Bad Boy Boogie

AC/DC’s “War Machine” incinerated San Antonio’s AT&T Center last December, and tonight the Frank Erwin Center’s sprinkler system tests its mettle against the Aussie rock & roll tank. Thirty years ago, Paris, France, preserved Bon Scott for Austin, Texas.

AC/DC’s first American arson, at the Armadillo World Headquarters in 1977, left a singular scorch on the band’s Highway to Hell, which came out two years later. Highway to Hell was released August 1979, father figure and singer Bon Scott died February 1980, his tribute Back in Black appeared that August, and Let There Be Rock the film premiered in Paris – where it was filmed – September 1980. What have you accomplished in the last 12 months?

The film Let There Be Rock today reveals itself as just another tour stop rock-doc only it’s the Highway to Hell tour. During the first generation of video rental stores, it shelved a staple in the music section, but still hasn’t been made over on DVD. Coming across the VHS for rent at Encore Records last year brought the document back to me just as Black Ice was proving itself the best AC/DC album since hell froze over. Encore has handily converted it to DVD, its VHS tape sound along the lines of a soup can and string, but it's vision not sound that’s the beauty here. Besides, the charcoal-streaked soundtrack to Let There Be Rock the movie beats as the 2-CD heart of 1997’s Bonfire box set. Cake and eat it too.

Simply seeing Bon Scott alive and in the moment, always with a Cheshire grin and serving a plate of ham, remains rock & roll revelation. Titles come in after 10 minutes, with the disclosure that oui, this is a French film – oh those Gallic hellions! – and then you’re onstage with the same five musicians of 30 years later, today, save for Scott, on whom lingering crane shots rather than MTV edits center. When the band cranks the propeller of Highway to Hell’s “Shot Down in Flames” second, dopamine runs down your cerebellum as if from a beer bong. By “Sin City” the Aussies’ resolve has stiffened. The song’s bass and hi-hat pause, with Scott’s Mephistophelean finger crook, lights Angus Young’s fire right beside him. Hail Satan!

Cut to Scott on the tour bus having just been thrown the question, “Are you waiting for the third world war?” There’s Phil Rudd in his Porsche racing Cliff Williams’ biplane while on the soundtrack the band begins a full frontal assault of Highway’s “Walk All Over You.” Scott walks on water, Angus riffs mad hornet on “Bad Boy Boogie,” which includes his schoolboy’s strip, and Malcolm Young shoots goals on himself and chases it with ale.

Second half of the set, beginning with a scrappy “Highway to Hell,” jolts out a lightning bolt when its LP successor, “Girls Got Rhythm,” is charged with assault next. Offstage color continues, meanwhile: the group loosed in a Champagne cellar and Scott’s boyish interview segment out back of the bus depot (“Bon, the band says you’re special.” “I’m a special drunkard. I drink too much.”) “Whole Lotta Rosie,” nine-minute spank “Rocker,” on which Angus takes oxygen and then off onto the crowd on the shoulders of a roadie, and the movie’s title song closer leave no run time for the end-run “T.N.T.” of the CD.

Bon Scott, dead from drink in London at the age of 33. Three decades later, Let There Be Rock the movie still bottles the culprit.