AC 15 DC

WHO MADE WHO

As soon as they wrapped up their American tour in December, AC/DC began recording Who Made Who. This album would include six previously released tracks: “You Shook Me All Night Long,” “Sink The Pink,” “Ride On,” “Hells Bells,” “Shake Your Foundations,” “For Those About To Rock (We Salute You),” and three brand-new songs: the title track, “Who Made Who,” “D.T.,” and “Chase The Ace.”

The entire project only took the band two weeks to complete. By mid-January 1986 they were back on the road playing eight dates in the U.K. supported by the band Fastway. The tour continued on through Europe with 17 more dates in Belgium, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark.

On February 27 and 28, the band took over Brixton Academy in South London to film the video for “Who Made Who,” with David Mallet directing. Hundreds of AC/DC fans had been summoned from all over the U.K. to act as Angus clones, wearing specially made Angus school uniforms. The concept centered around Angus and his look-a-like minions.

Who Made Who was released in May 1986. The cover of the album featured a picture of Angus with school cap on, head down, standing with his guitar between stone pillars…with rays of light shooting up from behind him. The new record became the band’s biggest hit in years, reaching Number 11 in Britain. Becoming their first Platinum seller since 1981’s For Those About To Rock, the album peaked at Number 33 in the States.

To direct a new video for “You Shook Me All Night Long,” AC/DC once again called upon Mallet. The filming took place on June 10 and 12 in Jacob Street Studios, with the outdoor scenes being shot in northern England. Any MTV junkie can recall the comical content of the video, with one particular scene showing Brian coming home to find a scantily clad cowgirl riding a mechanical bull in the middle of his living room. Typical teenage fantasy! One of the band’s crew fell in love with the girl in the video, eventually marrying her. AC/DC’s wedding gift to the couple was, naturally, a mechanical bull.

Once the summer arrived, AC/DC went into the Lakefront Arena in New Orleans to rehearse before their 42-day assault on the U.S. On July 31, the tour opened at the Lakefront Arena in the Big Easy. Queensrÿche and Loudness supported the show. Tour director Mike Andy claimed that since the band spent several days in the venue before the show, it gave him time to note existing damages. When the band was presented with a bill for $18,000 in damages after playing there, he knew better and the band wound up only paying a third. Although 1986 wasn’t the best year for concert sales, AC/DC’s entire tour was sold out, making it one of the most successful of the year.

Aside from the cannons and bell, the Who Made Who tour opened with the title track, which featured local fans dressed as Angus. You would think a one-and-a-half-ton bell would pose some problems, but according to “Pyro” Pete, Angus impersonators were much more hazardous. He explained, “When you get the show up and running, it becomes like a machine that just runs. It’s like one of those huge printing presses that you can’t just turn off or it will rip itself apart…or a locomotive that can’t stop on a dime.

“For the Who Made Who tour, there were winners for an Angus look-alike contest. The show would start and it would be however many they could get, whether it was 10, 20, or even 30…they would be up along the back line of the stage with their cardboard guitars, doing their best Angus impersonation. And then the real Angus would rise up on an elevator in this tube in the center and come up about six or eight feet higher than the fake Anguses. We had a signal where we would grab the first fake Angus, from behind, and they would turn around and come off the stage back down the same way they went up. Well, not always would these guys want to come off the stage!

“So you would get these fake Anguses running around and sometimes it would be like trying to catch a chicken or something. Where everyone else would leave, you would always get this one guy who is still throwing his arm up. And we’re back there hitting him with balls of rolled-up tape, or poking him with a yard stick, trying to tell him to get the hell down! We didn’t want to ruin the illusion by having somebody on the crew just jump up and grab this guy and wrestle him off the stage!

“The band was always like that, too. [They always said] if a fan got up on the stage, don’t run out and tackle him and beat the hell out of him. I never figured out that mentality, either. Some bands are like that. If a fan gets up on the stage and if I’m in a position where I see it happen, I’ll run out and put my arm around them and escort them off the stage. If they start to fight, then you have to drag them off. So the band didn’t want us pummeling the fake Anguses during the show! But more than once, we had to resort to poking them fairly hard to get their attention.

“I remember one time we grabbed this one guy by his ankles and we were trying to get him off to the side and he fell down. So then he started rolling around on the floor doing Angus’s whole solo. The rest of the band didn’t even know what was going on! Cliff walks front to back, front to back, and looks down at his feet, and looks at the microphone. Angus runs all around and Brian runs all around. And Malcolm does the same as Cliff: he walks up to the microphone and walks back, he doesn’t really look, he looks down at his feet or at the microphone. So Simon was the only one who saw what was going on, and he was really laughing watching us trying to get this guy off the stage. Finally it came to a point where somebody had to go up and grab him and even when we were pulling him off the stage, he’s still throwing his arm up into the air! Stage crews always cringe whenever we hear the two words, ‘contest winner.’

“For a while, MTV and all the local radio stations and promoters used to hold contests. I remember when they came up with ‘Roadie For A Day.’ Which meant that you got some kid who was a fanatical fan who was just insane about it. Another ‘roadie for a day guy’ and he wanted to know what he could do. So you usually give him a cleaning job, like cleaning the bell. And the guy says, ‘Oh my God, not the bell!’ We told him he didn’t really have to clean the whole bell, we just gave him some brass polish and a rag and asked him to just clean around the AC/DC letters. He must have taken a toothpick, a Q-tip, and a toothbrush and gotten every molecule of dirt off of the bell. When it came down that night and the lights hit it, it looked really good!”

Tickets for their upcoming tour of Australia went on sale in Perth in October, inciting a riot that resulted in the arrest of 63 people. Originally planned to wrap in September, demand for the band extended their tour into November…proving to some of their critics that AC/DC were still at the top of their game.

Angus was happy about Who Made Who and told Guitar World in March 1986, “We think we’ve done a good job and we achieved what we wanted. We just wanted to make a tough and exciting rock ‘n’ roll record. And that’s what we made.”

After an extensive search for the perfect location, the band chose to record their next album at Miraval Studio in Le Val, France. Pre-production was handled in Sydney by George and Harry from April through July of 1987. This would be their first time in nine years producing a full-length album for AC/DC.

Recording Blow Up Your Video officially began in August, with the title reflecting AC/DC’s sentiment toward the overall power of MTV. Angus told Metal Edge in 1985 regarding the acceptance of their earlier videos, “They said you can’t have a guy with a guitar sticking through him and blood gushing out…Why not?…I remember one video we had with me blowing up. And it was done in the best possible taste.”

Nineteen songs were recorded, but when the tapes arrived in New York for the final stages of mixing, only 10 made it onto the album: “Heatseeker,” “That’s The Way I Wanna Rock ‘N’ Roll,” “Meanstreak,” “Go Zone,” “Kissin’ Dynamite,” “Nick Of Time,” “Some Sin For Nothin’,” “Ruff Stuff,” “Two’s Up,” and “This Means War.” The cover featured a picture of Angus—guitar in hand—exploding through a television screen.

The first single, “Heatseeker,” was released on January 4, 1988, making it to Number 12 on the U.K. charts. [David Mallet directed the video for this single at Cannon Studios in Elstree, England.] Blow Up Your Video was released in January and rose to Number 12 on the American charts. The band’s thirteenth album made it to Number Two in the U.K., the highest to chart there since Back In Black.

AC/DC spent three days rehearsing at the Entertainment Centre in Perth before kicking off a “Homecoming Tour” on February 1. They played 17 dates across Australia and New Zealand. These were their first live appearances Down Under since 1981. Angus was quoted as saying, “There’s a whole new excitement about this band these days, and there’s a whole new generation of kids to be won over.”

The two nights they played in Perth were made even more special by the presence of Bon’s parents, Chick and Isa. Acknowledging his popularity, the band’s set list was dominated by Bon Scott songs. After shows in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and Auckland, AC/DC had rocked 130,000 fans in three weeks. Their return to Australia was extremely successful, except for the 60 people who were arrested in a riot at Melbourne’s Myer Music Bowl. Glad to hear the band didn’t disappoint the Parliament.

Their U.K. tour of six dates began on March 7, covering only two cities, London and Birmingham. While playing the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, a live video was shot for “That’s The Way I Wanna Rock ‘N’ Roll,” under the direction of Brian Grant, Peter Sinclaire, and Jiff Morrison.

AC/DC, supported by Dokken, continued into Europe for 20 more dates. They played shows in Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, France, and Switzerland before returning to London for one night at the Wembley Arena on April 13, 1988.

For the American leg of their Blow Up Your Video tour, Malcolm claimed exhaustion and chose to stay home and let his nephew, Stevie Young, take his place. Stevie, who had been in the successful Australian band Starfighters, had been playing AC/DC songs since he was a small child.

At first, the reason given for the change was that Malcolm wanted to take time off to be with his family. Later, the band admitted that he had taken the time off to deal with his alcohol problem. For years when asked why Malcolm didn’t play more solos, Angus would always jokingly respond that playing solos would “interfere with his drinking.” Eight years after Bon’s death, Malcolm’s drinking had become no laughing matter.

Angus eventually disclosed that “he [Malcolm] wanted to get rid of his booze problem and clean himself up. I think if you can do that on your own free will, it’s great; and having been through that situation with Bon, I don’t think I could have gone through it again.”

While at home in Australia, Malcolm spent time with his wife Olinda and their two kids. He even bought a horse and dabbled in racing. During his recuperation, he never put the guitar down for long and was already working on ideas for their next album. Luckily, nephew Stevie—who was the spitting image of Malcolm—had been so good at nailing his famous uncle’s stage moves that most fans didn’t notice Malcolm was gone.

Of course, Angus noticed a huge difference being on tour without Malcolm. He remarked to Hit Parader, “He’s an incredible songwriter and an amazing rhythm guitarist. Playing that kind of guitar takes a special person and Malcolm has just the right feel for it. He’s been willing to live a little bit in my shadow over the years, but [touring] without him just reinforced what I already knew—he’s a very important member of the band.”

Blow Up Your Video became the most successful AC/DC album in the U.S. since For Those About To Rock. Writer Jim Farber reviewed the album for Rolling Stone in April: “It’s time the world stopped thinking of AC/DC as just a heavy-metal band. For 13 albums now, Angus and Malcolm Young have been crafting the kind of guitar riffs any Who-style rock ‘n’ roll band would kill for. Better yet, the members of AC/DC have allowed no production compromises whatsoever: they’ve carved every one of those irresistible guitar hooks out of pure stone…the album posits loyalty to one’s own style as the ultimate virtue. Fortunately, the Young brothers continue to come up with enough inspired riffs to make the tunnel vision justifiable. In fact, the riffs here add up to the band’s catchiest work since its classic album, Back In Black. Maybe Blow Up Your Video will finally convince those who have doubted the truth about AC/DC: it’s the metal band that plays solid-gold rock ‘n’ roll.”

Commenting later on Blow Up Your Video, Malcolm said, “We wanted to carry on where Who Made Who had left off, although there was a long gap between albums. We’d lost our footing by that time and we needed to get the old feeling back again. So we stuck with Vanda and Young again and went back to our roots. There was more production on the album than there had been on Fly On The Wall or Flick Of The Switch and we tried to capture that traditional 12-bar rock ‘n’ roll sound that we’d had in the beginning.”

Over the next six months—beginning on May 3, 1988—the band played 113 dates touring throughout the U.S. AC/DC’s Blow Up Your Video tour, which closed at the Cow Palace in San Francisco on November 11, ended up being one of the most successful tours of the year.

Once the tour ended, everyone went their separate ways to enjoy the holiday. Deciding to leave Hawaii, Cliff moved near Brian to the Gulf Coast of Florida, while Malcolm went back to London and Angus returned home to Holland.

Adding to their rabble-rousing reputation, AC/DC’s music helped flush Manuel Noriega out of his refuge at Panama’s Vatican Embassy after his country was invaded. Apparently blasting “Hells Bells” and “Highway To Hell,” among other rock ‘n’ roll treats, aided in sabotaging the opera lover’s stand-off. This method of metal mental torture worked so well that it has become a staple used by the American government. Although I think it’s just an excuse for our soldiers to rock out to AC/DC while being all they can be. And for that, we salute you!

Alternating between each other’s homes, Angus and Malcolm started gathering ideas for the new record. Due to the stress of Brian’s divorce from his first wife, Carol, he chose not to contribute lyrics this time… leaving the song composition and lyric writing fully to the Young brothers. This caused a flurry of false rumors that Brian had actually left the band.

Aware of the straightforward rock ‘n’ roll sounds of bands like Guns N’ Roses, which signaled the decline of the Eighties hair bands, Angus and Malcolm prepared to stake their claim on the new decade. Not only would they take on the task of writing the music as well as the lyrics, but they would also change the beat of the band. At first, Simon Wright left on a temporary basis when he was invited to record an album with Dio. But once he was in the band, Dio’s offer turned into a permanent position.

That was the official reason given by Wright and AC/DC, but years later Malcolm would admit that during the time he spent off the road, he had the chance to see some of AC/DC’s shows from a very different perspective—the audience. The first thing Malcolm decided to do when he returned to the band was to “get rid of the drummer.”

AC/DC began rehearsals for their new album in a barn outside of Brighton, England. At the suggestion of their management, drummer Chris Slade was sent in to record with them on a temporary basis. Slade had previously played with Gary Moore, Manfred Mann, The Firm, and with Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page. Things went so well during the recording that the band asked Slade to join AC/DC.

By early 1990, AC/DC had switched to Windmill Road Studios in Ireland for pre-production work. Although Vanda and Young were originally supposed to produce the album, the band ended up working with Canadian producer Bruce Fairbairn. They all moved to Vancouver for the actual recording, which took place at Little Mountain Studios.

Fairbairn, along with his protégé Bob Rock, helped establish Little Mountain as one of the top recording studios in north America. Fairbairn had previously worked with Loverboy, Blue Öyster Cult, Krokus, Aerosmith, and Bon Jovi (whose hit album Slippery When Wet sold 12 million copies).

Completing the recording in just six weeks, the band’s fourteenth album would feature some of the biggest hits AC/DC had had in 10 years. It was called The Razors Edge.

AC/DC at a party in New York City on June 13, 1985, while they were in town shooting the video for Fly On The Wall. © Ebet Roberts

Playing their only British date for that year, AC/DC headlined Monsters Of Rock at Castle Donington in Leicestershire. (August 22, 1981). © Ross Halfin/ldols

Angus being lowered to the stage at the Hammersmith Odeon in London during the Back In Black tour (1980). © Ross Halfin/ldols

Malcolm, Angus, and Brian during the video shoot for Fly On The Wall, at the World’s End Club in Alphabet City, New York City (1985). © Deborah Feingold/Hulton Archive/Getty Images