Scott was a true rock subversive, however. “It’s A Long Way to the Top (If You Want To Rock N Roll)” may sound like a triumphant celebration of the spirit of rock, but lyrically, it is littered with overwhelming obstacles to living your dream. Honestly, it’s the kind of behind-the-curtain looksy that you don’t normally get: “Getting had/Getting took/I tell you, folks, it’s harder than it looks” is more in line with the tenor of down-on-his-luck-era Sinatra than any rock and roll utopian dream. And it’s concrete too: it’s about fighting the world and losing, and then getting up and doing it again — only with bagpipes.
Scott would return to this theme on Highway to Hell, and before he died he got to be confronted with blatant misunderstanding as conservatives the world over took the title tune’s theme of the toll of the road as a paean to Satan. Apparently, a lot of Scott’s sarcasm went right over people’s heads. When he sang, “Living easy, living free/Season ticket on a one-way ride,” it wasn’t in celebration, it’s a tired lament from a weary soul who is starting to give up on his fight.
Bon Scott was easy to misunderstand. His lyrics and presentation were leery and threatening, and everything was displayed behind a veneer of sarcasm. If his odes to rock and roll were really cynical sighs of futility, some of his other songs were more straightforward in their predatory intent. The most infamous song in the Bon Scott catalog is probably Highway to Hell closer “Night Prowler,” which became notorious five years after his death when serial killer Richard Ramirez (who earned the nickname “The Night Stalker”) claimed AC/DC as an influence. In an era where rock and roll was under attack for its lyrics, this particular case is more convincing than, say, Judas Priest’s or Ozzy Osbourne’s trials. There was no trial for AC/DC, but mounting pressure from campaigning parents groups dumped bad publicity on the band and heralded in their temporary decline in the late ‘80s. The band has since defended the song as being “about a boy sneaking into his girlfriend’s room at night,” but in doing so they are attempting to neuter a particularly threatening tune. “No one’s gonna warn you/No one’s gonna yell ‘Attack!’/And you don’t feel the steel/Til it’s hanging out your back” is a chilling little quatrain. Injecting murder, intimations of violence, and terror into rock is of course just one more way that Scott kept his audience on their toes; like Mick Jagger with “Gimme Shelter” and “Midnight Rambler,” the horror of the tune is meant to let the audience/listener know: “Hey, wake up, this is serious!”
Of course, it probably all got too serious for the Young brothers when Scott died just as the band were finally beginning to supernova with the success of Highway to Hell; I always felt that the most chilling part of any AC/DC song is in Scott’s “Live Wire” when he sings, “I ain’t foolin’, cantchoo tell?” We most certainly could: his death made so many of his lyrics make sense, as it was clear that he really was living the “one-way ticket” life he so often alluded to. Particularly of note are these lines from “Ride On” off of Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap:
