Youngs : The Brothers Who Built Ac/Dc (9781466865204) (18 page)

Not only would
Flick of the Switch
and
Fly on the Wall
gobble like turkeys (achieving only single platinum apiece) but they would also ensure an infuriated
AC/DC
left Atlantic. It's not hard to imagine that it would have been particularly galling for the Youngs to hear that
Dirty Deeds
, the record considered so substandard in 1976, was enthusiastically promoted by Atlantic with beach balls.

“I remember doing a promotion with WBCN in Boston,” says Judy Libow. “We'd decided to do a summer promotion and we took the song ‘Big Balls' and we had these huge beach balls made up and the station would give them away. They'd be all over the beaches. We had a great time with the band and the music.”

Why did Morris fail to appreciate what
AC/DC
were about?

“Doug appreciated
AC/DC
in his own way,” says Derek Shulman, who at sister label Atco, in one of the most magnificent intra-corporate grifts in music history, managed to nab
AC/DC
from Morris in a trade for The Who's Pete Townshend. “The problem, from what I felt, was the band's slight disdain for anyone on the ‘record business' side. They related to musicians but not particularly well to the people who worked for them in the ‘biz.' Doug certainly knew they were unique and fantastic sellers; however, I believe their less-than-showbiz personalities never allowed the ‘biz' into their insular world.”

Mark Gable got a sense of that insular world in his professional and personal encounters with the three brothers.

“My dealings were more with George on a professional basis, though I did meet Angus once and was lucky enough to have beers with Malcolm on a few occasions. Malcolm is very shy, not a loudmouth and not even the slightest bit arrogant. He's very switched on about music and in particular the business side of things. When I met Angus we chatted for a while but he didn't get my sense of humor. One thing I learned about the Youngs is that they do take themselves very seriously. Along with the huge talent comes a certain fragility. They are very careful about people they don't know. There is a sense that
we are on the inside and you are not
. That was always my impression when dealing with both Albert Productions and the Youngs
.
”

Shulman, however, managed to see a side of the brothers most never see.

“I haven't seen them in a while now. The last time I saw them on the road was a couple of years ago. I really love and relate to the guys. They are great people who live life by their own rules without any interference or manipulation from the outside. Just sitting in the dressing room with Angus nursing his cup of tea and cigarette and discussing issues
not
business related is completely refreshing.”

There's some irony in the fact that
Dirty Deeds
, the album that in 1981 practically destroyed
AC/DC
's relationship with Atlantic, was the same album that Atlantic very nearly used as an excuse to cut their ties with
AC/DC
five years earlier. But it wasn't going to end any other way. The Youngs' Glasgow mentality—
If you put it on me or mine, I'll get you back
—made sure of that.

*   *   *

After failing to convince the suits at Atlantic in New York that
Dirty Deeds
was a sellable proposition,
AC/DC
was in a state of shellshock. The adventure that had started in 1976 with the US version of
High Voltage
looked to be over as soon as it had begun.

“It just pissed us off,” says Mark Evans. “The band never took criticism well. Especially coming from the record company, the guys who were supposed to be in the same tent, saying, ‘No, mate, it's not good enough.' The band was pissed off.”

So the well-reported story goes, Jerry Greenberg wanted to drop the band but Phil Carson managed to persuade Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun (misspelled as “Neshui” in the Wall biography) to keep them at the label on the condition their advance was reduced on future albums.

Carson reiterates the account for this book: “There certainly was discussion about dropping the band at Atlantic in New York. The A&R department thought the group was going nowhere and that they were very derivative. That's why
Dirty Deeds
was never released in sequence. However, they did have the sense to consult me before actually dropping the group and, by that time, I was making very serious inroads with the group in Europe, and we were certainly recouping the $25,000 that we had to pay for each album.”

The wash-up?

“Nesuhi Ertegun was able to tell the Atlantic team that the international people were right behind
AC/DC
.”

Yet Greenberg remembers differently. He rejects suggestions that he didn't like the band or that he didn't care about the band. He rejects the story, put forward by Michael Browning in the Murray Engleheart book, that Carson went over the top of him to petition the Erteguns for mercy.

“I don't know anything about that,” he says. “There was
some
conversation about [dropping the band]. But it wasn't my decision. There was someone in the A&R department, who I basically trusted, who said that we should drop them. I never,
ever
was thinking about dropping the band. The band was touring Europe at that time; they hadn't played a date in America. Phil Carson was the day-to-day person [for
AC/DC
at Atlantic]. What I remember basically is Atlantic—and that was
everybody
, not just necessarily me—was not that excited about that record.

“The feeling from the people at Atlantic was, ‘I don't know if we should put this record out.' I cannot deny that. Atlantic did not want to put the record out, there's no question. That's a fact. But as far as ever wanting to drop the group, I don't believe we ever wanted to drop the group.”

So what was the true involvement of the Erteguns, the top executives at Atlantic, in the fate of
AC/DC
? The younger, Ahmet, told
Billboard
he'd seen the Australian band for the first time at punk club CBGB in New York City in 1977 but wasn't sold even then: “I'm not sure I would have signed them when I first heard them … they were pushing the envelope … and very ratty-looking.”

“Ahmet wasn't really around much during those days,” says Greenberg. “He was traveling a lot. The first tour I remember
AC/DC
came over and we had them at the Whisky A Go-Go [in Los Angeles]; we had them playing all those little clubs, and Ahmet wasn't very much involved [at that point].”

But when they took off, says Larry Yasgar, Atlantic's head of singles, “Ahmet jumped right in.”

*   *   *

Judy Libow, who went on to become vice-president of promotion & product development at Atlantic, backs the Carson version: “There was a point in time when there was talk of dropping the band.

“I remember going down to a WEA convention in Florida. WEA was the big distribution arm for all the labels—Warner Bros, Elektra, Atlantic. This one year [1977] Atlantic decided to have
AC/DC
play down there for everybody: all the labels, all the staff, all the WEA people. And most people hadn't yet seen them play. It was a small venue. I'll never forget they came out into this club that was packed with all these industry people and they did their thing. Angus was on Bon's shoulders, up and down the stage, he's mooning everybody. It was just an incredible thing to see.

“Sometime later, years later, I was on the West Coast, on a road trip in California, and I drove with our West Coast promotions guy, Barry Freeman, into Fresno;
AC/DC
was going to be playing there, and there was not much going on in Fresno back then. It was barely a city. And
AC/DC
came out and Angus pulled down his pants. We were standing on the side of the stage and the crowd started throwing garbage at them. It was crazy. They didn't expect it. They hadn't yet heard about this part of their performance. It was wild. Garbage was coming from everywhere. They just kept going. The band just kept on playing. They were very professional. They were always responsive. They always did whatever we asked them to do. Everybody who worked with them loved them.”

But offstage
AC/DC
was doing it tough. Nick Maria was senior vice-president of sales at Atlantic. He was with Libow at the WEA Records convention at the 4 O'Clock Club in Fort Lauderdale, the last show of the first leg of their first American tour.

“They were in the restaurant having breakfast and they didn't even have enough money to pay for it,” he says. “I did the first allocation for them [of
High Voltage
] to ship out to the entire country. I think it was only 4000 to 6000 units.”

“The first album stiffed,” says Larry Yasgar. “It didn't happen at all. I think it did about 50,000. We knew what we had but we didn't know how big it would get.”

By 1979,
AC/DC
was shifting ten times that amount.

*   *   *

There had been no crossed wires between Phil Carson and Atlantic's Gene Wilder–lookalike president, Jerry Greenberg, when the pair flew to Hamburg, Germany, to see
AC/DC
in the flesh in September 1976. Greenberg had had his own band in the 1950s, Jerry Green and the Passengers. By 1964, he was working as a record promoter. By 1974, only 32 years old, he was Atlantic's president, personally appointed by Ahmet Ertegun.

“I flew to London and Phil said, ‘You have to see this band,'” he says.

“Every year, at least once, Jerry would come over, usually for the international meetings that took place in the autumn,” remembers Carson. “I seized on an opportunity to take Jerry to see
AC/DC
at a club called Fabrik in Hamburg. The place was packed and people were literally hanging from the rafters.”

“We flew to Hamburg. I'm a drummer. I'm a musician. I understand good musicians and rock 'n' roll,” says Greenberg. “I
flipped out
when I saw the band. I'll never forget after the show I saw them all pile into this little truck; that's the way I started. When I was 16 years old I had a four-piece band and when we used to have to travel and do a gig 300 or 400 miles away overnight we could only afford to take one car. I used to only take a bass drum and a snare drum. I couldn't even take my full drum set. And when I saw that, with that band in Germany, all of a sudden it was like I relived my career and I said, ‘Man, I gotta make sure that these kids happen.'

“I went back to America. We had a video of the group. I called everyone into the conference room. I said, ‘I want you to see what could be the next biggest band for Atlantic Records.' We played
AC/DC
on the VHS. Atlantic was a very big rock label but we were a very big pop label, too. We had a lot of older people in marketing that didn't quite get Angus running around in shorts or on Bon Scott's shoulders. The expressions on some of the faces I can remember to this day. However, at that meeting I made a proclamation that we were going to break this band in America.”

Larry Yasgar remembers the troops being read the riot act: “We had a meeting of all departments and were told that the group we had to bring home at that time was
AC/DC
. [Atlantic general manager] David Glew was the one who had to put the hammer down to everybody once the word came from the top, ‘You've got to bring this group in.' We had a lot of pressure. A
lot
of pressure.
Really bring the group in
. All everybody talked about from that moment was
AC/DC
. We pounded everybody on that one.”

What of the widespread rumor that Bon Scott was firmly in Atlantic's firing line?

Alleges Anthony O'Grady: “He was pretty lucky to survive in
AC/DC
because when they went over to America the first thing Atlantic said to them was, ‘We think you have to get rid of the singer because we can't understand him.' Atlantic ummed and ahhed that Bon was not too easily understood by US boofheads. US record companies had the same problem with Jimmy Barnes and Alex Harvey—in fact, anyone with a Scottish accent. But Angus, Malcolm and George held the line.”

I put this to Greenberg and ask him if Scott's place in the band was ever an issue at Atlantic and discussed across his desk.

“No. I never did,” he says. “I never made that suggestion.”

His UK counterpart Carson supports him: “There was certainly no such discussion with me. Jerry is one of the most astute presidents in the entire record industry, and he got it in a heartbeat. This was just as well because all those label people in America were telling him the band had no future. Jerry saw something spectacular with his own eyes and set his people to work to come up with a plan.

“However, it wasn't until John Kalodner joined the A&R department, and Michael Klenfner came in to head up marketing and promotion, that we got any real traction. Once those two became involved, things changed very quickly for
AC/DC
and Atlantic.”

*   *   *

Who is this mythical John Kalodner figure with his flowing ginger beard, long hair and John Lennon–style wire-rimmed glasses? Go to his website and his short biography gushes about him signing Foreigner and other acts.

“John Kalodner not only finds the magic, he also helps to make the magic happen,” it blathers without a hint of humility. “
AC/DC
had been signed to Atlantic in the UK, but there was resistance to picking up the band for the States. Kalodner was behind
AC/DC
and knew they could make it. He even physically cut and edited the band's recorded tapes together for them.”

On the fan site
acdczone.com
, he's also listed among key “
AC/DC
personnel” alongside Bruce Fairbairn, Mike Fraser, Mutt Lange, David Mallet, Tony Platt, Harry Vanda and lighting director Cosmo Wilson. An elusive figure, Kalodner could not be contacted for this book, despite several attempts.