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LOS ANGELES (AP) – Through decades of death and disaster, AC / DC continues to boom.
Forty-seven years later, and with the closest thing possible to their original line-up, the rockers are releasing “Power Up” on Friday, their first album in six years.
It is also the first since the death in 2017 of Malcolm Young, who founded the group in Sydney, Australia in 1973 with his little brother, Angus. “Power Up” is dedicated to the elder brother and is crossed by his spirit and his writing.
“We all felt Malcolm around us, he was there. We’re not spiritual type people, but, boy, oh boy, ”singer Brian Johnson, 73, told The Associated Press in an interview via Zoom from his home in Sarasota, Florida. “Malcolm was a very strong character in real life, and his death wasn’t going to stop that. It was there, everywhere, and I think you can tell it on the record.
All 12 tracks are co-written by Malcolm and Angus Young, selected by young Young from a mine of unused songs that have accumulated over the band’s long life.
“Malcolm and I over the years, every time we came up with an album we would always come in with a lot of A-grade songs,” Angus Young, 65, said via Zoom from his home in Sydney. “We always had a full stack of more which were all great songs.”
Most of the songs came from a successful writing period in a long gap between albums from 2000 to 2008, and Angus Young chose the ones that most resembled his big brother.
“I focused on the ones I knew were Mal’s favorites,” Young said. “It’s a project that suits him. He always liked to be simple and straightforward, so I felt, what could be better than his music?
“Power Up”, their 17th studio album, whose first single and video debut, the blues “Shot in the Dark”, was released in October, brims with the same thunderous chords and schoolboy sneers that have made them legends with albums like “Highway to Hell” and “Back in Black”. The latter was also dedicated to an essential member of the recently deceased band, the original singer Bon Scott, who died in 1980.
“There is the similarity between the tragedy of Bon and that of Mal,” said Angus Young.
Malcolm Young suffering from the dementia that would lead to his death, his nephew Stevie Young replaced him in 2014’s “Rock or Bust”, and did it again on “Power Up”, although at 63 he don’t be the little one.
“We’ve known Stevie forever. He’s been around us for decades, ”bassist Cliff Williams said via Zoom from his home in North Carolina. “So there was no way to fit it into anything.
After a difficult tour in 2016 that Johnson was unable to complete due to increasingly severe hearing loss, it emerged that the classic version of the band may never perform together again.
He’s since been fitted with cutting-edge hearing technology and couldn’t wait to get back on stage, especially after feeling how well it worked to rehearse with the band at full blast.
“It was really a lot of fun being with the boys, and I felt equipped to go out and do something,” Johnson said. “My ammunition belt was full. I was ready to go. ”
The album had been recorded in 2018 and early 2019, and jam sessions came in preparation for the planned release date in early 2020.
“We rehearsed a bit, because we were hoping maybe we could do a few shows,” Young said. “We had done it a few weeks, then a few days later the world started to shut down.
When the coronavirus reached pandemic levels, the album hit shelves and the group went dark, stuck on different continents as they isolated themselves with their families and friends.
After nearly a year, the band and Columbia Records chose to release it in November.
“We do a lot of promotional stuff to let people know, to get the message across that AC / DC has a new album,” Young said. “I hope to cheer you up.”
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Follow AP Entertainment editor Andrew Dalton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andyjamesdalton
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