't need to print the lyrics on the cover. It makes them sound like shitheads, but let's face it - Manilow ain't that great, some soul music was kind of bland, and whatever other objections you may have, you probably wouldn't say it to their faces; and it might be argued that taking umbrage with AC/DC for appealing to shitheads whilst failing to address the concerns of the supposedly sophisticated is a waste of time and misses the point. It could be argued that this material is outrageously sexist - although on close inspection it's actually more like evil Benny Hill - but you might do better to direct any available outrage at something which actually makes people miserable in the real world.
It wasn't the first, it wasn't the last,
It wasn't that she didn't care.
She wanted it hard, wanted it fast,
She liked it done medium rare.
Milligan-esque narrative swerves aside, it's really just a record of men singing songs about how they like to drink beer and how much they appreciate nude ladies - which has been a theme central to rock 'n' roll and the blues from which it sprang from the beginning; and at the risk of turning into Milo Yiannopoulos, I generally share these interests with AC/DC so I don't have a problem with any of it.
On the other hand, Night Prowler makes for uneasy listening as the slowest, arguably heaviest, and unfortunately sexiest track on the album, seemingly belonging to the lyrical subgenre of heavy metal odes to stalking women; but it's a misleading impression possibly fostered by the rest of the album being songs sung for the ladies, sort of. The point of Night Prowler is the mania of the killer rather than his choice of victim. It's a horror story, so it's supposed to upset you, and by way of a clue, there's a bloke with horns on the cover of the record. You know, had I had the sense to embrace this back when I was seventeen, my life might have turned out completely different, and I have an uncomfortable feeling it might even have been a bit better.
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