back in black tour 1980

The inside story of AC/DC's Back In Black, the biggest-selling rock album of all time

It was the record that resurrected a band in mourning. From tragedy to triumph, this is the story of AC/DC’s greatest victory...

Back In Black is many things. With more than 50 million units shifted, it is the biggest selling rock album of all time. For many, it is also the greatest hard rock record ever made. 

It was the album that turned AC/DC into superstars, and it has been inspiration to countless rock bands for 40 years, from Def Leppard to Metallica, Guns N’ Roses to The Darkness.

Most remarkable of all is what Back In Black represents on a human level, for AC/DC’s greatest success followed their darkest hour: the death of their singer Bon Scott. 

Most bands would have been broken by such a loss. But with Back In Black - “our tribute to Bon,” as lead guitarist Angus Young called it - AC/DC pulled off the greatest comeback in rock history. It is, in the words of Slash, “One of the huge Cinderella stories of rock ’n’ roll.”

In January 1980, when Angus and his elder brother Malcolm, the band’s rhythm guitarist, first began work on the album with Bon Scott in London, they knew they were on to something big.

In the seven years since AC/DC had formed in Sydney, Australia - with Angus, dressed for the stage in his old schoolboy uniform, an unlikely looking guitar hero - they had built up a strong international following via relentless touring and a series of brilliant, balls-out albums, including Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, Let There Be Rock and Powerage, the latter a favorite of Keith Richards. 

But it was with 1979’s Highway To Hell that they had a major breakthrough, their first million-seller. And in the new songs they demoed in London, with Bon playing drums, as he had done as a young man in his first groups back in Australia, there was such potential that Bon had told his mother Isa in a phone call: “This one is going to be it!”

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It was only a few days after that call - on February 19, 1980 - that Bon Scott was found dead in East Dulwich, London. He had been out drinking with friends on the previous night.

Unsubstantiated rumors suggested that he might also have taken heroin. In the official inquest, the coroner cited ‘death by misadventure’. He was just 33 years old.

Angus spoke for the whole band when he said, “You feel immortal until something like this happens.” But at Bon’s funeral in his hometown of Fremantle in Western Australia, his father Chick urged Malcolm and Angus to carry on with the band. And on April 1st, Brian Johnson, then aged 32, formerly of glam rock act Geordie, was announced as AC/DC’s new singer.

Those were big shoes that Brian Johnson had to fill. Bon had had it all: a powerful voice, a witty turn of phrase in his lyrics, and a macho stage presence that was the epitome of rock ’n’ roll cool. 

As drummer Phil Rudd said, “Bon was such a character.” Moreover, he was, for Malcolm Young, a talismanic figure. “He pulled us all together,” Malcolm said. “He had that real stick-it-to-’em attitude. Bon was the single biggest influence on the band.” 

[Bon] pulled us all together. He had that real stick-it-to-’em attitude Malcolm Young

But in Brian Johnson, they found the right man for the job, and as it transpired, even Bon had been a fan of Brian’s. Back in the early '70s, Bon’s old band Fraternity had opened for Geordie on a UK tour and witnessed what he later described to Angus as the best Little Richard impersonation he’d ever seen from a singer rolling around on the stage and screaming his head off.

As Angus said of that conversation: “It was rare that Bon ever raved about anything.” What Bon hadn’t known was that Brian Johnson had been screaming in agony that night, and had subsequently been rushed to hospital suffering from appendicitis.

Compass Point Studios

After Brian was broken in during rehearsals in London, the band travelled to the tropical island of Nassau in The Bahamas to record Back In Black at Compass Point Studios with producer Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange, who had worked on Highway To Hell and would later produce multi-million selling albums for Def Leppard, Foreigner, Bryan Adams, Shania Twain and more.

In just five weeks, AC/DC had the whole album in the can, and it was the first song recorded, the album’s title track, which set the tone. It was also one of the numbers demoed with Bon back in London, with a funky, stop-start riff and a lyric that was both a statement of invincibility and a salute to Bon. 

As Brian said, “The whole point of the album was to celebrate Bon’s life.” There were times, however, when Brian struggled. Firstly, when the band was working on Hells Bells, the mighty epic they had already marked as the first track on the album. 

When I first heard it in all its glory, I thought, f*ck - it's magic! Angus Young

The riff - dubbed “ominous” by Malcolm and “mystical” by Angus - called for a heavy opening statement, but Brian just couldn’t find the words, until Mutt Lange said something that flicked a switch in Brian’s head. A storm was breaking over the island. 

“Rolling thunder,” Mutt noted. Brian took the phrase and ran with it: “I’m a rollin’ thunder, pourin’ rain, I’m comin’ on like a hurricane.” 

Brian also felt, at times, as if Bon was watching over him. “I was a little worried,” he said. “Like, who am I to try to follow in the footsteps of this great poet? Bon really was a kind of poet. And something happened to me - a good thing.” Angus had similar experiences.

“We still think Bon’s around,” he said. As Malcolm explained, “All these emotions were in play when we were recording.” The last song recorded ended up as the last song on the album. Malcolm and Angus wrote it in 15 minutes: a slow, swaggering boogie number they called Rock And Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution. 

An anthem was born, and Back In Black was complete, save for one detail. In May, during the mixing of the album at Electric Lady studios in New York City, Malcolm had a flash of inspiration while taking a wee. 

What was needed, he decided, was a tolling bell at the start of Hells Bells: a dramatic flourish. The engineer, Tony Platt, was dispatched across the Atlantic to record the bell at a grand old English church in Loughborough, only to find that he couldn’t get a clean sound because pigeons roosting in the bell-tower flew off noisily every time a note was struck.

As a result, Platt commissioned a custom-made bell from a specialist foundry in Leicestershire. And with that, the job, finally, was done.

Critical acclaim

• Angus Young's guitar gear: everything you need to nail the AC/DC star's high-voltage tones

When Malcolm returned from New York with the finished album, his brother knew they’d nailed it. As Angus later recalled: “When I first heard it in all its glory, I thought, ‘F*ck - it’s magic!”

There was a dispute over the album’s cover. The suits at Atlantic Records felt that an all-black design would be bad for business, but the band would not yield. The black cover was in memory of Bon. There was no backing down on that.

Back In Black was released on July 21st, 1980 - five months and one day after Bon Scott had died. Rolling Stone writer David Fricke declared the album a masterpiece and a milestone in rock. 

“Back in Black is not only the best of AC/DC’s six American albums,” Fricke wrote. “It’s the apex of heavy metal art: the first LP since Led Zeppelin II that captures all the blood, sweat and arrogance of the genre. In other words, Back In Black kicks like a mutha.” 

The emotion on that record will be around forever Malcolm Young

In the UK, Record Mirror’s review - headlined: ‘POWER IS RESTORED’ - critic Robin Smith stated: “The resurrection shuffle starts here. Brian was the perfect choice, possessing an almost uncanny feel for the band’s songs.”

Back In Black was an immediate hit. Within two weeks of its release, the album was at number one in the UK.

The first single, You Shook Me All Night Long, made the top 40 in the UK and US, and the top ten in Australia. By early October, when the band finished touring in North America, the album was certified platinum in the US as it began an incredible thirteen-month residency in the Billboard top ten. At one point it was selling 10,000 copies a day.

Their legacy

Brian Johnson had been anxious before his first gig with the band in Belgium, one month before the album was released. According to Angus, “He was sh*tting himself!” But his fears had evaporated when he saw a banner held up in the audience: ‘R.I.P. Bon Scott, Good Luck Brian.’ “It just lifted me,” Brian said. 

An even greater tribute followed when AC/DC returned home to Australia at the end of the Back In Black tour in February 1981. After their gig in Sydney, Bon Scott’s mother Isa told Brian, “Our Bon would have been proud of you, son.”

40 years on, Back In Black is still the benchmark for hard rock. As Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello said, unequivocally, no matter how good the newest rock or album is, “Back In Black will kick its ass.”

Back In Black put rock music back on the throne, where it belongs! Tom Morello

What AC/DC created, in the wake of tragedy, was as near to perfect as any rock album could be: ten tracks of electrifying rock ’n’ roll, all killer, no filler. Brian Johnson delivered, on debut, the performance of a lifetime. 

In Phil Rudd and bassist Cliff Williams, there was the best rhythm section in the business, no frills, no fancy stuff , just driving it home. And at the heart of it all was the guitar power of Malcolm and Angus Young: Malcolm, wielding his Gretsch, all about the rhythm, a master of riffs; Angus, with his Gibson SG, playing off Mal, and conjuring up one killer solo after another.

The aftermath

In 1980, Back In Black was a triumph not just for Brian Johnson and AC/DC but for rock music, period. As Tom Morello recalled: “Disco was huge and punk and new wave were ascendant, and along came this AC/DC record which just destroyed everybody. It put hard rock music back on the throne, where it belongs!” 

And as Slash saw it: “Back In Black saved rock ’n’ roll! It was the defining rock record that came during the biggest lull for rock music. It just exploded!” 

Slash was just a kid of fifteen when he first heard Back In Black, and as he said of its impact: “AC/DC was always a great band, totally genuine. But the miracle of the whole thing was that Back In Black was just a great new record, it was still AC/DC. We all missed Bon, but we let him go and at the same time welcomed and embraced Brian.”

In 1978, the NME writer Nick Kent described Thin Lizzy’s Live And Dangerous as “an album made by heroes.” So, in the truest sense, was Back In Black. As Malcolm Young once said of AC/DC’s music, in which Chuck Berry was a primary influence: “It’s just loud rock ’n’ roll - wham, bam, thank you ma’am!” 

But there was something else in Back In Black, something deeper, and it was Malcolm, again, who defined it most clearly. “We meant it,” he said. “It’s real. It’s coming from within. 

"That’s how that album was made - because of what we’d all gone through. And that emotion on that record – that will be around forever.”

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Content Editor at Total Guitar and freelance writer for  Classic Rock  since 2005, Paul Elliott has worked for leading music titles since 1985, including  Sounds, Kerrang!, MOJO  and  Q . He is the author of several books including the first biography of Guns N’ Roses and autobiography of bodyguard-to-the-stars Danny Francis, and has written liner notes for classic album reissues by artists such as Def Leppard, Thin Lizzy and Kiss. He lives in Bath, UK – of which David Coverdale recently said, “How very Roman of you!”

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Classic tracks: ac/dc 'back in black'.

• Classic Tracks

In 1980 AC/DC were on a roll and nothing — not even the death of their lead singer — was going to stop them.

In April 1980, just two months after lead singer Bon Scott’s death from a night of heavy drinking at a London club had prompted heavy metal pioneers AC/DC to consider disbanding, lead guitarist Angus Young, his rhythm guitarist brother Malcolm Young, bassist Cliff Williams and drummer Phil Rudd were back in the studio. Alongside them was Scott’s replacement, Brian Johnson, helping record a follow–up to the group’s breakthrough album, Highway To Hell. Titled Back In Black, AC/DC’s seventh studio LP took its name from the track that, penned as a tribute to the recently deceased frontman, featured Johnson’s defiantly upbeat lyrics in addition to an opening guitar riff that would help make the song one of the band’s signature tunes.

Johnson was recruited that March, Scott having previously sung his praises to Angus Young after watching him perform with Newcastle glam rockers Geordie. He stated in a 2009 Mojo magazine interview that his new bandmates told him the song’s words should be celebratory rather than morbid. This, in turn, prompted him to think, “Well, no pressure there, then.”

Welcome to Brian Johnson’s first project with AC/DC; taking over the spotlight from an iconic vocalist while performing numbers that certainly tested his own talents.

Highway To Highway To Hell

“Hitting some of those notes was a real challenge,” says Tony Platt who engineered Back In Black alongside producer Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange after having mixed Highway To Hell and overdubbed a Scott vocal. “There was a massive amount of pressure on Brian’s shoulders, but everyone was very sympathetic and supportive of him. We were all completely in awe of what he was doing and there were lots of positive vibes. So, whenever he had a moment of ‘I’m not sure I can do this,’ there were plenty of people around to tell him quite clearly that he could.

“Recording a band like AC/DC, the main thing I had to do was avoid screwing up. They were constantly providing the goods and I therefore had to be there to catch them at the right moment. Well, that was even more important with regard to Brian, because if I didn’t capture some of his performances the first time around it would have been a really steep climb for him to get back to that same place. Those vocals were absolutely incredible and what he achieved was quite extraordinary. He and Bon were totally different types of singer. Whereas Bon’s voice was extremely quirky, Brian’s was sheer power.”

The producer and/or engineer of anyone from Bob Marley, Toots & the Maytals, Aswad and Jazz Jamaica All Stars to Free, Iron Maiden, Motörhead, the Cult, Cheap Trick and Buddy Guy, Tony Platt moved from the Yorkshire town of Barnsley to the Oxfordshire town of Henley–on–Thames when he was seven–years–old and secured his first job as a tea boy and makeshift tape machine operator at Central London’s independent Trident Studios in 1969. Six months later, he then became a fully fledged tape op at Basing Street Studios, owned by Island Records founder Chris Blackwell.

These included assisting on 1971 sessions for Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Traffic, the Who, Paul McCartney and Jethro Tull. That same year, Platt engineered a record by Spooky Tooth guitarist Luther Grosvenor, as well as a New Age album by Henry Wolff and Nancy Hennings that was the first to feature singing bowls and Tibetan bells. Soon the engineering credits were gathering pace with Toots & the Maytals’ Funky Kingston, the Wailers’ Catch A Fire and Burnin’ and Sparks’ Kimono My House before Platt went freelance in 1974.

A couple of years later, he made his debut as a producer on Aswad’s self–titled first album, and thereafter he also served as chief engineer at a West Sussex studio named Pebble Beach Sound Recorders for his best friend, guitarist–producer Adam Sieff. Here he recorded demos for the Stranglers and Thin Lizzy while also working with UK reggae artists the Cimarons.

“After I left Pebble Beach, I spent about 10 months running the fantastic Eastlake/Westlake–designed Stone Castle Studios in Carimate, Italy, just north of Milan,” Platt recalls. “Then, when I returned to England, Adam Sieff introduced me to Mutt Lange. He had been producing AC/DC’s Highway To Hell at London’s Roundhouse Studios with Mark Dearnley engineering, and wanted to have it mixed by someone who could give it the vintage British Free–type rock sound. The mix took place at Island’s Basing Street Studios where I also recorded a few overdubs: some backing vocals on ‘Highway To Hell’ and the lead vocal on ‘Night Prowler’.

“We had to do a few things to get the sound the way Mutt was hearing it. Roundhouse was a very dead studio and he wanted to have it sound like everything was played in the same room at the same time. As there wasn’t a lot of ambience, I had to feed stuff out through speakers in the room at Island [Basing Street] to give it ambience and a sense of space. A lot of the guitars on the recording were very separated, there wasn’t a lot of leakage and there were quite a few overdubs. So, I also stated very clearly, ‘The next time you record, guys, the best thing to do is record some ambience along the way and try to do it all in one room.’”

It was during the afternoon of 19th February 1980, while Mutt Lange and Tony Platt were working together at London’s Battery Studios on an album by a band named Broken Home, that Lange received a phone call informing him Bon Scott had passed away.

Compass Point

That April, when the sessions for Back In Black were about to commence at Chris Blackwell’s Compass Point Studios in Nassau, there was a slight delay due to AC/DC’s equipment briefly being held by customs while a hurricane messed with the facility’s electrical system which, being on a Caribbean island, was already erratic. Still, none of this prevented Tony Platt from making the necessary preparations.

“Compass Point was a wonderful place,” he asserts. “Everything about it pointed towards music. We were in a part of the world where music was a part of everybody’s life, so the studio staff there were great. We were all there for the same reason, there was a terrific camaraderie, and often the biggest problem we’d have was getting people in off the beach when it was time to record.

“The studio itself was fairly dead–sounding with quite a low ceiling. So, I took a bit of time working out how to set everybody up, wandering around while hitting a snare drum. There was one place where the snare sounded a lot louder and much fuller than everywhere else — which, I later discovered, was because of space above the ceiling there — and that’s where we set up the drum kit before positioning the guitars around it.”

Looking through the control room window towards the live area, the producer and engineer saw the band members in largely the same format as they used on stage. While Phil Rudd’s drums were in the sweet spot that Platt had discovered (halfway back in the room, slightly left of centre) Malcolm Young’s guitar rig was screened off nearer the window and further to the left; his brother’s was screened off to the right; and Cliff Williams, standing next to the drums, had his bass rig inside a tiny area that, according to the engineer, “people laughingly referred to as the vocal booth... As there weren’t any guide vocals, Brian just hung around in the control room.”

Modelled on Basing Street, the Compass Point control room was equipped with a 48–channel MCI console, 24–track MCI tape machine and monitors comprising Tannoy Red drivers inside Lockwood cabinets, as well as a then–standard array of outboard gear and good selection of microphones.

That Guitar Sound

“The miking of the guitars changed for each song,” Platt explains. “We had a number of different Marshall heads and cabinets, and we used a different combination on each song. Sometimes it would be a 50 Watt head and the appropriate cabinet, sometimes it would be a 100 Watt head, and there were a couple of different 100 Watt heads that had their own textures. Generally speaking, we only ever turned up the amplifiers as far as we needed to — it wasn’t a matter of starting on 11 and then turning them down. We’d turn them up until the cabinets were biting the right amount and the space around the cabinets was lighting up in the right way. Of course, the timbre of the amps would change according to the chords being played. So, while the guitars were each recorded with either a couple of Neumann U67 microphones or a U67 and U87 — sometimes cardioid, sometimes figure of eight, sometimes omni, placed on different speakers of the cabinet — I would move them around depending on the combination of amps being used for songs that were recorded as individual pieces. As such, I’d never do these things the same way twice.

“I know this is of great interest to a lot of people, but it honestly wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference if somebody recreated the exact same combination. There have been so many times when people have asked me to get them a sound like Angus, and I’ve generally said, ‘We’ll need a Marshall head, we’ll need a Marshall 4x12, we’ll need a Gibson SG and we’ll need Angus. Without them we just won’t have the right combination.’ Then again, the guitars would also change from song to song based on the ones that the players were feeling most comfortable with. As we’d start to zone in on the sound, those players would respond to what they were hearing by playing better. As they played better, the sound would improve, and this might prompt me to change the mic positions a little bit; moving them in or out to advance the sound in small increments. Meanwhile, Mutt would be listening to the song and discussing the arrangement with the guys, making changes that would also impact the sound.

“Angus used a radio transmitter when doing the solos. His guitar was the only overdub and he would then play rhythm after the solo, all the way to the end so the dynamics didn’t drop. However, the sound that his radio transmitter gave the guitar was quite different. In fact, unhappy with the solo on ‘Shoot To Thrill’, he replaced it when we were at Electric Lady to do the mix and, as we didn’t have the radios with us, I had a lot of trouble matching the sound.

“When it came to the drums, I miked them with two U87 overheads, a U47 and/or an AKG D20 on the bass drum, an AKG 414 on the hi–hat and a Neumann KM86 on the snare with a Shure SM57 underneath. The miking of the tom–toms — if we were using them — depended on their role. Sennheiser MD421s got used quite a bit, but sometimes I might even put 87s on the tom–toms if I wanted them to be very specific. In the room there were at least a couple of ambience microphones, including a Neumann stereo mic which I moved around sometimes over the top of the drums and sometimes more towards the guitars. Meanwhile, the bass guitar was recorded with a D20 and possibly a 414 on the Ampeg Portaflex amp along with a DI.”

Vocal Debut

The Young brothers composed all of the music for Back In Black while, in the tradition of Bon Scott, Brian Johnson penned his own lyrics.

“AC/DC went about their songwriting in a very particular way,” says Tony Platt. “Angus and Malcolm put the riffs together and the songs were already in pretty reasonable shape by the time we entered the studio, even though the lyrics still needed to be written. In fact, most of the numbers had titles that ended up being used. At the same time, the songs on Back In Black all had backing tracks consisting of two guitars, bass and drums, recorded in complete takes with some edits. Editing has always been one of my strong points. So, if we had a couple of takes that sounded like they might go together well, I’d do a rough mix and test edit on quarter–inch tape. Then, if everybody was happy with the result, I’d do the same on the two–inch.”

After all of the backing tracks had been recorded, it was time for Brian Johnson to make his AC/DC debut. Accordingly, the studio was cleared and he then stood at the back of the live area to perform his vocals.

“We put screens around Brian as he wanted to have some privacy and didn’t like the idea of everybody staring at him,” Platt recalls. “He also didn’t want the air–conditioning to be too cold after he’d warmed up his voice. So, once he went in to record a vocal he had to stay there, because returning to the control room would have meant a change of temperature and humidity that wouldn’t have been at all good for his voice. This meant getting as much out of him while he was in there, captured with a U87 to handle the power of his voice.

“A reasonable amount of comping was done with Brian’s vocals, but not a vast amount. I learned so much from Mutt in that regard, including how you try to get three or four performances that would be perfectly acceptable as a master vocal and then compile the best of the best, taking things to a higher level every time.”

Mixing & Mastering

With Johnson’s performances all committed to tape, Mutt Lange, Malcolm Young and Cliff Williams then took care of the backing vocals, including a few that were overdubbed during the mix. This took place at New York’s Electric Lady in May of 1980 as Tony Platt far preferred the idea of using the Neve 8078 console there than Compass Point’s MCI.

“It was always difficult to find a studio where Mutt liked the monitors,” he explains. “I hadn’t worked at Electric Lady before, but I’d always been quite a fan of Westlake rooms and the one in Studio A was really good. I’m not crazy about horn–loaded monitors, but something about the way Westlake rooms were balanced really appealed to me. Eastlake rooms were largely about dampening everything down and controlling the sound as much as possible, whereas Westlake tuned the room to its characteristics. You weren’t trying to make the room do something it didn’t want to do. You were actually taking its good attributes and enabling them to be the most prominent ones.

Maintaining quality control, both Tony Platt — who would also engineer AC/DC’s 1983 album Flick Of The Switch — and Mutt Lange were involved in the Back In Black mastering by Bob Ludwig at Masterdisk in New York. They then checked the test pressings before the record was released on 25th July 1980. This would go on to sell more than 50 million copies worldwide while becoming the second-highest–selling album of all time after Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Peaking at number four in the US, it topped the charts in the UK while spawning four singles: ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’, which was a Top 40 hit on both sides of the Atlantic; the aforementioned ‘Hells Bells’; the title track, which went Top 40 in America; and ‘Rock & Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution’, which climbed to number 15 in the UK.

Birds In The Belfry

‘Hells Bells’, the opening track on AC/DC’s first album without Bon Scott, commences with the slow, funereal–sounding tolling of a 2000–pound bronze bell. Manufactured by John Taylor Bellfounders in the Leicestershire town of Loughborough, this was recorded by Tony Platt using Ronnie Laine’s mobile studio following the completion of the Back In Black tracking sessions at Compass Point in the Bahamas.

“The bell that AC/DC had ordered to take out on tour with them still hadn’t come out of the mould when I arrived in Loughborough,” Platt recalls. “So, the people who were making it arranged for me to record another bell of the same size and key that was hanging in a nearby church. However, after placing microphones in the belfry I discovered that what no one had considered were the birds living inside there. As soon as the bell was hit, the first thing we’d hear was this mad fluttering of wings as pigeons flew away. Then, by the time the bell stopped ringing enough for us to hit it again, all of the birds had returned. We therefore had to abort that whole idea while the bell foundry people hurried up the process of getting the other bell out of the mold.

“As I couldn’t get the Rolling Stones’ mobile, I used Ronnie Laine’s mobile, which was in an Airstream caravan. At that time it was being run by a mate of mine, so we towed it up to Loughborough and actually parked it inside the bell foundry. The bell itself weighed one ton because that was the largest feasible size to take on tour, but the pitch of the bell as you hear it on the record is an octave lower than the actual bell; it was slowed down to half–speed to replicate the sound of a two–ton bell that would have been impossible for the band to take on the road with them or to hang in the venues. As a result, when that bell was hit on stage, it was an octave higher than on the record.

“The guy who made the bell was the guy who hit the bell on the record. We hung it on a block and tackle in the foundry and there was a specific spot, painted red, where he had to hit it. Being that I had a short time in which to record this before flying to New York to do the mix, I put up 15 or 16 microphones all around in different places, and recorded across 24 tracks using lots of Neumann U87s and some AKG 451s. As a bell’s sound is mostly harmonic, it’s very difficult to record. So, I went all the way from having Shure SM57s at the dynamic end to using B&Ks at the top end, covering all the bases. That was the only way to do it because I had to consider what we were going to mix and slow it down to half–speed. When you do that, all sorts of things you didn’t know were there suddenly appear.

“At Electric Lady when we were doing the mix, Mutt and I chose a combination of the close and distant microphones that produced the best sound, made a mix to half–inch at 30ips and then slowed that down to 15ips. Out of the takes that we had, we chose the best one and, because there were no samplers in those days, spun it in. We had quarter–inch and two–inch tape machines, I started the two–inch and dropped it in, and Mutt started the quarter–inch at the appropriate moment.”

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Back in Black Tour

The Back in Black Tour was a concert tour by the Australian hard rock band AC/DC in support of their seventh studio album Back in Black , which was released on 25 July 1980.

Cancelled dates

Box office score data.

This was AC/DC's first tour with new vocalist Brian Johnson , who replaced Bon Scott after the latter's death in February 1980, making his first appearance on stage on 29 June 1980 in Namur, Belgium. [1] [2] The band transported their own one-ton "Hells Bell" on the road, which was lowered to the stage each night as the bell tolls of "Hells Bells" were heard. Johnson would finish it off with several hard hits, hammer in hand as the band commenced the show. [1]

During the North American and European legs, the band were supported by Humble Pie , Def Leppard , ZZ Top , Blackfoot , Whitesnake and Maggie Bell . [1]

The responses from the audience during the band's performances in the United Kingdom were described as near rabid with anticipation. [1]

Mike London from Billboard , however, had given the show he attended in New York a negative review - stating that while the band had established itself as a leader in heavy metal, the show lacked imagination and failed to live up to the band's sound, describing the stage theatrics as lifeless and overused. He noted that the fans attending the show had shown a general positive response, but later in the show grew tired of the poses and solos that Angus Young had given. Concluding his review, London stated his disappointment - saying that AC/DC's music deserved better treatment than what the band performed that night. [3]

• " Hells Bells "
• "Shot Down in Flames"
• "Sin City" or "Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be"
• " Back in Black "
• "Bad Boy Boogie"
• " Highway to Hell "
• "What Do You Do for Money Honey"
• " High Voltage "
• " Shoot to Thrill " (played on occasions)
• "Givin' the Dog a Bone" (played on occasions)
• " Whole Lotta Rosie "
• " You Shook Me All Night Long "
• "Rocker" or "Problem Child" or "Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution" (played on occasions)
• " T.N.T. " or "Shake a Leg" ("Shake a Leg" played once)
• " Let There Be Rock "
• Angus Young – lead guitar
• Cliff Williams – bass guitar, backing vocals
• Malcolm Young – rhythm guitar, backing vocals
• Phil Rudd – drums
• Brian Johnson – lead vocals
• ↑ This concert was an unannounced club gig.
• ↑ Originally scheduled for 28 August 1980.
• ↑ Originally scheduled for 3 September 1980.
• ↑ Originally scheduled for 5 October 1980.
• ↑ Originally scheduled for 20 January 1981.
• ↑ Originally scheduled for 20 February 1981.

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The Highway to Hell Tour was a concert tour by Australian rock band AC/DC in support of the group's seventh studio album, Highway to Hell , which was released on 27 July 1979. The tour had 3 legs around Europe and North America lasting 5 months starting on 17 August 1979 at Haffmans Park in Bilzen, Belgium, and concluded on 27 January 1980 at Southampton, England. This was the last tour with Bon Scott, who died due to alcohol poisoning, three weeks after the Southampton show, which therefore cancelled the Japan and Australian legs of the tour.

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• 1 2 3 4 Perkins 2011 .
• 1 2 London, Mike (16 August 1980). "Talent in Action: AC/DC, Def Leppard" . Billboard . Vol.   92, no.   32. Nielsen Business Media, Inc. p.   27. ISSN   0006-2510 . Retrieved 1 September 2022 .
• ↑ Durieux, Arnaud. "AC/DC Tour History - 1980/81 "Back in Black" World Tour" . ac-dc.net . Retrieved 1 September 2022 .
• 1 2 3 4 5 Masino 2015 .
• ↑ "North American tour dates" . Billboard . Vol.   92, no.   31. Nielsen Business Media, Inc. 2 August 1980. p.   64. ISSN   0006-2510 . Retrieved 1 September 2022 .
• ↑ "Boxscore" . Billboard . Vol.   92, no.   31. Nielsen Business Media, Inc. 2 August 1980. p.   36. ISSN   0006-2510 . Retrieved 1 September 2022 .
• ↑ "Boxscore" . Billboard . Vol.   92, no.   35. Nielsen Business Media, Inc. 30 August 1980. p.   35. ISSN   0006-2510 . Retrieved 1 September 2022 .
• ↑ "Boxscore" . Billboard . Vol.   92, no.   38. Nielsen Business Media, Inc. 20 September 1980. p.   57. ISSN   0006-2510 . Retrieved 1 September 2022 .
• ↑ "Boxscore" . Billboard . Vol.   92, no.   39. Nielsen Business Media, Inc. 27 September 1980. p.   37. ISSN   0006-2510 . Retrieved 1 September 2022 .
• ↑ "Boxscore" . Billboard . Vol.   92, no.   40. Nielsen Business Media, Inc. 4 October 1980. p.   37. ISSN   0006-2510 . Retrieved 1 September 2022 .
• ↑ "Boxscore" . Billboard . Vol.   92, no.   41. Nielsen Business Media, Inc. 11 October 1980. p.   41. ISSN   0006-2510 . Retrieved 1 September 2022 .
• ↑ "Boxscore" . Billboard . Vol.   92, no.   42. Nielsen Business Media, Inc. 18 October 1980. p.   31. ISSN   0006-2510 . Retrieved 1 September 2022 .
• ↑ "Boxscore" . Billboard . Vol.   92, no.   43. Nielsen Business Media, Inc. 25 October 1980. p.   30. ISSN   0006-2510 . Retrieved 1 September 2022 .
• Perkins, Jeff (2011). AC/DC: Uncensored on the Record . Warwickshire, England: Coda Books Ltd. ISBN   978-1-908538-54-3 .
• Masino, Susan (2015). AC/DC FAQ: All That's Left to Know About the World's True Rock 'n' Roll Band . Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN   978-1-4950-2601-0 .

How Back In Black brought AC/DC back from the dead

The death of AC/DC’s frontman Bon Scott looked like it might deal a fatal blow to the band as well. But they got a new singer and made a career-rejuvenating record that became the biggest-selling rock album of all time: Back In Black

For Angus Young, the pre-show ritual was the same as it had always been. In the dressing room backstage at the Palais des Expositions in the Belgian city of Namur, AC/DC ’s lead guitarist changed out of jeans and T-shirt and put on his schoolboy uniform, went for a piss, and had one last cigarette to take the edge off his nerves. But this was no ordinary gig. 

On this evening, June 29, 1980, AC/DC were about to perform in public for the first time with their new singer, Brian Johnson . And in the last few minutes before going on stage, as Angus looked around the room, he could see the tension in Johnson’s face. 

“He was shitting himself,” Angus said.

Johnson had big shoes to fill. The man he’d replaced, Bon Scott , had been a great rock’n’roll singer and charismatic frontman, a free-spirited hellraiser whose easy charm earned him the epithet ‘Bon The Likeable’. Following Bon’s death in February that year, the band had pushed on with Johnson to make the album Back In Black , of which Angus later said: “When I first heard it in all its glory, I thought: ‘Fuck, it’s magic!’” 

But on that warm summer evening in Namur, with the release of the album still a few weeks away, Johnson was a worried man as he waited for show time, wondering how AC/DC fans would react to him, especially when he was singing the old songs, Bon’s words. 

It was only when he got on stage and looked out into the audience that he realised how much those fans were rooting for him. In the audience he saw a banner raised aloft, on which it was written: ‘R.I.P. Bon Scott. Good Luck Brian.’ “That,” he recalled, “just lifted me.”

There were moments during the show when all of that anxiety and adrenalin got the better of him. 

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“It was a very traumatic night,” he admitted. “I was so nervous.” 

Halfway into the set, he had a brain-freeze and sang the same lyrics to two songs. “I thought: ‘Oh God, what have I done?’” 

For that he received a bollocking from rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young, Angus’s elder brother. “Malcolm looked at me and went: ‘What the fuck was that?’”

It was a baptism of fire, but Johnson got through it. He won the respect of that audience by singing his balls off, and by being his own man. The flat cap he wore was a sign of his working-class roots in the North East of England, and his on-stage demeanour was different to Bon’s; Johnson was a cajoling, fist-shaking rabble-rouser, but without the macho swagger than Scott had, or the glint of craziness that was always in his eyes. 

Johnson also knew from the start how the band worked on stage, ceding the centre ground for Angus to run amok. That night, AC/DC performed seven songs from Back In Black , beginning with album opener Hells Bells . The set ended with Let There Be Rock – significantly, the last song Bon ever sang on stage, just five months earlier, at Southampton Gaumont on January 27, 1980. 

Johnson later said of the Namur show: “We had enough spirit to cover up any mistakes.” On a deeper level, there was also a feeling within the band that they had a spirit watching over them. As Angus said in the first days after their new singer had joined them: “We still think Bon’s around.”

Bon Scott had known, in his last days, that AC/DC were on to something big. Their 1979 album Highway To Hell was the band’s first million-seller, and in the early days of January 1980, when work began on new songs in London, he was buzzing. 

These new songs were demoed by Angus and Malcolm, with Bon playing drums, as he had done in his first groups back in Australia, and he was convinced that they had the makings of an album that would be even bigger than Highway To Hell . In a phone call to his mother Isa in Australia, he had told her, “This one is going to be it!” 

It was only a few days after that call – on February 19, 1980 – that Bon was found dead in East Dulwich, London. He had been out drinking with friends the previous night. Rumours suggested that he might also have taken heroin. In the official inquest, the coroner’s report cited ‘death by misadventure’. Bon was just 33. It was at Bon’s funeral, in his home town of Fremantle in Western Australia, that his father Chick urged Malcolm and Angus to carry on with the band. 

On April 1, Johnson, then aged 32, formerly of glam rock band Geordie, was announced as AC/DC’s new singer. The place where the band created their comeback album was far removed from the cold and grey of London and the bad vibes around Bon’s death. Nassau, on the island of New Providence in The Bahamas, was a tropical paradise. 

As Johnson would tell Record Mirror : “Actually it’s quite difficult recording in the Bahamas. All you want to do is lounge on the beach. And you can’t get a decent pint of beer.” He added, with tongue in cheek: “Somehow we managed.”

It’s difficult recording in the Bahamas. All you want to do is lounge on the beach Brian Johnson

What drew the band to Nassau was the calibre of Compass Point Studios, a world-class facility that had been established by the founder of Island Records, Chris Blackwell. According to Tony Platt, the engineer working on the album alongside producer Robert ‘Mutt’ Lange, it was also beneficial for the band to be in such a remote location, away from all the distractions of London or Sydney. 

“That helped to bring everyone together,” Platt said. 

In the tracks laid down in Nassau, there was something different to previous AC/DC albums, and not only because they had a new singer. While the music was anything but subtle, the change in it was. While the essence of AC/DC – the hard riffing, the heavy grooves – remained intact, the tone had shifted a little. It was rock’n’roll, but with more of a heavy-metal edge. And what Mutt Lange had begun with the band on Highway To Hell – adding a touch of sheen, while retaining maximum power – was brought into full effect. 

The sound was huge, and at the highest end of it was Johnson’s voice, pushed to its limit. Some of those tracks were as simple as they come: shoot-from-the-hip numbers such as Have A Drink On Me, What Do You Do For Money Honey, Given The Dog A Bone and the frantic Shake A Leg.

Elsewhere, a little more sophistication came into play: the title track, with its ticking-time-bomb intro and twisting riffs, the slow-burning Let Me Put My Love Into You , and Shoot To Thrill with its funky breakdown. You Shook Me All Night Long was a rock’n’roll song made for radio, with its ringing intro, hooky riff, walloping groove and shout-itout-loud chorus. And in Hells Bells there was an epic feel, a sense of gravitas that AC/DC had never had before, with its tolling bell leading into a slow, mighty riff that was described as “ominous” by Malcolm and “mystical” by Angus.

As Angus confirmed in a 1991 interview, some lyrics written by Bon were used in the new songs. In other songs there were echoes of his spirit and sense of humour. Just as Bon had poked fun at religion in Let There Be Rock and Highway To Hell , so Brian delivered a Christian-baiting one-liner in Hells Bells : ‘ If good’s on the left, then I’m sticking to the right! ’ 

In a similar vein, the bluesy boogie Rock And Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution – the last track recorded for the album, written on the spot in around 15 minutes – had an intro in which Brian did what he called “this Southern preacher thing”, just talking off the top of his head and hailing with missionary fervour the life-affirming power of rock’n’roll. 

With the album completed in six weeks, they knew what they had was dynamite. Atlantic Records knew it too. The only problem, as the label saw it, was the band’s idea for the album cover – all black, with the AC/DC logo and album title the only detail. It was suggested by Atlantic that this would not be good for business. But the band would not yield. 

As Angus put it: “The whole Back In Black album was our dedication to Bon. That’s why the album cover was pure black, and why the album starts with a bell ringing, something sombre and different to anything else we’d done.”

In the first days of the Back In Black tour, with Namur the first of six low-key warm-up gigs in Belgium and Holland, there was another memorable moment for Johnson. He met a Dutch fan with a tattoo of Bon Scott on his arm. 

“Bon was my hero,” the fan said. “But now he’s gone I wish you all the luck in the world.” 

Johnson later recalled the profound effect those words had on him. “I just stood there shaking,” he said. 

The band were in Canada, in the first week of a North American tour, when Back In Black was released there, on July 25, 1980. For one British writer who reviewed the album, there were mixed emotions. Phil Sutcliffe had been a supporter of AC/DC since 1976, and had a great affection for the guys in the band, Bon in particular. 

In his review for Sounds , Sutcliffe awarded Back In Black four out of five stars, but stated in memory of Bon: “The ecstasy with which I expect to greet a new AC/DC album just wasn’t possible this time.” Moreover, he dismissed Brian Johnson as a “copy” of Bon. For all that, Sutcliffe concluded: “ Back In Black remains a genuine, excellent AC/DC album.” 

Two other leading critics had no such reservations. Rolling Stone ’s David Fricke declared the album a masterpiece and a milestone in rock. “ Back In Black is not only the best of AC/DC’s six American albums,” he wrote. “It’s the apex of heavy metal art: the first LP since Led Zeppelin II that captures all the blood, sweat and arrogance ofthe genre. In other words, Back In Black kicks like a mutha.” 

In Record Mirror ’s review – headlined: ‘POWER IS RESTORED’ – Robin Smith wrote: “The resurrection shuffle starts here. Brian was the perfect choice, possessing an almost uncanny feel for the band’s songs."

In Smith’s feature on AC/DC in the July 26 edition of Record Mirror , Johnson said: “Bon is still around and watching. At night in my hotel room I had proof that he was there in some form. I know that he approves of what the new line-up is trying to do. He didn’t want the band to split up or to go into a long period of mourning. He wanted us to build on the spirit he left behind.”

In that interview, Johnson opened up to a remarkable degree, expressing his sorrow over Bon’s death. 

“It’s strange how rock music breeds ecstasy and tragedy,” he mused. “You build up that great feeling every night when you go on stage, and then suddenly death strikes in the strangest form. The truth of the matter was that Bon died because he vomited when his neck was twisted, and he choked. That poor boy was loved by thousands of people worldwide.” 

He also spoke with great humility about his role in the band. “I hope that I’ve been accepted by AC/DC fans,” he said. “They want the band to go on as well. Certainly I’ve had no letters or phone calls saying get out.” 

On August 1, at the Palladium in New York City, AC/DC’s support act, for one night only, was Def Leppard , whose singer Joe Elliott was celebrating his twenty-first birthday. The young British band, then promoting their debut album On Through The Night , had opened for AC/DC a year earlier on the Highway To Hell tour. They also shared a manager with AC/DC, Peter Mensch, and as a result they had been among the first people, outside of AC/DC’s inner circle, to hear Back In Black . 

Joe Elliott recalls now: “Mensch came on our tour bus with a cassette of the album, and when we heard Hells Bells we all sat there going: ‘Holy crap!’ It was almost too fucking good.” 

When Elliott met Johnson for the first time, in a hotel lobby ahead of the New York show, the conversation they had seemed a little weird to Joe. 

“Brian was a seasoned veteran,” he says. “Geordie had a few hits in the early seventies, and after that he’d done years in clubs in the North East. But this was one of his first gigs in the States, and I’d already done a ton of gigs out there. So he took me to one side and said: ‘What the hell am I supposed to do?’ I was just a kid, still learning my craft, but I told him: ‘Just be yourself, man. It’s all you can do.’”

That night, when Elliott watched AC/DC’s performance from the side of the stage, he still had his doubts as to whether Johnson could pull this off. “What they had with Bon Scott was this cocky motherfucker, bare chest, all attitude. And then you’ve got the guy who looks like fucking Andy Capp singing for them! My initial impression was: ‘Hmm, not sure about this. But as it turned out, Brian was perfect for that band, and maybe the only guy who could have done it. He had the voice for it. And that record – it was just amazing."

In what was an emotional and triumphant homecoming, AC/DC performed seven shows in Australia, and at the third date in Sydney on February 23 there was a moment that Brian Johnson would remember for the rest of his life. Bon’s mother Isa was a guest at the show, and afterwards she said to Brian: “Our Bon would have been proud of you, son.” 

For Brian, there could be no greater validation. The tour ended with two shows at the Sidney Meyer Music Bowl in Melbourne on February 27 and 28. The last of those shows came a year and one day since the last gig with Bon. By this time, Back In Black had sold more than three million copies in the US alone.

The resurrection of AC/DC with Back In Black was arguably the greatest comeback in the entire history of rock’n’roll. Out of their darkest hour had come a heroic victory. 

Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash was just 15 years old when Back In Black was released. Many years later, he recalled the impact that record had on him, and spoke of it as a triumph not just for Brian Johnson and AC/DC, but also for rock music, period. 

“ Back In Black saved rock’n’roll,” Slash said. “It was the defining rock record of that time, and it just exploded! AC/DC was always a great band, totally genuine. But the miracle of the whole thing was that Back In Black was just a great new record, it was still AC/DC. We all missed Bon, but we let him go and at the same time welcomed and embraced Brian.”

Back In Black saved rock’n’roll. It was the defining rock record of that time Slash

The key songs from Back In Black – the title song, Hells Bells, Shoot To Thrill and You Shook Me All Night Long – have remained in AC/DC’s live set for decades. Most remarkable of all is the sheer scale of this album’s success. Back In Black is not only the biggest-selling rock album there has ever been – bigger than anything by Led Zeppelin , Pink Floyd , the Rolling Stones or even The Beatles – with more than 50 million copies sold its also the second-biggest-selling album of all time, after Michael Jackson’s Thriller . 

In the making of Back In Black , their tribute to Bon, as Angus Young called it, AC/DC dug deep. As Malcolm Young once said: “The emotion in that album, it will be around forever.” 

For Joe Elliott, and millions of others who feel the same way, what AC/DC achieved on Back In Black was perfection. “That record sounds as good now, forty years later, as it did the day it was released,” Elliott says. “It’s timeless, and very few records are like that – the first Montrose album, the first Van Halen album , the first Boston album. AC/DC was always about full-on rock’n’roll, based on the blues and Chuck Berry . But with Back In Black they took it up a level, and they blew everybody else out of the water. Without a doubt, it’s one of the greatest rock albums ever made."

The 20 Million Club is Classic Rock's new podcast - and the first episode is all about Back In Black .

Freelance writer for Classic Rock since 2005, Paul Elliott has worked for leading music titles since 1985, including Sounds, Kerrang!, MOJO and Q . He is the author of several books including the first biography of Guns N’ Roses and the autobiography of bodyguard-to-the-stars Danny Francis. He has written liner notes for classic album reissues by artists such as Def Leppard, Thin Lizzy and Kiss, and currently works as content editor for Total Guitar . He lives in Bath - of which David Coverdale recently said: “How very Roman of you!”

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• September 24, 1980 Setlist

AC/DC Setlist at Market Square Arena, Indianapolis, IN, USA

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Setlist History: AC/DC's 1978 Gig That Became Its First Live LP

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Def leppard’s joe elliott on the legacy of ‘pyromania’ 40 years later.

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Def Leppard (v.l. Phil Collen, Rick Allen, Joe Elliot, Rick Savage, Steve Clark) on 01.12.1983 in ... [+] Dortmund. (Photo by Fryderyk Gabowicz/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Following the release of their 1980 debut LP On Through the Night , the British hard rock group Def Leppard was gradually building their following that continued with their sophomore record, 1981's High 'n' Dry , which marked their first and crucial collaboration with producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange. So when it came time to make their third album in 1982, the quintet from Sheffield, England, had a game plan.

“Mutt hasn't seen us for seven or eight months,” Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott recalled in 2023, “because you make the record, you go out and tour, and he goes off and does his work for other people. And then you see him again and it became like a thing in the first couple of days where we were listening to ideas for songs.

“He may have asked the question [to us]: ‘Do you wanna make High ‘n’ Dry 2 or do you wanna make a record that nobody else has ever made?’” Elliott added about Lange. “He said, ‘We're not gonna make High ‘n’ Dry 2 –we're gonna make an album that no one else has ever made.'”

Released in 1983, the resulting work, Pyromania , became Def Leppard's breakthrough record in the States where it peaked at number two on the Billboard album chart (it has since sold 10 million copies in the U.S.). At a time when British synthpop and Michael Jackson's Thriller were the rages, Pyromania brought hard rock back to the pop chart buoyed by the now-classic tracks “Rock of Ages,” “Foolin’” and “Photograph.” As Rolling Ston e's David Fricke wrote in the liner notes for the 2009 reissue of the album: “...the symphonic dynamics of Lange’s production, his pioneering use of new sampling and electronic-processing technologies and the band’s precocious invention as writers and players made Pyromania a truly rare thing: a heavy-metal album for everybody.”

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“Sometimes it stands in the shadow of Hysteria [Def Leppard’s 1987 blockbuster album],” Elliott said of Pyromania . “But my God, Pyromania was an insane breakthrough. It was only kept off the top by Thriller , the biggest record of all time.”

To mark the 40th anniversary of Pyromania , the band re-released the album last Friday as a 4-CD/1 Blu-ray collection that also contains previously unreleased demos and rough mixes from the recording sessions; two live concert performances recorded in Germany and Los Angeles; and the official videos for the singles. Its release comes as Def Leppard is about to embark on a summer tour with Journey beginning in July.

In a 2023 interview promoting the band memoir Definitely , Elliott spoke about the new Pyromania box that he executive produced. “It's been long in the making and will be a very, very special thing,” he said back then. “We said, 'Look on, if we're gonna do this, we're not just gonna put that out as a 12-inch box. It's got to have some other stuff.'”

At the time of its recording, Pyromania was the first Def Leppard album to feature new guitarist Phil Collen, who replaced Pete Willis and joined co-founders Elliott, guitarist Steve Clark, bassist Rick Savage and drummer Rick Allen. In addition to his production work on the album, Lange also co-wrote all of Pyromania ’s songs and sort of became an unofficial sixth member of the band.

“Mutt Lange had done fantastic records before we went into the studio in ‘82,” Elliott said, “having done [AC/DC's] Back in Black and Highway to Hell , Foreigner's 4. ..he did the Boomtown Rats, City Boy and all these great unknown bands in the 70s, and then he was writing songs for Huey Lewis. He was just the guy to go to. Someone like him with the belief in us to do something like that, you're just 10 feet tall. It's like, ‘We can do this.’”

In contrast to their hard-rock guitar-driven contemporaries, Def Leppard and Lange embraced the latest state-of-the-art technology more aligned with the pop and electronic music acts of the times. Especially under Lange's purview, Pyromania was painstakingly built to the very last sonic detail.

“There's all this digital stuff coming out – 'Oh, what does that do?'” Elliott said. “We were intrigued to incorporate it into the standard rock and roll sound. All this new stuff that was the domain of bands like the Human League, Joy Division, New Order—they were using drum machine sounds. It was starting to become a thing, so why not? We wanted to make a record that people would hear and go, 'What the hell is that?' We had the riffs and we started to put the pieces together and built them into songs.”

“These things take time,” Elliott later added, “because you spend hours and hours getting the sound that you’re recording. You’d come back the next day and go, 'Does it work?' And so you do it again. That's what we did. We were forever reinventing every song. every section of every song if needed to be done. If we got it right the first time, then we got it right. But a lot of the time, we'd be like, 'No, it’s not right.'”

Elliott said the band’s lyric writing was evolving with an emphasis on more drama and less predictability for Pyromania : “They were more stories like “Billy's Got a Gun” or “Die Hard the Hunter.” The longingness of someone in “Photograph,” the “let's celebrate/we’re at a gig” type song in “Rock of Ages” or “Rock! Rock! (Til You Drop).” We were starting to develop.”

In addition to the dramatic 'Foolin'” and the celebratory “Rock of Ages” (with its memorable "Gunter glieben glauten globen” intro), “Photograph,” with its power riffs and killer hooks, became Def Leppard’s biggest song up to that point. On the origin of that track’s title, Elliott said: “I think we were just singing ( sings the riff ), and I think it might be Mutt who went ‘photograph.’ We went, ‘That’ll do, that’s good, photograph. Let's just use that as the hook for the chorus.’ I was the one that suggested, ‘Let's make it about the ultimate woman you can't have because she's no longer around.’ I felt like I had this epiphany, brilliant idea.”

Elliott brought in the lyrics of “Photograph” after the band worked on the music. “It was born out of the fact that I got a Shawshank Redemption sort of hole in my bathroom wall that I covered up with a poster of Marilyn Monroe,” he explained. “The previous tenant must've got angry and punched a hole through, and I covered it up with this picture of Marilyn Monroe, which I saw every day when I went to the bathroom. And I remember saying, ‘What about something like Marilyn Monroe?’ It could have been Jayne Mansfield – it didn't matter. It was that kind of iconic beauty: 'die young, stay pretty.' So Marilyn became like a focal point.‘

“It was that poster that made me suggest the idea,” he continued, “so we just worked on that: ‘Gotta photograph, picture of.’ It was that whole longing thing. The lyrics are great. More importantly, the songwriting arrangement is just great. It jumps like a lot of great rock songs jump, but it's just got an extra little bit magic to it, which was really great melodies, good attitude.”

Although driven by good-old-fashioned guitar rock that borrowed from glam and metal (cases in point included the blistering “Stagefright,” the haunting power ballad “Too Late for Love,” and the meaty “Coming Under Fire”), Pyromania made use of synthesizers. And a little-known fact: Thomas Dolby of “She Blinded Me With Science” fame guested as a keyboard player on Pyromania under the pseudonym of Booker T. Boffin. “Tom Dolby was like, ‘I don't want a credit. I don't want people to know I'm working with a band like you,’” Elliott remembered. “As soon as he said that, we told everybody. We’re paying him money, take the credit. Mutt admired his work so he came along and he did a fantastic job.”

The emphasis on technology and sleek production techniques complementing their hard rock sound reflected Def Leppard’s desire to push the boundaries. “We did things that most other bands don’t do,” said Elliot. “[People would say,] ‘That's the domain of the Human League. They're the enemy.’ We never saw them as the enemy. We saw it as different. Some of that stuff was great —[the League’s] “Don't You Want Me,” Thompson Twins. All those bands that were doing stuff like that, and then later on it would be Frankie Goes to Hollywood with [producer] Trevor Horn. [He] brought it to Yes and totally changed Yes from the prog rock band doing “Yours Is No Disgrace to “Owner of a Lonely Heart”—they sounded like a completely different band.

“That's what we wanted: we wanted that freedom to do that. We were getting there. Pyromania was like the learning curve to get there so that we had the freedom to do it on every record since if we wanted to – we have the knowledge because we learned how to do it.”

ROCHESTER, NEW YORK: Def Leppard performing in concert in Rochester, New York. (Photo by mICHAEL ... [+] Montfort/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

A year-long world tour followed the massive critical and commercial success of Pyromania. Afterward, it took Def Leppard four years to make and release Hysteria —a long and tortured process that has since become part of band lore. That record generated more hits (including “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” the title song, “Animal” and “Love Bites”) and elevated Def Leppard as one of the biggest acts on the planet by the end of the 1980s. But it was Pyromania that made it all possible.

“ Pyromania set that all up for us,” Elliott reflected, “and the work that we put into that record was very important for the rest of our career because Mutt allowed us the freedom to be who we were. But at the same time, it gave us the discipline that we needed to not just waffle around too much. People joked it took nine months to make [ Pyromania ]. These days, to make a record in nine months is like rapid fire.

“When we heard it, we thought we made a great record. But it's not up to us, isn’t it? We've done our bit. It's up to the rest of the world after that.”

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This New Book Celebrates Black Rodeo Culture in the US

By Sarah Enelow-Snyder

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Cowboys are so often depicted like John Wayne—meaning, as a white man on a horse. For a long time, this representation has overshadowed the existence, and importance, of Black cowboys, but in the 19th century, an estimated one in four cowboys was Black. They were often barred from competing against white riders in rodeos, though, so they went on to form their own—and to this day, Black rodeos continue to thrive.

For photographer Ivan McClellan, the Roy LeBlanc Invitational in Oklahoma was a mesmerizing introduction to Black rodeo culture in 2015. He was invited by Charles Perry, director and producer of the documentary The Black Cowboy , and had no idea what to expect. He was instantly hooked. “I really thought I was going to go to that first rodeo and be done,” says McClellan. “But what I saw there, the fashion, the merging of cultures, hip-hop and Western culture and church culture all smashing into each other in a really elegant way, the people that I met, how friendly and open they were, all prompted me to go back again.”

“Women are wearing shirts with fringe on them and their bedazzled jeans and fancy hats,” says the book's creator, Ivan McClellan. “That reminded me of church. When it’s time to go in front of a crowd, you present yourself as your best.”

He’s been traveling the circuit ever since, documenting the overlooked stories of Black riders in North Carolina , Tennessee , Alabama , Arkansas, Oklahoma, Colorado , Arizona , Nevada , California , and Texas —where I grew up barrel racing in local rodeos. He even founded the Eight Seconds Juneteenth Rodeo in Portland , Oregon, where he lives with his family (it returns for its second year on June 16, 2024; in a venue three times larger than last time, due to demand). The name is a nod to the “eight seconds” which is historically the amount of time a rider must remain on a wildly bucking bull, holding onto the rope without touching the animal, themselves, or the ground, in order to qualify for a score.

Now, his ongoing study of Black rodeo culture has culminated in a new form: McClellan’s new photography book, Eight Seconds: Black Rodeo Culture. Out April 30 (from Damiani Books), it's full of images that evoke a bygone era on the open range, but also manages to feel very contemporary. The sport itself has been around a long time, after all—but the Nike tees, sparkling earrings, and Black hairstyles reflect modern tastes.

Below, McClellan tells us about his memories behind the photos in his brand new book.

You spent nearly a decade attending Black rodeos across the country while researching this. What surprised you the most on the journey?

The thing that surprised me the most is that I kept going back. And I couldn't have fit in any less. I didn't dress the part, I didn't talk the part, I didn't know the front part of a horse from the back. I was scared of horses, and people were still offering me a beverage. People were still telling me their story, leaning on a fence with me for an hour, telling me about a cow that had just given birth, or about their competition and why they love it, and taking me on rides in their truck to go sell a bull, or inviting me into their trailer to hang out for an hour. That really was something that I'd never run into in my life, just a complete and unrestrained welcoming in.

Cowboys are so often depicted like John Wayne—meaning, as a white man on a horse—but in the 19th century, an estimated one in four cowboys was Black, writes Sarah Enelow-Snyder.

One of the things that struck me about the images in this book is the mix of old and new. The sport has been around a long time, but as you said, the fashion is really eye-catching, and feels in many cases very current. Tell me more about that juxtaposition.

There are two modes to rodeo. There’s before the rodeo, and there’s during the rodeo. Before the rodeo you'll see cowboys dressed head-to-toe in Nike, Jordans, shorts, and t-shirts with a big Nike logo or a Jordan logo on the front, fitted caps, or no shirt at all and a gold chain because it's hot. You'll see women in cut-off shorts and a tank top with long acrylic nails and braids practicing roping. You'll see these Western things mixed with very modern dress before the rodeo.

But 30 minutes to the start, all of that disappears and everyone transforms into their cowboy clothes. They're wearing creased jeans, jeans so creased they can stand up even when they take them off, and everyone's got on a cowboy hat, and everyone's got on a nice pearl-snap button-down. The women are wearing shirts with fringe on them and their bedazzled jeans and fancy hats. That’s the part that reminded me of church. When it’s time to go in front of a crowd, you present yourself as your best.

Shana Clarke

Lane Nieset

Paris Wilson

It's been a long time since I competed in a rodeo, and you've been to a lot more rodeos than I have. Did you notice any regional differences across the country?

The first difference that you notice is the dirt, and I've become a dirt connoisseur. The dirt in Oklahoma and parts of Texas is bright red and it's clay, so it has a very different consistency. It's very dense. The dirt in the Southwest is dusty and tan and it kicks up when the wind blows, and there's sort of a haze in the air. And then in the Southeast, in Atlanta and those areas, the dirt is black because it's very fertile soil. It's the fertile belt where farmers can throw a peanut on the ground and it will turn into a plant.

The way the crowd interacts with the rodeo is different. In Oklahoma, the crowd shows up on horseback, and they show off their Tennessee Walkers , and they show off their tack, and they just ride around in the rodeo grounds and then tie up their horses before the event. At other rodeos, like the rodeo that I went to in Arizona, the only ones on horseback are the cowboys, and the crowd doesn't really dress the part. Their hats are brand-new. They're wearing novelty cowboy clothes. They’re thrilled to see the sport, but a lot of them are seeing it for the first time. And that's the same thing at our rodeo in Portland.

The sports that make up rodeos—roping, barrel racing—have been around a long time, but the styles at Black rodeos are increasingly modern, and the faces ever younger.

There must be something exciting about introducing so many new people to Black rodeo.

Absolutely. When we did our first rodeo last year, I didn't know who was going to be there. I thought it might be like the PBR [pro bull riding] crowd, coming out of curiosity, and it would be all Black people performing in front of an all-white crowd. But when I showed up, in Portland, the whitest big city in America, 70% of the crowd was Black, and the rest were white and Latinx allies. That really warmed my heart to see the community show up and support the event in that way.

We have a cowboy named Warren. I invited him to come out and teach roping lessons. There were old Black women that he was teaching to rope, little kids, single men, and I don't know if that rope would have been perceived as friendly in the hands of a white man. It might have been perceived as a threat. It might have been something that, for some of those old Black folks, would harken back to horrors of the South. In Warren’s hands, it became a tool and it became an invitation.

Along the lines of creating a safe space, your photographs capture a lot of joy. Tell me about some of those moments that you encountered while making this book.

The first rodeo that I shot, I smiled until my face was sore. Seeing a bronco rider who's really got his bronco, and the bronco’s bucking, and he feels comfortable and he knows he's going to get his eight seconds, and he takes off his hat and starts waving it around in the air—it’s the biggest flex that I've ever seen.

It’s also seeing bull riders hit their eight seconds, hit the ground, run over to the fence, and escape the bull trying to get their revenge, then realizing that they're safe. They go out in the dirt and throw their helmet in the air, pump their fist, jump over the fence out into the crowd—just that elation and pure unabated joy, but also showboating in front of the judges, is something that I really can't get enough of. Those moments keep me coming back.

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ac/dc tour history

1980 "Back In Black" North American Tour

Wed. 16 jul. 1980 : vancouver, bc canada (concert bowl).

Exact set list unconfirmed. Very similar to this.

• Hells Bells
• Shot Down In Flames
• Hell Ain't A Bad Place To Be
• Problem Child
• Back In Black
• Bad Boy Boogie
• Highway To Hell
• What Do You Do For Money Honey
• High Voltage
• Whole Lotta Rosie
• Let There Be Rock

Supported by: Streetheart

Tickets: C$9.00

Promoter: Norman Perry

Capacity: 7,500

Attendance: 8,197

Fan reviews:

By Gord, Vancouver, BC : 1980...Bon Scott was dead and AC/DC was about to rock Vancouver,BC, Brian Johnson was the new singer and was about to be crowned king...My friend Paul was there and we no what happened. The opening band was booed of the stage...AC/DC came on and slew us all, some one jumped up on stage and was hit by a line backer strong man (SECURITY?) and sent flying into the crowd...OUCH!!! The best show ever for this sixteen year old!

All AC/DC concerts in Vancouver, BC

• 25 Jul. 1978: Vancouver, Pacific National Exhibition Coliseum
• 16 Jul. 1980: Vancouver, Concert Bowl
• 11 Oct. 1983: Vancouver, Pacific National Exhibition Coliseum
• 13 Jun. 1988: Vancouver, British Columbia Place Stadium
• 11 Jan. 1991: Vancouver, Pacific National Exhibition Coliseum
• 12 Jan. 1991: Vancouver, Pacific National Exhibition Coliseum
• 18 Jun. 1991: Vancouver, Pacific National Exhibition Coliseum
• 8 Feb. 1996: Vancouver, General Motors Place
• 9 Feb. 1996: Vancouver, General Motors Place
• 22 Apr. 2001: Vancouver, Pacific National Exhibition Coliseum
• 23 Apr. 2001: Vancouver, Pacific National Exhibition Coliseum
• 28 Nov. 2008: Vancouver, General Motors Place
• 29 Aug. 2009: Vancouver, BC Place Stadium
• 22 Sep. 2015: Vancouver, BC Place

» Upload a review if you were at any of these shows!

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