AC/DC
Family Jewels (Epic)
Bon Scott was reportedly wearing a red satin jumpsuit the night he took command of AC/DC in Sydney, Australia, sliding over from van wheelman to the band’s driver seat with the help of a half bottle of whiskey. By 1975, live on ABC with “Baby Please Don’t Go,” he’s aced the Lolita look, down to the Traci Lords undies. Big-top barker (“Show Business”), pulpit fop (“Let There Be Rock”), Scott even dons bagpipes on the flatbed semi, rolling the lads through “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘N’ Roll).” Almost a decade older than the rest of the band, Scott was the head of his class, and through his half of the double-disc Family Jewels, the camera laps up his outfits, antics, and tom-cat yowl like a saucerful of Kahlua. Live is live wire: “T.N.T,” flashpots and oi!, and “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” vs. hokey promos (“Jailbreak”) and bad lip-syncs (“Dog Eat Dog”). Yet even canned clips, “Rock ‘N’ Roll Damnation” and four out of six fake performances for Highway to Hell, can’t stop metal’s best distillation of the blues from cannoning out of your Surround-Sound system. “Sin City” and “Riff Raff,” both from Highway to Hell’s launching pad, 1978’s kicked-in-the-teeth Powerage, brawl with “Girls Got Rhythm” and “Highway to Hell,” taped 10 days before Scott’s death from whiskey in 1980. The track is prerecorded, but not the group, and when the latter coda closes disc one of Family Jewels, Scott melting vocally like the Wicked Witch of the West – “And I’m going down, allll the way …” – the devil’s obviously had his drink on all of us. Disc two, another 20 videos in 90 minutes, picks up where its precursor left off: in hell. Back in Black‘s Hell-ish sound-staging, live shoots from For Those About to Rock, and rehearsal vérité footage from Flick of the Switch give out halfway through the disc. Beginning with Fly on the Wall‘s long-form concept, the videos become as increasingly cheesy as their musical come-ons. “The Bonny Scott,” Scotland-born monarch of the double-entendre, would’ve aged no better, but he still got the jack.
This article appears in May 6 • 2005.
