CD Odyssey Disc 1364: ACDC

Welcome back to the CD Odyssey! This next album is an old favourite.

Disc 1364 is…. Highway to Hell

Artist: AC/DC

Year of Release: 1979

What’s up with the Cover? Malcom glowers, Angus sneers and Bon flashes a grin while he sports a pentagram necklace sure to trouble your mom when she finally notices it. You know deep down you wanted her to.

How I Came To Know It: I have no idea. I’ve known and loved this album since the day it came out. I never owned it on vinyl, so I assume either my brother or friends did. Probably both. It was the first AC/DC album I bought on CD, but it was so long ago I can’t remember when.

How It Stacks Up:  I have nine ACDC albums and this is the best of them all - #1.

Ratings: 5 stars

Nowadays, throwing up the devil horns at a concert is so commonplace you’ll sometimes see it at an indie folk show. It’s weird, and it’s out of place, but you’ll see it. It might even be me doing it. Old habits are hard to break.

When I was a little kid back in 1979 throwing up the horns at all felt quite risky. Like at any moment the devil himself might notice and come calling. While albums like Iron Maiden’s “Number of the Beast” seemed to tempt the very edges of fate, AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” was a safer way to celebrate sin and fast living. A bit more party, and a bit less Satan, if you will. I’d give it even odds this album was the first I ever honoured with that greatest of rock and roll salutes; head bowed, and devil horn-hands raised high.

If so, I couldn’t have done better than “Highway to Hell,” which is one of the greatest hard rock albums ever made. 41 minutes of screaming guitar riffs, thumping drums and Bon Scott – one of hard rock’s finest vocalists – screeching away with rebellious celebration. This is everything AC/DC does, done to perfection. The songs are 4/4 time, driven at every step by Malcolm Young’s incredible guitar. The album sports a song called “Girls Got Rhythm” but it is Malcolm Young that has rhythm, and plenty of it.

In a way, all the songs sound the same, but chiefly that’s because they all sound great. Everything is played with a relaxed precision that sits down in the pocket and stays a while. You’re going to get a bunch of verse-chorus-verse-chorus-solo-chorus repeat, and you are going to fucking like it. Angus Young’s solos are nothing complicated, but they perfectly fit into each song, giving you a little sideways glance at the tune, before you are safely returned to Malcolm’s reliable groove.

Lyrically, this is also AC/DC at their best. And by “at their best” I don’t mean that they are dropping Leonard Cohen-style insights on the universe or the nature of the universe. These are songs about partying, chasing girls and generally acting like a miscreant. Bon Scott is a naturally over-the-top singer, and the more ridiculous his lines get, the more he revels in them. Some of the best are on “Touch Too Much”:

“She had the face of an angel, smiling with sin

The body of Venus, with arms.”

Um…yeah! Also:

“She wanted it hard, wanted it fast

She liked it done medium rare.”

I expect this is supposed to be a sexual metaphor, although I’m not sure for what. I prefer to think that in the throes of passion this goddess of a woman (with arms, no less!) put in a call for room service.

I also love this line from “Shot Down In Flames” which is basically a song about young men on the prowl, behaving badly:

“Singles bar, got my eye on a honey
Hanging out everywhere”

Is she hanging out at all the bars, or just not wearing very much? The answer to this question is ‘yes’.

While I am poking fun here, both “Touch Too Much” and “Shot Down in Flames” are rock and roll classics, with instantly recognizable guitar riffs that can be heard a thousand times and never grow tiresome. Every song on the album is like this, launching with a furious and undeniable energy over and over again.

This blog often reviews very obscure records, but this is not one of them. This album was everywhere from when I was a kid until I graduated high school. It literally never left the house party playlist for the better part of a decade, merely shifting format (vinyl, cassette, CD) with the times as required.

But that’s not all it is good for. “Highway to Hell” is also the perfect companion for a highway cruise, or a drunken daytime walk (ideally while wearing a pair of cut-off jeans). You can even take this to work. I’ve worked many a blue-collar job, and what got put in the ghetto blaster for the day’s soundtrack was important, and potentially contentious. “Highway to Hell” was never questioned. This is green chain music, construction site music, and bottle depot music rolled into one. It belongs anywhere and everywhere you have to wear steel-toed boots.

This is the band’s best record, combining the driving hard thump of later records with Brian Johnson, with the lascivious blues groove of earlier efforts with Bon Scott. It is also the “gateway” album for anyone unlucky enough not to know AC/DC. It is both accessible and brilliant in equal measure.

So if I’ve waxed poetic, I hope you’ll forgive me. It is just that when it comes to “Highway to Hell” we are talking about a beauty as profound as the goddess of love herself. Only imagine she has arms, and at the end of those arms are hands. And those hands are throwing up the devil horns.

Best tracks: all tracks