AC DC by Mick Wall

Author:Mick Wall [Wall, Mick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409115366
Publisher: Orion Books

CHAPTER TEN

A Wolf in Wolf’s Clothing

Although Let There Be Rock barely scratched the US Top 200 (peaking at No. 154), it was the start of a journey that would result, over the next three years, in AC/DC becoming one of the biggest rock bands in America. These, though, were hard miles they would have to travel. Arriving in New York, the last week of August, for two shows – third on the bill to NY punk elders The Dictators at a sold-out show at the 3,400-capacity Palladium, followed by a much smaller but more media-friendly spot, it was thought, at the punk-credible CBGB’s, opening for local power pop new-wavers Marbles – just as they had in Britain a year before, AC/DC often got thrown in with the wellspring of punk and new-wave acts now flourishing in the United States as well. ‘I booked them into the Palladium,’ admits Doug Thaler. ‘Not because I thought AC/DC was punk. To me it wasn’t the Ramones. It was something else with a much harder edge than that. I just wanted to get them in front of as many people as possible at their first New York show and we did the whole three-dollar ticket thing with The Dictators and the Michael Stanley Band, who were also on the bill, getting the various different labels to underwrite it. Michael Kleffner was the one who booked them into CBGB’s.’ Looking to add a little credibility-by-association, Kleffner thought he was doing the band a favour. But if AC/DC left the Marbles crowd frankly baffled, it did lead to Bon being interviewed the next day for New York fanzine Punk, who asked him for the meaning of life. Bon shrugged: ‘As good a time and as short as possible.’

Says Phil Carson: ‘AC/DC were not a punk group. But somehow in America they kind of thought they were because of the way Bon and Angus dressed . . . Jerry Greenberg thought they were a hit almost by mistake. Because the American fans thought we better like punk cos it’s hip but we don’t like punk cos it sucks. But we like this, let’s buy it. And that’s how I think AC/DC really got its start in America, because of the look of them. And of course as soon as you got kids through the door to see them play they were hooked and the word started to spread . . .’

The important thing was to keep the band working, keep the machine rolling, no matter what. On that score, at least, Atlantic could have no complaints. ‘They came here determined to crack this country,’ says Barry Bergman, who took it upon himself to push the boys at Rockefeller Plaza as hard as he could. ‘They were the hardest-working musicians I had ever known. They would play for five people, twenty people, they never gave a damn. They played every joint and dive that existed and never complained about it either. There was no way they couldn’t make it – no way.

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