But, Johnson makes sense. First of all, he’s not an operatic singer, which sets AC/DC apart from almost all of their competition at the time; and most important, Johnson’s style, instead of riding a sarcastic wave over the listeners head, lobs an intense glottal detonation at it. Brian Johnson was balding, old, and weathered looking, yet still full of regular-guy power and piss. In short, choosing Johnson was a wise populist move on the band’s part, and it’s a move that has been paying off ever since.
Part V: Back in Black and Conservative Rock: How It’s Done, Son
How successful has that move been? Let’s look at some numbers: The album they first made together, 1980’s Back in Black, has sold an estimated 42 million copies, making it the second most successful album of all time. They have sold more than 200 million albums worldwide, making them the sixth best-selling musical artist of all time. There is only one other rock band that has outsold them, and that is the Beatles. Their discography has outsold Led Zeppelin, the Stones, and ABBA. They are the most successful hard rock band of all time.
And they did this by taking Back in Black as an exercise in redefining rock and roll. In an era of new wave, punk, emerging hip-hop, disco, and all sorts of splintering musical fads and trends, BIB was insistent and powerful, but more important, it was inclusive. Whereas so much of hard rock and metal was about defining oneself as outside of the norm, AC/DC were re-writing the rules, or rather, dumbing them down. As Johnson sings on “Rock And Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution,” “Rock and roll ain’t no riddle, man/To me it makes good, good sense.”
You have to place this move in its historical context a bit to appreciate how successful it is: KISS had their own army; Judas Priest would soon be emphasizing the exclusive nature of their union of metalheads. All around the world, lines were being drawn between genres, as increased sophistication and specification in music was creating more and more separate musical experiences for people growing up and experiencing culture. AC/DC’s way through this was to appeal to the base: If rock and roll is a low culture, then play low culture music that isn’t ashamed to be what it is — and stick to it, because once people get it, they are going to want it again and again. It worked: AC/DC as a brand became synonymous with back-to-basics hard rock, and what the industry found was that no matter how a music fan might self-identify, the odds are that somewhere in there was a fan of back-to-basics hard rock. When you sell 42 million copies of an album, it isn’t all to the faithful — but that’s the price you pay when you reach out to everyone.
This is, of course, completely at odds with so many people’s conception of what rock is all about; especially the Woodstock generation’s sense that rock and roll is merely a means to cultural radicalism and fringe expression. Compared to the freak-out acid haze of even the most resilient ’60s leftovers, the music of AC/DC comes down like a gigantic boot on top of experimentation and genre studies: AC/DC took previous rock forms, diluted their essence, and then took over the world with repeated lessons in How It’s Done.
