AC/DC- “DON’T SING…SCREAM”

ANGUS YOUNG OF AC/DC PLAYING "BLUES METAL" IN SPOKANE, WA. ON 7-26-78. PHOTO BY BEN UPHAM

AC/DC-
“DON’T SING… SCREAM”
BY SYLVIE SIMMONS
THE CHRONICLE TELEGRAM
ELYRIA, OHIO
OCTOBER 12, 1979

AC-DC will not be making a movie. They’d like that made perfectly clear. They were offered the starring role in an upcoming movie called “Dracula Rock,” which will now feature the Boomtown Rats. One look at the Australian rockers’ ‘If You Want Blood” album cover and you’ll know why AC-DC was the initial choice.

“So the Rats got that one?” asks diminutive lead guitarist Angus Young, who looks like a demented schoolboy on stage but is a perfect gentleman once the show is over. “It’s obviously done the rounds. We got it first and then after us they offered it to Queen. They didn’t like that.”

AC-DC is midway through its fourth American tour in a bus that keeps breaking down in towns whose concert-goers seem to have a habit of making off with souvenirs belonging to the band. On one of the first dates on this tour, “all the kids pulled my pants off — a bit embarrassing, but it does make you very popular,” says the guitarist. A couple of stops down the line, “someone ripped off my sneakers. “I was rolling around on the floor onstage and some kid in the front row dived over and pinched them. I put up a good fight trying to get them back, but between him and his friends there wasn’t much left except one inch pieces!”

The group’s other energetic member, singer Bon Scott, still has ins clothes, but lost the cassette recorder that he carried with him everywhere to jot down notes for new songs. His method of songwriting is to sing ideas into the microphone when other than sober, play them back, to his mother, and if she says they are “not nice,” keep them in the act. “The tape got ripped off too,” says Young. “One night Bon got drunk. Three months later he sobered up and it was gone.”

This is the group who did not honor the calls for an encore at the Whiskey A Go-Go on their first U.S. tour because they fell into a deaf stupor as soon as they left for the dressing room.

Surprisingly, it is Angus, the group’s craziest member on stage, who is the quietest off. Backstage after a recent concert, he painstakingly orders a cup of tea while his colleagues go searching for bottle openers.

Presently of no fixed abode — the house they shared in Australia “got wrecked,’ said Angus philosophically, and this current tour is booked solid until January — AC-DC members are busy following the advice of their new producer, who told them: “Don’t sing — scream. People don’t want to see Liberace. “They want to see a bunch of guys out there who look like they’ve got rabies.” “It’s not a bad life,” concluded Angus, who spent more than 10 months of last year doing just that. “But it’s hard to get a decent cup of tea in this country.”

AC-DC will be appearing in concert
Thursday at Cleveland Public Hall at 8
p.m. Tickets, $7.50 in advance and $8.50
the day of the show, are available at all
Ticketron outlets.

AC/DC DISCOGRAPHY:

High Voltage (Australia) (1975)
T.N.T. (1975)
High Voltage (International) (1976)
Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (1976)
Let There Be Rock (1977)
Powerage (1978)
If You Want Blood You’ve Got It (1978) (live album)
Highway to Hell (1979)
Back in Black (1980)
For Those About to Rock We Salute You (1981)
Flick of the Switch (1983)
74 Jailbreak (1984 USA) (compilation album)
Fly on the Wall (1985)
Who Made Who (1986) (soundtrack album)
Blow Up Your Video (1988)
The Razors Edge (1990)
AC/DC Live (1992) (double live album)
Ballbreaker (1995)
Stiff Upper Lip (2000)
Black Ice (2008)

CLICK THE LINKS BELOW TO SEE AC/DC PHOTOS:
AC/DC PHOTOS BY BEN UPHAM
AND
AC/DC FINE ART AMERICA IMAGES BY BEN UPHAM
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