I suppose it shouldn’t be any sort of surprise that Angus
Young, the last remaining original member of AC/DC, hired – to replace ailing
vocalist Brian Johnson – a dyed-in-the-wool head case, a wingnut who, among
other things, has written racist, homophobic lyrics, and attacked a fan
mid-show, precipitating a full scale riot.
He’s also a misogynistic wife-beater. But even that
unpleasant factoid had no bearing on Young’s decision to soldier on in the face
of total disaster. The guitarist now holds the dubious distinction of replacing
three members of AC/DC in the last 19 months, the rock’n’roll equivalent of the
Saturday Night Massacre.
Young’s actions since the notoriously reticent band finally
admitted that their rhythm guitarist is leaving the band have been, at best, predictably
bewildering. Anyone possessing even a modicum of integrity simply would have
called it a day after the heart and soul of the band, Malcolm Young, was
hospitalized with dementia at the age of 61. But integrity has been in short
supply for AC/DC in the last quarter century, as lackluster, generic
sub-efforts like Ballbreaker and Stiff Upper Lip have made abundantly
clear.
AC/DC haven’t been an actual band for 20 years. Bands are
made up of bandmates, and have a muse, and write and play music because it
diminishes their souls if they don’t. Once upon a time, AC/DC fit that bill. But the more records they sold, and the more stadiums they
filled, the more paranoid and insular the Young brothers became, shutting
everyone out (often times their own band members), sacking managers, even
taking over lyric-writing duties from Brian Johnson so they had complete, total
control over every aspect of the band (and all the royalties).
Rather, this is a business, a company, with
Angus as CEO of AC/DC, Inc. And this CEO has no reason to shutter an otherwise
decrepit company, because somehow the fans keep showing up, no questions asked,
no matter the number of ringers Young stacks the lineup with, no matter how
bland each new release – separated, on average, by five years at this point –
sounds. Axl Rose played his first few shows with AC/DC sitting in a chair,
nursing a fractured ankle back to health. I can’t imagine what the people
watching those shows were thinking: I paid $100 for this…? A 61 year-old man in a schoolboy outfit who moves at about
1/15th the speed he used to, and a singer who can’t even walk?
Yes, at 61, Angus is still wearing his schoolboy outfit,
despite the fact that he barely gets around anymore, and is painful to watch. This may sound sacrilegious to most, and
even a tad ageist; what is this group about without Angus and his Schoolboy
Outfit? Isn’t that the very symbol of AC/DC? Isn’t that what the fans turn out
for?
I suppose so. And for a long time, I was willing to defend Young’s
obdurate devotion to his long-since obsolete role-playing, through the flacid
90s, even into the aughts. But at some point it really does become scary. I
speak as someone who has loved this band for over 35 years, whose life
trajectory was altered by this band. And I’m telling you, even I’m at a point
where it makes me tired just looking
at AC/DC 2016, nevermind listening to the AC/DC-by-numbers dreck they dish out twice
a decade.
On the latter score, Michael Hann recently went the charitable
route: “(AC/DC) had entered the realms of those groups for
whom each album was a potential return to form, rather than a new landmark.
It’s not that they were making bad records, more that no one was turning to Black Ice or Ballbreaker instead of Back
in Black or Highway to Hell.”
That's an extremely gracious way of pointing out that latter-era AC/DC albums are the pits. He
goes on to call Rock or Bust
“perfectly serviceable.” Let’s pause here for a moment and give this some
serious thought: can you imagine anyone, back in the band’s heyday, referring
to Highway to Hell or Back in Black as “perfectly
serviceable?” This is what it’s come to for AC/DC, Inc: a sycophantic fan base
bludgeoned into accepting, after decades of mediocrity, anything the band throws
out there. Allow me to finally cast some light on an unpleasant truth: AC/DC haven’t
released a good record in 35 years. They have certainly released albums during that time that sold well, but those are
meaningless statistics. In a world where people cut each other’s heads off in
the name of a supernatural male deity, and people who are the very embodiment
of ignorance and narcissism have a serious shot at getting elected to the highest office in the most
powerful country on earth, it’s not surprising that millions of slack-jawed miscreants paid money for an album containing the lyrics “we met some girls, some dancers who gave a good time – broke
all the rules, played all the fools, yeah yeah they, they, they blew our
minds.”
A few weeks back I watched a clip of Axl/DC performing Hell
Ain’t a Bad Place to Be, and sat in disbelief when it came time for Angus’
solo: it was, note for note, the same solo he’s been playing since 1977. Same
solo. Same outfit. Same striptease act mid-show. Everything the same, for years now, carefully
choreographed, with no tolerance for spontaneity. No interest in it, even. The
playbook is tattered, its binding spent: release featureless album every five
years, tour the world making piles and piles of money playing the same songs
and solos over and over and over again.
For his part, Rose has been uncharacteristically gracious,
telling Rolling Stone he wants to do
right by the band and their fans. And certainly his range is made to order for
AC/DC’s requirements. It’s nice seeing such a world-class creep being
deferential for once. But at the end of the day, each new AC/DC story is just
one more sad piece of evidence proving beyond a reasonable doubt that this band
should have hung it up years ago.
The latest such story comes from Cliff Williams, AC/DC’s
longtime bassist, who announced he is leaving after the current tour. “Losing
Malcolm, the thing with Phil and now with Brian, it’s a changed animal,” he
very accurately said during an interview with Gulfshore Life. “It’s been what I’ve known for the past 40 years,
but after this tour I’m backing off of touring and recording.”
There’s no reason to believe Angus Young won’t replace
Williams and cynically forge ahead with another pointless album and world tour
in five years. Then again, maybe this is finally enough for the diminutive
guitarist. Maybe after the tour is over he’ll use those five years to reflect on the
unfamiliar faces surrounding him on stage every night and realize there really does
come a time to call it a day.
But whichever way it goes won’t erase the very sad spectacle
of AC/DC 2016: the band as Monty Python’s Black Knight, its limbs hacked away,
still mindlessly making a ruckus long after relevance slipped from its grasp.
