The Story of AC/DC: Let There Be Rock
by Susan Masino
Omnibus Press, 244 pp., $22.95
With the noted exception of Chuck Berry, who transfixed Angus Young into his eternal “School Days,” AC/DC defines rock in a way mostly unattainable throughout music history. As such, the story of the Aussies is the music itself: the sexual escapades (“Whole Lotta Rosie,” “Go Down”), “Bedlam in Belgium,” the transition from Bon Scott to Brian Johnson. Susan Masino’s Let There Be Rock merely fills in the remaining voids with dates, numbers, and awards, tracing the band’s “long way to the top” from their first show in the states at Austin’s Armadillo World Headquarters in 1977 through the band’s canonization into the educational curriculum by way of Jack Black and Richard Linklater’s School of Rock. Her writing is reminiscent of AC/DC’s abundant filler – simple, consistent, completely forgettable. Her insight is disappointing, viewing the band from the perspective of a super fan and blind to the fact that by the time the band was touring with a 38-foot bronze statue of Angus, the group had become a caricature of itself. More frustrating, she never dishes dirt on any “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.” Rock & roll damnation.
This article appears in December 1 • 2006.