These epiphanies had been made before, most recently by underground musicians working the blues circuit; because in the absence of music business attention, one has to figure things out for oneself, right? Rock bands like the Stones and Led Zeppelin didn’t just steal their tunes from the blues, but they found a way to makes the blues’ small band format work in a big showbiz way. This model has worked successfully for so many bands since; religious zealots said that KISS stood for “Knights In Satan’s Service,” but I always imagined that a group of four relatively bright middle-class Jewish boys would be familiar with the business axiom “Keep It Simple, Stupid!”
AC/DC’s genius, upon formation, was to use their minimalist aesthetic to popularize adolescent regression. They were far from the first, nor were they even the most self-conscious: I think it can be argued that early Dictators, mid-period MC5, the Ramones and Iggy & the Stooges all nailed down a distinctly American response to the pomp and pretension of ’60s hippie aspirations. That all four of those bands rock so hard is almost a by-product of their shared attitude, one of creating a musical diagram of the typical American adolescent (male) mindset: hormones, testosterone, rejection, awkwardness, and thinking you know everything when you don’t are powerful tools when put in the hands of a handful of kids holding microphones, drumsticks, and guitars plugged into amplifiers.
But for the most part, those four bands eventually gave away their ulterior objectives: The Dictators were rock critics first, and their music was almost a critique on the very thing they seemed to be championing; the MC5 had political aims that soon made them grow too big for their britches; the Ramones were the closest to this sort of adolescent purity (their ensuing stamina and relative consistency in the subsequent decades sprung forth from said purity), but their strict adherence to a code of downtown NYC underground rules would ensure that they remain arguably a cult act; and the Stooges just burnt out too quickly on the megalomania of their frontperson, who could never accept his position as just the singer in a phenomenal rock band — Iggy’s antics in the Stooges made him one of the most legendary and influential figures in rock history, but his mercurial nature signified that the flame that burns twice as fast lasts half as long.
When little Angus Young kept his schoolboy outfit on for a show and realized that this schtick might be a keeper, not only was a rock legend born, but the band’s aesthetic, and that aesthetic’s place in pop culture history, was forever solidified.
Part III: Rock's Death Cult and Bon Scott: “I get older and they stay the same”
Any rock band that shows the discipline to stick to the script in order to consistently give fans what they want eventually winds up seeming somewhat, dare I say it, conservative. This is because rock musicians are supposed to be degenerate flakes who give in to ephemeral artistic whims, flights of fancy, and delusions of grandeur — or at the very least, be completely and utterly ridiculous like, say, Freddie Mercury, or W. Axl Rose — with outsized ambitions that far exceed what they can accomplish. These unrealistic aspirations, these desires to make the real world into something it isn’t, seem inevitably to lead down two predictable paths. One is the path of the drug casualty; the other is that of the Dead Rockstar. Both of these are compelling narratives that cycle up again and again in rock culture, and really, examples aren’t necessary, right?
