100 Best Albums Of All Time

01 Hells Bells

02 Shoot to Thrill

03 What Do You Do for Money Honey

04 Given the Dog a Bone

05 Let Me Put My Love into You

06 Back in Black

07 You Shook Me All Night Long

08 Have a Drink on Me

09 Shake a Leg

10 Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution

It could be the most perfect opening to any album. For a full 20 seconds there’s nothing but the lone, eerie sonics of a giant ringing church bell. Then Malcolm Young plays an impossibly slow, circular rhythm guitar riff that is pure funeral march. The song is ‘Hells Bells’, the album is Back in Black and this is AC/DC farewelling their dead frontman, Bon Scott. The much-loved Scott had died on 19 February 1980 after a typically huge drinking binge.

If the central theme of Back in Black is to pay tribute to Scott, the album is equally an unapologetic statement about moving on. AC/DC, which had been formed by guitarist brothers Angus and Malcolm Young in 1973, had worked relentlessly to establish themselves as a major band in Australia, Europe and, with 1979’s Highway to Hell, in the USA. The Young brothers were not about to walk away. Malcolm recalled to Q magazine, ‘At the funeral, Bon’s dad said “You can’t stop, you have to find someone else”’.

The search for a replacement didn’t take long – the band soon settling on Brian Johnson, previously of Scottish heavy rockers Geordie. The songs for Back in Black had been started with Scott, who also played drums on the original demos. The band scrapped Bon’s lyrics and Johnson wrote his own. Within six weeks of Bon’s death AC/DC and their new lead singer were ensconced at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas with Highway to Hell producer, Robert ‘Mutt’ Lange. ‘We got the title before we’d even written a word,’ Malcolm explained. ‘Angus said, “Why not call it Back in Black and make a black album cover as a tribute to Bon?”.’

The resulting album is pure, unadorned, timeless rock & roll – and 30 years later it is remarkable how little it has aged. Rolling Stone magazine called it ‘(perhaps) the leanest, meanest record of all time’. As always, the unique, synergistic riffing of the Young brothers and the intuitive rhythm section in bassist Cliff Williams and drummer Phil Rudd fuse traditional blues with stadium rock dramatics.

If AC/DC had grown up through albums High Voltage, T.N.T., Dirty Deeds (Done Dirt Cheap), Let There Be Rock, Powerage and Highway to Hell to become masters of the art of heavy rock, they were still back in junior high school when it came to lyrics. In Bon’s hands, the band’s political incorrectness came across as cheeky, harmless smut, which he always delivered with his mischievous smile. Johnson is more what-you-see-is-what-you-get on tracks like ‘What Do You Do for Money Honey’ and ‘Given the Dog a Bone’.

At the core of it all, calling the shots and setting the new agenda, was the unbreakable bond of the brothers Young. ‘We had been touring on Highway to Hell, and he [Malcolm] put the “Back in Black” riff on a cassette and played it for me,’ Angus remembers. ‘It was just on a little acoustic guitar that Mal used to trail around with him. He said, “What do you think of that? Is it rubbish? Should I trash it?” So I said, “If you’re gonna trash it, give it to me and I’ll say I wrote it” [laughs]. Some of the great licks, like that little flicky one at the beginning of “Back in Black”, I played, but it was me copying what he had from that cassette. Mal always says, “The two of us together, we play as one”.’

Back in Black closes with the epic ‘Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution’ that says it all: ‘We’re just talkin’ about the future/Forget about the past/It’ll always be with us/It’s never gonna die, never gonna die’.