After more than 40 years of defiant, high-decibel rock, AC/DC is facing big challenges, just as the band is about to release a studio album, ‘Rock or Bust.’
In the songs of AC/DC, rock has been a noun (“Can’t Stop Rock ’n’ Roll”), an adjective (“Rock ’n’ Roll Damnation”) and a verb (“It’s a Long Way to the Top If You Wanna Rock ’n’ Roll”).
It’s also been a rallying cry (“Rock ’n’ Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution”), a cause (“For Those About to Rock We Salute You”) and a gospel (“Let There Be Rock”).
As AC/DC now deals with some of its biggest career challenges since forming 41 years ago in Australia, the band is putting all its faith in the R-word. “Rock or Bust,” AC/DC’s 15th studio album, set for release Dec. 2, consists of 11 characteristically brash and uncomplicated songs—four with the word “rock” in the title.
“I believe in it,” says Angus Young, the band’s 59-year-old lead guitarist. His onstage image, defined by a schoolboy outfit and a sneer, made him both the mascot for AC/DC and one of the world’s most recognizable symbols of rock attitude.
His band, which rebounded after the death of its original lead singer, Bon Scott, in 1980, is currently down two core members. Just as a promotional campaign for the new album started, Phil Rudd, the band’s longtime drummer (and fellow Rock 'n' roll Hall of Fame member) was arrested this month in New Zealand. Mr. Rudd is charged with threatening to kill someone and possessing marijuana and methamphetamine. He is scheduled to appear in a New Zealand court Nov. 27. Mr. Rudd’s attorney didn’t respond to requests to comment.
Another blow to AC/DC has been the loss of founding member Malcolm Young, who at age 61 is suffering from dementia and living in a special-care facility in Australia. Malcolm’s rhythm guitar balanced the headlong lead of his younger brother Angus, and he was a driving force behind AC/DC’s songwriting. His diagnosis coincided with the release of the band’s previous album, six years ago, but he continued to perform with them on a tour that lasted a year and a half.
The new release, “Rock or Bust,” is the first album AC/DC has recorded without Malcolm. Stevie Young, a nephew of Angus and Malcolm, has succeeded him. But the band says some of the album’s building blocks, such as certain guitar riffs and choruses, were created by Malcolm years ago.
As other aging rock bands struggle to update their sound, AC/DC is proudly retrograde. In the title track of “Rock or Bust,” over a slashing riff and a beat you could break rocks to, singer Brian Johnson yowls about cranking up amplifiers and making a sound like a siren. In his controlled shriek, he sings, “We be a guitar band. We play across the land.”
Not since the 1980s has it been fashionable for rock bands to record songs about being in a rock band—at least not without irony. “Here are good words to live by: Don’t sing about rock—ever—unless you’re AC/DC. I don’t want to hear that from anybody else,” says producer Brendan O’Brien. Known for his work with bands such as Pearl Jam, Mr. O’Brien produced “Rock or Bust” and its successful predecessor, 2008’s “Black Ice.” His job was to help create songs that would sound instantly recognizable to fans, he says, noting that the simplicity of AC/DC’s best work is deceptive. “These songs are played really heavily and aggressively but at their core they are great pop songs.”
The band has had its share of duds, releasing a string of forgettable albums in the ’80s. But its hits rank among music’s blue-chip commodities. “Back In Black,” the first album AC/DC recorded with Mr. Johnson, has sold tens of millions of copies world-wide and more than 7 million alone in the U.S. since 1991, when Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales.
Loaded with staples like “You Shook Me All Night Long,” the album is a prerequisite for young listeners discovering the hard-rock canon, making it a peer of Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” or “Legend,” by Bob Marley and the Wailers. According to SoundScan, the 34-year-old album has sold about 117,000 copies so far in 2014, roughly the same amount as it did last year, and the year before that.
The band’s most recent album, “Black Ice,” was carried exclusively by Wal-Mart. The album became the No. 2 world-wide seller of 2008, and the ensuing tour was the second-best-selling international concert tour of 2009 (behind U2), grossing $227 million from sales of 2.6 million tickets.
AC/DC was one of the last major acts to release its music in digital formats. The band’s catalog wasn’t available on iTunes until 2012. Mr. Young says, “When the latest thing comes along, everyone wants to be the first to jump in. But we were hesitant. We were the same even when cassettes came along.”
Though at times he worried that being a digital holdout would hurt AC/DC’s career standing, he says the strategy proved successful, at least financially. “It was only later on that people said, hey, you were pretty clever. We were doing better because people were still buying the physical product.”
So far the band hasn’t released its music on streaming services such as Spotify, where artists earn less compared with the royalty rates from paid downloads and CD sales. “You have to put a market value on what you do,” Mr. Young says.
During a recent interview in a New York hotel suite, the guitarist leans in to better hear questions. At just over 5-feet tall, and wearing jeans, a long-sleeve T-shirt and Converse sneakers, he looks boyish even without the trademark schoolboy get-up that his older sister first tailored long ago. He jokes about the costume’s youthful effect: “From a space of 300 yards, I’m covered. Get too close to the stage and you’ll say, wait a minute, what’s Tutankhamun doing up there?”
Sitting across from Mr. Young, bass player Cliff Williams shrugs off the changing musical landscape. After weathering 40 years of industry cycles, it’s hard to get worked up about Spotify or other new market forces. “How will it be any different, really? We go out and do our thing and hopefully people will like it,” Mr. Williams says.
The band still hasn’t announced whether it will replace Mr. Rudd in a concert tour being planned for next year. The drummer (who in 1983 left AC/DC for a decade) played on the “Rock or Bust” album, but Mr. Young says it was difficult to get him into the studio and that he was absent from a music-video shoot for a new song, “Play Ball.”
“When he did show up, he did his job. But it wasn’t the Phil that I’ve known for a long time,” Mr. Young says.
Mr. Williams says the band won’t hesitate to tour without him. “Whatever Phil’s problem is, he’s got to sort it out, but we’re going to move forward.”
Though AC/DC has been criticized for rehashing its sound, no one accuses the band of trying to be something it’s not. Mr. Young says he has dabbled in piano melodies from time to time, but quickly got such larks out of his system. The band has never released a true ballad. Too cheesy, Mr. Young says.
He recoils at the sound of “pleasant harmonies and crooning,” a reflex that goes back to his childhood love of Little Richard and other proto-rockers. Even with later influences like the Beatles and the Kinks, he only wanted to hear the hard-driving tunes with an edge on them. The gentler stuff? “It’s syrup,” he says.
Though the band says Stevie Young’s guitar style is a ringer for his uncle’s, AC/DC felt Malcolm’s absence acutely in the studio. He was the more disciplined and detail-oriented of the brothers, and would even step in occasionally to help a frustrated Angus calibrate his signature guitar sound on his equipment. “If I start fiddling with it, I diddle with it so much it diddles right out of the ballpark,” Angus says. “But Malcolm knew those Marshall amps. He would walk over and go tweak, tweak, tweak, and that was it.”
After his memory failed, Malcolm told his brother and the other members of the band to carry on with AC/DC, echoing a similar decision from decades before.
Angus recalls, “The biggest tragedy we had early on was when Bon Scott died. It was Mal who said to me that the best therapy was to keep writing songs. Before that, we were lost.”
“I think that’s what it is with rock music,” he adds. “It helps you hang tough, I guess.”
