AC/DC – (from left) Cliff Williams, Brian Johnson, Stevie Young and Angus Young. Photo: courtesy of Sony Music India

Ahead of Aussie rock band AC/DC releasing their new album ‘Rock or Bust’, we’ve got a double dose of the band for readers. An exclusive stream of ‘Rock or Bust’ and an excerpt from the book The Youngs: The Brothers Who Built AC/DC, written by Australian author and journalist Jessie Fink. The excerpt is from the chapter  Jailbreak, named after one of AC/DC’s tracks from their album Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. Originally released in Australia late last year, the book is now available for Indian readers, published by HarperCollins India. Preorder the book here, and listen to Rock or Bust below.

Here’s an excerpt from The Youngs: The Brothers Who Built AC/DC 

”˜Jailbreak’ (1976)

Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia, 1989. Three excited young boys from the Sydney waterside suburb of Balmain, two 16, one 17, are a long way from home: up on stage at Berrimah Prison, a correctional facility described by one criminal barrister as ”˜something out of Dickens, in fact it is worse than Dickens’, in front of a rowdy crowd of 100 mostly Aboriginal felons.

Their band, Sooty Blotch, was there as part of the Teenage Roadshow, an initiative pioneered by a white-haired, ex-army philanthropist called Gil Weaver and funded by the Australia Council. It toured artists and musicians to outback communities and prisons in the country’s disadvantaged north.

Sooty Blotch mercifully changed its name to Baby Sugar Loud and for a moment in the early 1990s threatened to break the big time but instead broke up. At one point, Brisbane rockers Powderfinger, who would go on to become superstars in Australia and had a slew of #1 albums, supported them.

”˜Virtually all the faces in the crowd were black while all the guards were white,’ remembers Tom Donald, the guitarist, who now works in advertising. ”˜We played a set, all covers: Stones, Free, Cold Chisel, Hendrix. Rocked very hard. Had a great response. The prisoners in maximum security were shaking their doors ”“ you could hear them rattling.

”˜The mood had started getting crazy-electric to the point that Gil was taken aside by one of the guards and warned: “The warden says one more song.” But we were only halfway through. So Ben Quinn, our singer, announced to the crowd, “We’ve been told we can only do one more song.”

A few boos rang out, which became a din. The rattling in the cells was incessant. It was getting tense. Then came a cry from down the back.

Photo: Courtesy HarperCollins India

”˜PLAY “JAILBREAK”!’

”˜We knew the song,’ says Donald. ”˜I looked at Stuart Miller, our drummer. He was grinning like a fool. I looked at Ben. He mouthed, “No”, as if we were taking our lives in our hands. I looked at Stu again. He clicked the sticks ”“ one, two, three, four ”“ and I launched into the riff. The place went fucking nuts, and there was that brief moment where we didn’t know what was going to happen; that we could have made a terrible mistake. The guards made everyone sit down. We finished. The inmates went crazy. We were escorted out by the guards. One of them started screaming at Gil, telling him that the Teenage Roadshow was now banned from any Northern Territory Correctional facility. Gil thought the whole thing was hilarious. It was one of the most memorable moments of my entire life.’

Six years later Aboriginal rock band Yothu Yindi did their own cover of ”˜Jailbreak’ for the Fuse Box tribute album, a collection of AC/DC covers by Australian alternative acts such as Regurgitator, Ed Kuepper and The Meanies. With its didgeridoos and low, growly backup vocals, it almost betters the original: something not often said when it comes to AC/DC.

To this day, ”˜Jailbreak’ remains a song that speaks like few others do for so much of the Aboriginal experience in outback Australia ”“ for one simple reason.

”˜High rates of imprisonment,’ was the straight answer of Mandawuy Yunupingu, who spoke to me before passing away in June 2013. He sang backup vocals and the Yolngu-language part of the song. ”˜Indigenous Australians are 10 times more likely to spend time in prison than non-indigenous Australians. Also it’s simply a great song.’

But the original lyrics are also cleverly subverted. In a powerful political statement about Aboriginal deaths in custody, the words are changed at the end: He made it out/With a sheet around his neck.

”˜A sad fact but true. It’s unlikely a death in custody will come from a rope. There are not too many ropes accessible to prisoners. A sheet is the stark reality of the situation.’

”˜Jailbreak’ is not the most original of the Youngs’ songs ”“ the similarities with Them’s ”˜Gloria’ are undeniable, even though Mark Evans insists the bass line shifts and ”˜takes it into a different area’ ”“ but lyrically and musically it’s one of AC/DC’s simplest and most venomous, what Clinton Walker calls a ”˜virtual manifesto’ for the band. It was thrown together in early 1976 and released as a single in Australia and the United Kingdom that year with an el-cheapo film clip, once again directed by Paul Drane, this time at a quarry in the suburb of Sunshine in Melbourne’s western suburbs.

It starts pretty much as all AC/DC songs do: with Malcolm’s riff establishing intent and driving the rhythm from the top down.

”˜Definitely a three-chord repetitive riff that recycles the same chordal riff to “Gloria”,’ says Joe Matera. ”˜It’s on a par with Deep Purple’s “Smoke On The Water” and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as one of the most popular riffs learned by guitarists when they’re starting out. Yet from the moment the first strum is heard it’s instantly recognisable as AC/DC.’

Then the drums and bass join in, but this time there’s more of a wallop to the George Young-patented boogie than there is on ”˜It’s A Long Way To The Top’; a kind of bounce or elasticity. Bon Scott has his snarling narration down pat; you can almost visualise his missing tooth. And it’s complemented with backing vocals so blood-flecked and wretched they could be coming from a convict gang on the lam in Van Diemen’s Land. But most of all ”˜Jailbreak’ exemplifies the importance of space in AC/DC’s music. The single bass note for the racing heartbeat. Angus’s distortion and aggression as he mimics spotlights, sirens and firing rifles. The long pause before that lone bullet gets Scott in his baaack. It ends in a crossfire of cymbals, guitars and, perish the thought, even maracas: all-round AC/DC perfection.

”˜AC/DC will always be a live band,’ says Evans, explaining the tightness. ”˜The four of us used to be in the studio together, recording, and that’s what made it easy to mix too. There weren’t any add-ons [apart from] vocals and guitar solos. So whenever you hear an AC/DC song, you’re hearing sort of two Anguses. Because Angus has hidden the big chords underneath but he’s also playing the solo. But ostensibly what you’re hearing is the band playing live in the studio. So when you go play live, they say, “Oh gee, it sounds just like the record.” It is the fucking record.

”˜This is sacrilege to some but I’ve seen Led Zeppelin play a couple of times and while I was a fan of the first couple of records, I went and saw them live and just went, “You fucking kidding me?” They made unbelievable fucking records and because a lot of it was so grand you couldn’t produce it live with those guys. But as far as studio records go, fucking absolutely in a world of their own. For me, you dig a band because of their recordings and you go see them and say, “Oh fuck, that was even fucking better than the record.” To me that’s the greatest compliment you can give a band.’

Says Stewart Young, for a time AC/DC’s manager with Steve Barnett: ”˜They are brilliant; still probably the best live band I have ever seen.’