𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐑𝐘𝐏𝐓𝐒 - 𝐂𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐁𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐏𝐀𝐒𝐓 𝐀𝐋𝐁𝐔𝐌 𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐄𝐒 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘 𝐨𝐟 𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐃 𝐑𝐎𝐂𝐊 & 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐕𝐘 𝐌𝐄𝐓𝐀𝐋…
July 27, 1979 — ACϟDC released their sixth full-length studio album Highway to Hell via Albert Productions and Atlantic Records.
It was the last album featuring lead singer Bon Scott, who would die early the following year on February 19, 1980.
Though, only three singles were released from the album, including; “Highway to Hell”, “Girls Got Rhythm”, and “Touch Too Much”, the band filmed music videos for the songs; “Touch Too Much”, “Highway To Hell”, “Walk All Over You”, “If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It)”, and “Shot Down In Flames”.
Background:
By 1978, ACϟDC had released five albums internationally and had toured Australia and Europe extensively. In 1977, they landed in America and, with virtually no radio support, began to amass a live following. The band's most recent album, the live “If You Want Blood”, had reached No. 13 in the United Kingdom, and the two albums previous to that, 1977's “Let There Be Rock” and 1978's “Powerage”, had seen the band find their raging, Blues-based Hard Rock sound. Although the American branch of Atlantic Records had rejected the group's 1976 LP “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”, it now believed the band was poised to strike it big in the States if only they would work with a producer who could give them a radio-friendly sound. Since their 1975 Australian debut “High Voltage”, all of ACϟDC's albums had been produced by George Young and Harry Vanda. According to the book “ACϟDC: Maximum Rock & Roll”, the band was not enthusiastic about the idea, especially guitarists Angus Young and Malcolm Young, who felt a strong sense of loyalty to their older brother George: Being told what to do was bad enough but what really pissed off Malcolm and Angus was they felt that George was being treated disrespectfully by Atlantic, like an amateur with no great track record when it came to production... Malcolm seemed less pleased with the situation and went so far as to tell Radio 2JJ in Sydney that the band had been virtually "forced" to go with an outside producer. Losing Harry was one thing. Losing George was almost literally like losing a sixth member of the band, and much more.
The producer Atlantic paired the band with was South African-born Eddie Kramer, best known for his pioneering work as engineer for Jimi Hendrix but also for mega-bands Led Zeppelin and KIϟϟ. Kramer met the band at Criteria Studios in Miami, Florida but, by all accounts, they did not get on. Geoff Barton quotes Malcolm Young in Guitar Legends magazine; "Kramer was a bit of a prat. He looked at Bon and said to us, 'Can your guy sing?' He might've sat behind the knobs for Hendrix, but he's certainly not Hendrix, I can tell you that much." Former ACϟDC manager Michael Browning recalls in the 1994 book “Highway to Hell: The Life and Times of ACϟDC Legend Bon Scott”, "I got a phone call from Malcolm in Florida, to say, 'This guy's hopeless, do something, he's trying to talk us into recording that Spencer Davis song,' 'Gimme Some Lovin',' 'I'm a Man,' whatever it was." Browning turned to Zambian-born producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange to step in. Lange was best known for producing the Boomtown Rats number-one hit "Rat Trap" and post-pub Rock bands like Clover, City Boy, and Graham Parker. In 1979 singer Bon Scott told RAM Magazine, "Three weeks in Miami and we hadn't written a thing with Kramer. So one day we told him we were going to have a day off and not to bother coming in. This was Saturday, and we snuck into the studio and on that one day we put down six songs, sent the tape to Lange and said, 'Will you work with us?'" The band had also signed up with new management, firing Michael Browning and hiring Peter Mensch, an aggressive American who had helped develop the careers of Aerosmith and Ted Nugent.
Recording:
Recording commenced at the Roundhouse Studios in Chalk Farm, north London in March 1979. In his book “Highway to Hell”, Clinton Walker writes, "The band virtually moved into the Roundhouse Studios in Chalk Farm, spending the best part of three months there. That, to start with, was a shock to ACϟDC, who had never previously spent more than three weeks on any one album ... Sessions for the album—15 hours a day, day-in day-out, for over two months—were gruelling. Songs were worked and reworked." Lange's no-nonsense approach was appreciated by the band, whose own work ethic had always been solid. In an article by Mojo's Sylvie Simmons, Malcolm Young stated that Lange "liked the simplicity of a band. We were all minimalist. We felt it was the best way to be ... He knew we were all dedicated so he sort of got it. But he made sure the tracks were solid, and he could hear if a snare just went off." In the same article Angus Young added, "He was meticulous about sound, getting right guitars and drums. He would zero in—and he was good too on the vocal side. Even Bon was impressed with how he could get his voice to sound." Tour manager, Ian Jeffery, who was present during recordings recalled; "Mutt took them through so many changes. I remember one day Bon coming in with his lyrics to “If You Want Blood”. He starts doing it and he’s struggling, you know? There’s more fucking breath than voice coming out. Mutt says to him, 'Listen, you’ve got to co-ordinate your breathing'. Bon was like, 'You're so fucking good, cunt, you do it!' Mutt sat in his seat and did it without standing up! That was when they all went, 'What the fucking hell we dealing with here?"
In “ACϟDC: Maximum Rock & Roll”, Arnaud Durieux writes that Lange, a trained singer, showed Scott how to breathe so he could be a technically better singer on songs like "Touch Too Much" and would join in on background vocals himself, having to stand on the other side of the studio because his own voice was so distinctive. The melodic backing vocals was a new element to the band's sound, but the polish that Lange added did not detract from the band's characteristic crunch, thereby satisfying the band and Atlantic Records at the same time.
Lange also taught Angus some useful lessons, instructing him to play his solos while sitting next to the producer. "Mutt said: 'Sit here and I'll tell you what I want you to play'," recalls Jeffery. "Angus was like, 'You fucking will, will ya?' But he sat next to Mutt and Mutt didn't force it on him, just kind of pointed at the fretboard and, 'Here, this...' and 'Hold that...' and 'Now go into that...' It was the solo from Highway To Hell. It was fantastic! And that really stood them all to attention on Mutt too. He wasn’t asking them to do anything he couldn’t do himself, or getting on their case saying it’s been wrong in the past; nothing like that. He really massaged them into what became that album".
Compositions:
The album's most famous song is its title track. From the outset, Atlantic Records hated the idea of using the song as the album title, with Angus recalling to Guitar World's Alan Di Perna in 1993; “Just because you call an album “Highway to Hell” you get all kinds of grief. And all we'd done is describe what it's like to be on the road for four years, like we'd been. A lot of it was bus and car touring, with no real break. You crawl off the bus at four o'clock in the morning, and some journalist's doing a story and he says, "What would you call an ACϟDC tour?" Well, it was a highway to hell. It really was. When you're sleeping with the singer's socks two inches from your nose, that's pretty close to hell.”
In a 2003 interview with Bill Crandall of Rolling Stone, Angus recalled the genesis of the song; “We were in Miami and we were flat broke. Malcolm and I were playing guitars in a rehearsal studio, and I said, "I think I have a good idea for an intro", which was the beginning of "Highway to Hell". And he hopped on a drum kit and he banged out the beat for me. There was a guy in there working with us and he took the cassette we had it on home and gave it to his kid, and his kid unraveled it [laughs]. Bon was good at fixing broken cassettes, and he pasted it back together. So at least we didn't lose the tune.”
The words to "Highway to Hell" took on a new resonance when Scott drank himself to death in 1980. AllMusic's Steve Huey observes; “The lyrics displayed a fierce, stubborn independence in his choice of lifestyle ("Askin' nothin', leave me be"; "nobody's gonna slow me down"), but not really loneliness (of hell: "goin' down! party time! my friends are gonna be there too"). It's ironic that Scott seems most alive when facing death with the fearless bravado of "Highway to Hell", yet it's undeniably true, especially given his positively unhinged performance. The untutored ugliness of his voice; the playfulness with which he used it to his advantage; the wails, growls, screeches, and scratches - all these qualities combine to give the song an unbridled enthusiasm without which it might take on an air of ambivalence.”
Scott's lyrics on “Highway to Hell” deal almost exclusively with lust ("Love Hungry Man", "Girls Got Rhythm"), sex ("Beating Around the Bush", "Touch Too Much", "Walk All Over You"), and partying on the town ("Get It Hot", "Shot Down in Flames"). In his 2006 band memoir, Murray Engelheart reveals that Scott felt the lyrics of songs like "Gone Shootin'" from the preceding Powerage were "simply too serious."
"Touch Too Much" had been first recorded in July 1977, with a radically different arrangement and lyrics from its “Highway to Hell” incarnation. The final version was performed by Scott and ACϟDC on the BBC music show Top of the Pops a few days before the singer's death in 1980.
The song "If You Want Blood (You've Got It)" borrowed the title of the band's live album from the previous year and stemmed from Scott's response to a journalist at the Day on the Green festival in July 1978: when asked what they could expect from the band, Scott replied, "Blood".
The opening guitar riff of "Beating Around the Bush" has been referred to by journalist Phil Sutcliffe as "almost a tribute ... a reflection, I hesitate to say a copy" of "Oh Well" by Fleetwood Mac.
Asked "What's the worst record you've ever made?", Angus replied, "There's a song on “Highway to Hell” called 'Love Hungry Man' which I must have written after a night of bad pizza – you can blame me for that."
Perhaps the album's most infamous song is "Night Prowler", mainly due to its association with serial killer Richard Ramírez. In June 1985, a highly publicised murder case began, revolving around Ramirez, who was responsible for brutal killings in Los Angeles. Nicknamed the "Night Stalker", Ramírez was a fan of ACϟDC, particularly "Night Prowler". Police also claimed that Ramirez left an ACϟDC hat at one of the crime scenes. During the trial, Ramírez said "Hail Satan" and showed off the pentagram drawn on his palm with the numbers 666 below it. This brought extremely bad publicity to ACϟDC, whose concerts and albums faced protests by parents in Los Angeles. On VH1's Behind The Music on ACϟDC, the band maintained that the song had been given a murderous connotation by Ramírez, but is actually about a boy sneaking into his girlfriend's bedroom at night while her parents are asleep, in spite of lyrics such as "And you don't feel the steel, till it's hanging out your back". The final words spoken by Scott on the song are "Shazbot, na-nu na-nu", phrases from the popular American sitcom, Mork & Mindy, by lead character Mork (a visiting extraterrestrial played by Robin Williams.). The phrase closed the album.
Release History:
“Highway to Hell” was originally released on July 27, 1979 by Albert Productions, who licensed the album to Atlantic Records for release outside of Australia, and was then re-released by Epic Records in 2003 as part of the ACϟDC Remasters series.
On May 25, 2006, “Highway to Hell” was certified 7× Platinum by the The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). In Australia, “Highway to Hell” was originally released with a slightly different album cover, featuring flames and a drawing of a bass guitar neck superimposed over the same group photo used on the international cover. Also, the ACϟDC logo is a darker shade of maroon, but the accents are a bit lighter.
Additionally, the East German release had different and much plainer designs on the front and back, apparently because the authorities were not happy with the sleeve as released elsewhere.
Two songs from the album, "Highway to Hell" was featured in the 2003 film Final Destination 2 and 2010 film, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief and "If You Want Blood (You've Got It)" is featured in five films; Empire Records, The Longest Yard (2005 film), Shoot 'em Up, Final Destination 5 and finally, The Dukes of Hazzard. The song "Walk All Over You" is featured in the movie Grown Ups. "Touch Too Much" is featured on the soundtrack for the video game Grand Theft Auto: The Lost and Damned. it was also used for the World Wrestling Federation SummerSlam (1998) theme song.
In October 2010, “Highway to Hell” was listed in the top 50 in the book, 100 Best Australian Albums with “Back in Black” at No. 2.
Critical Reception:
“Highway to Hell” became ACϟDC's first LP to break the US Top 100, eventually reaching No. 17, and it propelled the band into the top ranks of Hard Rock acts. It is the second highest selling ACϟDC album (behind “Back in Black”) and is generally considered one of the greatest hard rock albums ever made.
Greg Kot of Rolling Stone writes, "The songs are more compact, the choruses fattened by rugby-team harmonies. The prize moment: Scott closes the hip-grinding 'Shot Down in Flames' with a cackle worthy of the Wicked Witch of the West."
In a 2008 Rolling Stone cover story, David Fricke notes: "Superproducer 'Mutt' Lange sculpted ACϟDC's rough-granite rock into chart-smart boogie on this album."
AllMusic calls the song "Highway to Hell" "one of Hard Rock's all-time anthems."
In 2003, the album was ranked No. 199 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of “the 500 greatest albums of all time”, and 200 in a 2012 revised list.
In 2013, ACϟDC fans Steevi Diamond and Jon Morter (who was behind the Rage Against the Machine Facebook campaign in 2009) spearheaded a Facebook campaign to get the title track to become a UK Christmas No. 1 in the UK Singles Chart, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of ACϟDC, and to prevent The X Factor from achieving another No. 1 hit single. The campaign raised proceeds to Feel Yourself, a testicular cancer awareness charity. The single peaked at No. 4 in the Official UK Charts, scoring ACϟDC's first ever UK Top 10 single.
Links to Artists, Albums, and Music Videos:
Click this link to listen to “Highway to Hell” via Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/highway-to-hell/574043989
Click this link to listen to “Highway to Hell” via Spotify: Highway to Hell https://open.spotify.com/album/10v912xgTZbjAtYfyKWJCS
Click this link to watch the official music video for “Touch Too Much”: https://youtu.be/JGftIcp2SC0
Click this link to watch the official music video for “Highway to Hell”: https://youtu.be/l482T0yNkeo
Click this link to watch the official music video for “Walk All Over You”: https://youtu.be/_bP6aVG6L1w
Click this link to watch the official music video for “If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It)”: https://youtu.be/6EWqTym2cQU
Click this link to watch the official music video for “Shot Down In Flames”: https://youtu.be/UKwVvSleM6w
Click this link to follow ACϟDC on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/acdc
Note: The reviews shared here are for historical reference. The views and opinions expressed within are not always supported (in full or in part) by Into the Wells. — E.N. Wells
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