In 1975, near the beginning of AC/DC’s phenomenal climb to international stardom, producers Harry Vanda and George Young were grappling with the task of getting the band’s dynamic live pub-rock sound onto record.
AC/DC’s debut single was a Malcolm and Angus Young composition Can I Sit Next to You, Girl sung by then-lead singer Dave Evans (later of Rabbit), released in July 1974.
Their second single, and the first with Bon Scott on lead vocals, was a punchy guitar-driven cover version of the oft recorded Big Joe Williams blues standard Baby Please Don’t Go, which the band famously performed on Countdown with Scott dressed as a schoolgirl. Though it was a radio and TV hit, the band and their backers, including their record label Albert Productions, were never content for them to be a cover band, and that single was to be their last such release.
Check out our gig guide, our arts guide, our festival guide, our live music venue guide and our nightclub guide. Follow us on Instagram here.
The song
Searching for original material, one of their strategies was to let the tape run as the band ripped into explosive live jams of new songs in the recording studio, to see what they came up with. During one such typically raucous jam session, lead singer Scott ad-libbed the opening line to what was to become It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ’n’ Roll): ‘’Riding down the highway…’’
The final version of It’s a Long Way to the Top was quite different to that first take. Former bassist Mark Evans recalled in an interview with Steve Flack on the Australian Guitar Magazine archives that following the jam session, George Young had worked on the song overnight. “George thought that it needed something in the middle’’, Evans said. When George suggested bagpipes, Bon Scott said that he used to play in a pipe band. Encouraged, Bon then went down to a music store on Park Street in Sydney, where he bought a set of Hardy bagpipes still in their box for $479, a princely sum that, at the time, “would have got 2 Strats’’ (Fender Stratocasters). ‘’He comes back with this box’’, Evans recalled, ‘’three Scotsmen trying to put a set of bagpipes together … like a Scottish Rubik’s Cube. There was swearing… ‘’ An exasperated George challenged Bon. ‘’You said you used to play in a pipe band!’’ Scott explained that he had. ‘’I was the drummer.’’
The structure of the song lends itself to the use of a ‘’drone’’ type of instrument such as the bagpipes. The long, sustained tone of the drone pipe provides a dramatic counterpoint to Malcolm Young’s driving rhythm guitar and Angus Young’s lead, even joining with Angus in a superb ‘’call and response’’ in the middle of the song. Bon was determined to become proficient enough to play the instrument live and on record, and enlisted the help of Kevin Conlon of the Rats of Tobruk Pipe Band for some lessons. He succeeded on both counts, although his initial recordings were enhanced in the studio by George Young’s clever use of tape loops. The pipes met an untimely end when Bon made the mistake of placing them at the side of the stage when playing a gig at St Albans High School in 1976. They were set upon by fans and destroyed.
Despite Long Way to the Top’s status as arguably the band’s best-remembered song, tuning all the instruments to the drone pipe made playing the song live a challenge. Mark Evans estimates AC/DC ‘’played the song live maybe 30 times most… and the band has never played it since then.’’ Bon Scott died prematurely in 1980 of acute alcohol poisoning; his replacement lead singer Brian Johnson has requested that the band no longer play the song out of respect.
The film clip
In the world of Australian pop and rock music, Swanston Street, Melbourne has seen its share of memorable occasions: The Beatles waving from the Melbourne Town Hall balcony in February 1964 to greet 15,000 fans, and Abba’s euphoric reception at the same location in 1977, come easily to mind.
There were no such crowds on hand on Monday 23 February 1976, when the ABC’s Countdown director/producer Paul Drane, cameraman David Olney, and a small crew recorded the now-famous It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ’n’ Roll) clip with a budget of only $380. There were two versions recorded that day. The one shown on Countdown sees the band and three pipers from the Rats of Tobruk Pipe Band – Les Kenfield, Alan Butterworth and Kevin Conlon – playing the song while travelling south down Swanston Street on the back of one of the ABC’s own flatbed trucks. The other version sees the band and pipers perform the song on boxes in the Melbourne City Square.
One of the highlights of the City Square version of the clip is the sight of the small crowd of less than a hundred onlookers standing around, arms crossed, watching the band mime the song. It’s a somewhat bemused bunch covering most age groups: a young mother with her baby; a shirtless tattooed bloke who could be one of the roadies; an elderly gentleman in a hat. If AC/DC were to try to record a similar clip now they would probably have to at least shut down the City Square and surrounds. If they were to attempt to record the ‘’back-of-the-truck’’ version now, they would probably have to shut down the city!
Back in 1976, the police and the City of Melbourne were remarkably relaxed about the filming. There were no convoluted council permit requirements, and no traffic was stopped – the truck with AC/DC and the pipe band on board just drove slowly down Swanston Street with the rest of the traffic. At one stage it was overtaken by a tram!
It’s estimated that the ‘’back-of-the-truck’’ video has been viewed over 38 million times, making it arguably Countdown’s most famous clip. All that for under $400!
It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ’n’ Roll) peaked at #9 on the Australian charts on 16 February 1976 (Kent Music Report), and was ranked 3rd in the Melbourne Triple M Ultimate Rock 500 in 2010. In 2012 it was inducted into the National Film and Sound Archive’s Sounds of Australia. It was ranked 9th in the Australian Performing Rights Association (APRA)’s Best Australian Songs of all-time list in 2001, and #5 in Triple M’s ‘’Ozzest 100’’ for ‘most Australian’ songs of all time.
The song was featured on the 2003 movie School of Rock starring Jack Black, and has been covered by a wide range of artists including John Farnham, The Wiggles, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Read about the day I got Rose Tattoo to play my highschool social here.
