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'Stiff Upper Lip': AC/DC Over Easy
By Dave McKenna
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, March 22, 2000; Page C05

That old rock bromide "You can't always get what you want" must mean nothing to AC/DC fans by now. The Aussie band has never given its fans anything but what they want. Here comes another helping: "Stiff Upper Lip," AC/DC's 17th studio collection and its first in five years, has hit the bins.

The CD's release coincides with the 20th anniversary of the death of former lead throat Ronald "Bon Scott" Belford, who started as AC/DC's driver and went on to become the most influential shrieker of his day. Scott's brand of pop Satanism, perfected by the band's fifth album, 1979's "Highway to Hell," was more humorous than threatening to everybody but parents of metalheads, and it inspired innumerable copycats. Even Scott's demise became a rock cliche. He reportedly choked on vomit in the back seat of a car after a drinking binge.

The most durable of the Scott clones, as things turned out, was his successor in AC/DC, Brian Johnson, who was handed the mike within a month of Bon's voyage to the hereafter. Though the high notes didn't come as easily to Johnson as they had to Scott, even hard-core AC/DC fans embraced the new singer, who rasped every syllable as if on the verge of a severed vocal cord.

AC/DC was as devilishly entertaining as ever under Johnson on 1980's "Back in Black" and on the band's release two years later, "For Those About to Rock." Both of those albums, as well as Scott's last sessions, launched the career of Robert John "Mutt" Lange as a producer.

Though Lange has long since departed and gone on to become Mr. Shania Twain, and much of the shrill is gone from Johnson's wail, AC/DC's popularity hasn't waned much over the years--a guitar lesson with Angus Young sold for more than $28,000 during a recent eBay auction. Here's hoping Young shared more licks with the winner than he and his mates divulge on "Stiff Upper Lip."

Current producer George Young, late of the Australian pop pioneers the Easybeats and a onetime bassist for AC/DC, coaxes his younger siblings--Angus and rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young--to deliver tried-and-true power chords in the same bloozy song structures that the faithful demand and nothing else. But if familiarity bred contempt, these lads would have been tarred and feathered long before this.

Johnson, who has shared songwriting credits in the past, lets Malcolm and Angus come up with all the sexual and demonic single-entendres on the new CD. For what it's worth, they're up to the task.

"I shoot from the hip/ Yeah, I got a stiff, stiff upper lip," Johnson squawks on the title track over Angus's repetitious riff of finger-picked octaves and a Cliff Williams bass line so simple that even Danny Partridge could sit in. "Come and Get It" has creepy backup vocals filched from "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap," which should make the old fans smile. As will "Can't Stop Rock 'n' Roll," with Johnson spewing, "Ah ah ah, you can't stop rock 'n' roll" again and again. Now there's a truism.

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Washington Post