Here’s a clip featuring Scots-Australian rock ‘n’ roll juggernauts AC/DC, fronted by original lead singer Bon Scott in arguably his most convincing performance with “Rock ‘n’ Roll Singer”, taken from the 1976 album High Voltage.

There is a false split I think having to do with the old dinosaur progressive rock crowd, which takes in stadium rock too, and the short sharp shock of punk rock.  When it comes to the direction of rock music, the two poles are often portrayed as the only games in town in the mid-70s.  But AC/DC proved that straight ahead blues-soaked rock ‘n’ roll music was alive and well, although it took some convincing at first – Rolling Stone magazine panned High Voltage in 1976 as being the lowest common denominator in rock that year – “a new low” they said at the time.  Yet, they’d missed the point.  When you boil everything else away, what this band created was a pure breed rock band, uninterested in pretension of any sort, and putting their own rock ‘n’ roll dreams in practice for the sake of anyone who ever rocked an air guitar or sang into a hair brush.

And that’s what this song was all about – fantasy.  It’s about telling the Man where to stick his golden handshake, his silly rules, his moral standing, and all the other shit that they teach to kids in school.  This was a high-powered statement which, although fueled by the dual engines of Malcolm Young’s rhythm guitar and his brother Angus’ lead, really wasn’t much different than Chuck Berry bitching about being in school when all day long he’d been wanting to dance.  It’s rock ‘n’ roll.

Really, this song is about becoming something other than a cog in the wheel, a reality for most of AC/DC’s audience perhaps.  Yet that audience is delivered by three minutes of rock, with Bon Scott as their voice.  And that is what this group understood from the get-go; speak for your audience and they’ll be with you for the next thirty five plus years.  And so they are.

AC/DC newest album Black Ice is out now, and the band are touring it.

Check out the AC/DC official website for information about tours and other stuff.

Enjoy!