Youngs : The Brothers Who Built Ac/Dc (9781466865204) (16 page)

But it was a big deal. Jacksonville was one of the key cities in the United States where the band first got some traction playing live.

“Fans had been listening to the band on the radio before they got here,” says Drashin. “Airplay helped sell the show but the fans liked what they heard or never would have bought into it.
AC/DC
became headliners in record time. I thought they had made it in the middle of the first song they played.

“What set
AC/DC
apart were their lyrics, their show/stage presence and the overall timing. Kids were delirious about live shows and records. But I think the southeast became a stronghold for
AC/DC
because of the early promoters like myself. There were just a few of us and we had to make our own game plan. Getting airplay was different back then because of federal regulation [that restricted the number of radio stations a company could own]. I was able to work with local DJs that I hired as MCs for some of the shows. This gave them an incentive to play the music. It was a win-win situation. The stations played the music to promote the shows and the station and employees gained recognition at the shows.”

But not in the history books.

*   *   *

Remarkably, there was another unsung American radio hero working hard to push
AC/DC
.

His name was Tony Berardini, a programmer for KTIM, a small rock station in San Rafael, just outside San Francisco, California.

“Tony was a fanatic,” says Judy Libow, who was with Atlantic's promotion department for 16 years and started out pushing the band on college radio. “He went on to program and eventually become the general manager at WBCN in Boston, which was one of the elite progressive rock radio stations in the country for many years. The guy would eat razor blades for
AC/DC
. He just loved the band.”

And still does, nearly four decades on.

“Their music was real,” says Berardini, now vice-president of talent development at CBS Radio. “It always rocked hard—in an era of music that featured singer/songwriters and disco. They had no pretense nor made apologies for who they were or what they did and they had a great sense of humor in their lyrics; lots of tongue in cheek. I loved that about them.”

He has only happy memories of that time.

“I was managing director and a jock at KTIM and one of my jocks, Wild Bill Scott, brought the album to a music meeting, we listened to it and immediately added ‘It's a Long Way to the Top.' It was a hard-rocking song with a bagpipe lead. Never saw that one coming. The lyrics were great; I could really relate as a jock making $2 an hour working late-night shifts six days a week. Not only does it perfectly capture the music business but in my opinion it's a damn good description of life. It will be the last song played when they finally plant me.

“This was long before the Internet and social media so the only way I would know if someone was playing a band was through the trade papers. We were such a small station in the Bay Area that we didn't even report to a lot of the trade publications. All the jocks at the station loved
High Voltage
and we played it to death. We were conscious that no other stations in the Bay Area were playing the band. We really didn't give a shit what other stations were doing. We played it because it rocked.”

When he moved to Boston, nothing changed.

“WBCN was getting its ass kicked in the ratings and Charlie Kendall, the program director, wanted the station to rock more. He and I had met over the years and he knew my preference for music that rocked. The first song I played on my first air shift was ‘It's a Long Way to the Top.' I figured that would set the tone for what was to come. The next week I added the album to our playlist, which given WBCN's history with harder music—not much outside of Queen and Aerosmith, championed by Maxanne Sartori, a great WBCN jock—I think surprised the music industry.”

With the support of Bartlett, Berardini and other unheralded believers in the band at radio stations from KMAC/KISS in San Antonio to WLVQ in Columbus, “It's a Long Way to the Top” helped get the band its shot at the big time.

It wasn't going to let the opportunity slip.

*   *   *

Today, Boston is
AC/DC
territory. The New England Patriots play “Thunderstruck,” “For Those About to Rock” and other
AC/DC
songs before, during and after games at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough. In the working-class Irish-Catholic area known as South Boston, the gritty milieu for Martin Scorsese's
The Departed
and Gus Van Sant's
Good Will Hunting
,
AC/DC
has taken hold because their songs are not just honest, real and aspirational, but also about not forgetting where you come from. There's no place like that place, whether you can physically step back into it or if it just remains in your heart. You shouldn't try to shake it off because it makes you what you are. Growing up in the Young family or the streets of South Boston, the bonds of family and birthplace are everything.

Boston and the outlying city of Quincy (pronounced
Quin-zee
by true locals) is also home to Dropkick Murphys, an Irish-American punk-rock stadium band that has managed to do what so many others have not: crafted a serviceable cover of an
AC/DC
song, taking “It's a Long Way to the Top” and turning it into something uniquely their own. They also perform “Dirty Deeds” and “TNT” live.

In January 2013, at McGreevy's in Back Bay, the “Dropkicks” perform a special free gig to celebrate the launch of an album with a very
AC/DC
-sounding title,
Signed and Sealed in Blood
. The bar is owned by Ken Casey, the group's vocalist and bassist. I turn up, manage to get in and join the huddle of Red Sox caps and Bruins shirts inside. There must be 200 people crammed into the tiny space, many more disappointed out on the sidewalk. When it comes time to play their anthem, “Shipping Up to Boston,” immortalized in
The Departed
, the joint trembles so violently it's like the walls are going to come tumbling down: what
AC/DC
were doing in small venues in Australia, England and America in the mid to late 1970s.

After the show, Casey poses for photos and signs merchandise. For all his wealth and newfound fame, he clearly connects with his fans and hasn't forgotten where he comes from. This is a man who's gone on the record as saying, “I think our goal is to be the
AC/DC
of Celtic punk rock.” His face lights up when I mention I'm writing a book about the Youngs.

“Genius songwriters and showmen,” he says. “They're just everything it is about being a real rock 'n' roll band. It's not about how you look. It's just about the music.
AC/DC
were a fucking man's band and they stuck to their roots and stuck to their guns. You always know what you're going to get from
AC/DC
and that's like what we try to be. We want our fans to know what they're getting and to be able to trust that the music's going to be what they signed on for. That's what
AC/DC
have always done.”

I ask Tony Berardini what it is about Boston that saw them gain such a foothold.

“The response to
AC/DC
on the East Coast was far greater than the West Coast,” he says. “Outside of the city of Boston, which is relatively small, there are a lot of blue-collar, working-class towns with a much larger population than the actual city. I think
AC/DC
's hard-rocking music and subject matter appealed to that working class.
AC/DC
are real, no-pretense, no-apologies, what-you-see-is-what-you-get, stripped-down, straight-ahead rock. I believe audiences can hear and see ‘bullshit' miles away. There is no bullshit in
AC/DC
's music or shows. Think about it: the Dropkicks are in much the same vein, in their case traditional/Irish punk, and—let's face it—who else could do a respectable cover of ‘It's a Long Way to the Top,' including the bagpipe solo?”

Berardini himself had MCed
AC/DC
's first Boston gig.

“In the fall of '78 I found out
AC/DC
were coming to Boston to play a small club, the 500-seat Paradise Theater. I immediately called the label and said we wanted to do a live broadcast. The label was like, ‘Really? Sure, no problem.' That was in the days when you could do something like that. It would never happen today. The club was packed; I got on stage and did the intro, which went out over the air. Unfortunately, in my enthusiasm I dropped an F-bomb and probably a couple of other expletives in the middle of the rant. The crowd went absolutely nuts and the band proceeded to blow the doors off the place.”

The Paradise still stands on Commonwealth Avenue, half a mile from Fenway Park, but has been renamed the Paradise Rock Club. The stage takes up most of the space in a tiny room. Going there, it's incredible to contemplate that
AC/DC
went from performing in front of a few hundred people at dives like the Paradise to performing in front of hundreds of thousands in Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro and Toronto and even millions at an airfield in Moscow. No other band can mobilize a mass of people like
AC/DC
.

“
AC/DC
are still rocking as hard today as they did on their first albums. They sold out the TD Garden and Gillette Stadium on their
Black Ice
tour—I went to both—and their shows are still balls to the wall, 35 or so years later. You tell me how many bands have done it that long and with that kind of integrity?”

*   *   *

Not everyone agrees, though, on
AC/DC
's mortgage on the “no bullshit” Australian sound.

Rob Riley was just 17 when he first met the Youngs at South Side Six in Melbourne and, as he says modestly, “had a blow with them at their joint in Lansdowne Road.” At 21 he moved to Sydney with the band Dallimore, an Alberts act that released a solitary single, 1980's “We Are the Kids.” A year later he joined Rose Tattoo, whose first four albums would be produced by Vanda & Young after Bon Scott had championed them to Alberts, and the marriage was instantly volatile but creatively productive.

Riley says he got “blackmailed” into joining the band. He no longer has anything to do with them, having had a spectacular falling out with frontman Angry Anderson, but will live in rock celebrity for all time for his song “We Can't Be Beaten.” Its riff is one of Australian music's most distinctive and most loved. If anyone knows the chemistry behind a good rock song, it's Riley.

“There's definitely an Aussie sound. Everyone tries to emulate it, which is a nice thing.
AC/DC
have an Australian sound but they're a
world
band. They left Australia behind a long,
long
time ago and made their way in the world. The whole world finds their music accessible, the formula they've applied.”

Mark Gable takes a similar view: “I wouldn't necessarily say that
AC/DC
are the quintessential Australian rock sound. The fact that Angus and Malcolm came from Scotland meant that they could create something that had never been created before because they were in Australia. If they had been
born
in Australia they would never have sounded like that. These guys were different: they looked different, they thought differently and they saw Australia in a way that Australians couldn't see it. They took pub rock and turned it into something that the rest of the world could appreciate.”

Even old enemies such as Radio Birdman's Deniz Tek have come around to appreciating what the Youngs have achieved since “It's a Long Way to the Top,” the kind of song he might have been talking about when he slagged off
AC/DC
as a “lame early '70s boogie trip” in the Engleheart biography. It's the same boogie that courses through the songs “High Voltage” and “Rock 'n' Roll Damnation.”

But interviewed for this book, he sounds a more contrite note: “I'm not sure where that [Engleheart] quote came from. It is certainly possible that [Birdman lead singer] Rob Younger or I said it. In our early days, in the mid 1970s, we were critical of anything we felt was aimed at mainstream acceptance or was trendy. Electric boogie rock was definitely in that category. We were pretty hard on just about every band that had industry acceptance, mainly because we were excluded ourselves.”

Time has softened that hostility.

“Regarding
AC/DC
at that time I recall appreciating their energy and tough stance but did not regard them as a band that was breaking any new ground. I'll stand by [what I said in Engleheart's book], generally, but if asked today I would not say ‘lame.'

“I suppose that they were helped by their brother and by having access to Alberts management and studio facilities. I would be very surprised if that was not the case. But that does not in any way detract, in my mind, from what they achieved when they were given the chance. I would say that theirs
became
the quintessential '70s Australian rock sound. Maybe they took over where Daddy Cool left off.”

Phil Carson, for his part, doesn't buy into the argument at all: “
AC/DC
is a great rock 'n' roll band with a sound that crosses international borders. I certainly don't think that their sound was indigenous to Australia. If you want to talk about an Australian sound, I would say that bands like Australian Crawl, Mondo Rock, Skyhooks, and Iva Davies with Flowers and Icehouse epitomize what I would call an Australian rock sound. I would put Cold Chisel halfway between that and a straight-ahead international rock feel, but
AC/DC
was full-blooded rock 'n' roll from start to finish.”

“They carved a path in Australian rock-guitar music,” says Mark Opitz. “No question. Just like The Bee Gees did with harmony and melodic music, they carved a path. Air Supply did too. If there is an Aussie rock sound,
AC/DC
play a very big part, not a total part. As far as guitar sounds are concerned, we were in that period when we didn't have instant access to the rest of the world and what was happening so you more or less invented your own and what you imagined that other guitarist was doing to his amplifier. With so many pub gigs there was a lot of time to experiment with your sound and
AC/DC
weren't alone in having a big sound. They were maybe one of the first to go that way but a lot of other people did as well.”