AC/DC "Powerage (1995 Reissue, Remastered, Australia, EMI/Albert Productions, 4770862)"

Powerage is the fifth studio album by Australian hard rock band AC/DC, released on 5 May 1978 in the United Kingdom and 20 May 1978 in the United States. This was the band's first album to feature Cliff Williams on bass guitar, and it was also the first AC/DC album not to have a title track (aside from the Australia-only High Voltage album) and the first worldwide not to be released with a different album cover. Powerage was re-released in 2003 as part of the AC/DC Remasters series.

After a 12-date European tour opening for Black Sabbath in April, bassist Mark Evans was fired from AC/DC on 3 May 1977. In the AC/DC memoir AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll, former manager Michael Browning states, "I got a call one day from Malcolm and Angus. We were in London, I went to their apartment and they told me they wanted to get rid of Mark. Him and Angus didn't see eye to eye. They used to have a sort of tit-for-tat thing going, but nothing that I would have ever thought was going to be gig-threatening." According to Browning, the Young brothers were seriously considering Colin Pattenden of Manfred Mann's Earth Band fame. Browning feared that Pattenden was too old and didn't fit the band's image, so he instead pushed for Cliff Williams, who had previously played with Home and Bandit. Williams, who could also sing background vocals, passed the audition and was asked to join the band. In a 2011 interview with Joe Bosso that appears on MusicRadar, Evans reflected on his ousting from the group:

"With Angus and Malcolm, they were put on this earth to form AC/DC. They're committed big-time. And if they feel your commitment is anything less than theirs, well, that's a problem. Angus was intense. He was AC/DC 100 percent. His work ethic was unbelievable. When I was with him, he expected everybody to be just like him, which is pretty impossible... At the time, Malcolm said something about them wanting a bass player who could sing, but I think that was a smokescreen. I don't know if there was any one reason. It's just the way it went down. I felt the distance growing between me and Angus and Malcolm. When I was fired, it wasn't so much a surprise as it was a shock. There was a lot of tension in the band at the time. We'd just been kicked off a Black Sabbath tour, and this was right when a trip to the States was cancelled because the record company rejected the Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap album. So it was a hard period."

The band finally toured America for the first time in the summer of 1977, focusing on smaller markets at first but eventually playing CBGB in New York City and the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles. In December, they played a set in front of a small audience at Atlantic Recording Studios in New York City which was broadcast live over Radio WIOQ in Philadelphia and hosted by Ed Sciaky. The promotional album, Live from the Atlantic Studios, was later released on the 1997 Bonfire box set. In early 1978, the band returned to Sydney to record their next album.

According to the Murray Engleheart book AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll, several songs that appeared on Powerage were started in July 1977 during the band's first rehearsals with Williams at Albert Studios, including "Kicked in the Teeth", "Up to My Neck in You", an early version of "Touch Too Much" (which later appeared on the follow-up album Highway to Hell), and possibly "Riff Raff". The Powerage sessions officially got going in January 1978 and stretched over a period of about eight weeks. Atlantic Records executives in the United States complained that the album did not contain a radio-friendly single, so with the first pressings of Powerage ready to go in the UK, the band complied and recorded "Rock 'n' Roll Damnation". The song, which features handclaps and maracas and does not have a traditional guitar solo, was released in Britain at the end of May and reached #24, the best performance yet by an AC/DC single. However, Powerage was ultimately the final Bon Scott-era studio album the band recorded with the team of Harry Vanda and George Young, who had produced all of the band's albums up to that point (George was the older brother of Angus and Malcolm; he and Vanda had enjoyed their own pop success with the Easybeats in the 1960s), the feeling from Atlantic being that a more commercial producer might do wonders for the band's profile in the lucrative American market.

Biographer Clinton Walker wrote in his 1994 Scott memoir Highway to Hell, "'Gimme a Bullet' was perhaps Bon's most accomplished piece of writing to date, in which his penchant for hardcase metaphors finds even more genuine pathos and humour than it had before." "What's Next to the Moon", with its allusions to Casey Jones and Clark Kent, as well as the elusive "Gone Shootin'" and the unapologetic "Down Payment Blues" ("I know I ain't doin' much, but doin' nothin' means a lot to me"), clearly show that Scott's writing, much like the band's sound, had evolved from the novelties of the group's early albums. "Bon was a street poet – he described it as 'toilet wall' poetry," former AC/DC manager Michael Browning explained to Peter Watts of Uncut in 2013. "That was unknown. They signed a singer and got a lyricist, as well." "Sin City", which the band performed frequently in concert, explores the seductive charms and dangers of Las Vegas, while "Kicked in the Teeth" addresses a two-faced woman with "two-faced lies". In an interview with Bass Frontiers, Cliff Williams recalls the sessions fondly: "The guys had already been in the studio for a while and we went in to do what turned out to be the Powerage album. Great work environment. Albert Studios there in Sydney was a great little rock and roll room... Great producers. Obviously a lot of chemistry there being brothers. Just a real fiery, energetic work environment. And we had about three weeks to do it, 'cause that's about all the money we had... It was really a tremendous experience."

Many of AC/DC's early albums were altered for release in other markets, and this practice continued with Powerage, although it was the first LP to be released nearly simultaneously in both Australian and international markets and the first to use just one cover image for both.

While initial sales were somewhat disappointing, Powerage surpassed its predecessor, Let There Be Rock, by reaching No. 133 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart in the US, eventually achieving platinum certification. Eddie Van Halen and Rolling Stones' guitarist Keith Richards have stated that Powerage remains their favourite AC/DC record. The album is also Guns N' Roses' guitarist Slash and Aerosmith's guitarist Joe Perry's favourite album by the band, citing it as a major influence. The album has remained a favourite of Malcolm Young, who was quoted in AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll as saying, "I know a lot of people respect it. A lot of real rock and roll AC/DC fans, the real pure rock and roll guys. I think that's the most under-rated album of them all." It's also drummer Phil Rudd's favorite record the band did with Bon Scott.

The Detroit Free Press called AC/DC "another late '70s boogie band making strides toward commercial clout [who] pumps out heavy metal with a reasonable amount of panache". The Cheshire Observer wrote that "the LP captures better than ever the fresh, aggressive style, the compelling high voltage rock". The Sydney Morning Herald determined that the band "were our first punk rockers, but thank heaven they are not our best or last... They have been emulated and surpassed by their students".

AllMusic gives Powerage a rating of three and a half out of five stars, stating that while "it is the most uneven of" AC/DC's 1970s material, the album still contained a "few genuine classics", specifically mentioning "Down Payment Blues" and "Up to My Neck in You". Edwin Faust of Stylus Magazine considers Powerage "AC/DC's best album... because it isn't simply about sex, drinking and tongue-in-cheek Satanism", but shows a band "growing up". In 1994, Bon Scott biographer Clinton Walker opined in his book Highway to Hell that "altogether, Powerage just seemed to lack the uncompromising coherence and relentless body and soul that was its predecessor's greatness." Band biographer Jesse Fink cites the album as containing "their best ever collection of songs" and deems it "a high point creatively for the three Youngs, an album arguably superior to the commercially successful Mutt Lange circuitbreakers that followed, Highway to Hell and Back in Black."

In 2005, Powerage was ranked number 325 in Rock Hard magazine's book The 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time. Kerrang! magazine listed the album at No. 26 among the "100 Greatest Heavy Metal Albums of All Time".

Australian/US and all CD releases

All tracks are written by Angus Young, Malcolm Young and Bon Scott

1. "Rock 'n' Roll Damnation" 3:37
2. "Down Payment Blues" 6:04
3. "Gimme a Bullet" 3:21
4. "Riff Raff" 5:12
5. "Sin City" 4:45
6. "What's Next to the Moon" 3:32
7. "Gone Shootin'" 5:06
8. "Up to My Neck in You" 4:13
9. "Kicked in the Teeth" 3:54

Total length: 39:47

Recorded at Albert Studios, Sydney, Australia.

℗ 1978 Albert Productions.

© 1995 J Albert & Son Pty Ltd.

Digitally remastered from original master tapes by George Marino at Sterling Sound, N.Y.C.

Manufactured and Distributed by the EMI Music Group Australasia.

Notes

Some cassette copies, such as the original Canadian issue, had an alternate track listing. For example, "Sin City" was the first song on side 1, while "Rock 'n' Roll Damnation" was the first song on side 2. All other tracks appear in the order of the original Australian/US release.

First pressing with dark blue center labels.

Recording information:

Producer – Vanda & Young

Recorded at Albert Studios, Sydney, Australia, February/March 1978.

Tracks A2, A3 and B2 to B5 of the Australian and New Zealand version are different to the rest of the world.

AC/DC "Let There Be Rock (2007 Reissue, Remastered, Limite Edition Mini LP Replica, Enhanced CD, Japan, Sony Records, SICP 1702)"

Let There Be Rock is an album by Australian hard rock band AC/DC. It was the band’s third internationally released studio album and the fourth to be released in Australia. All songs were written by Angus Young, Malcolm Young and Bon Scott. It was originally released on 21 March 1977 in Australia on the Albert Productions label. A modified international edition was released on 25 July 1977 on Atlantic Records.

In late 1976 AC/DC were at a slump. “It was very close to being all over,“ manager Michael Browning said. “Things were progressing very well in London and Europe. We’d been through a whole thing with the Marquee where they broke all the house records. We’d done the Lock Up Your Daughters UK tour and the Reading festival. It was all shaping up really well.”  Having moved the band and their operation to London over the previous eight months - during which time their first UK album release, High Voltage, had served warning on an unsuspecting British music scene of the impending explosion of Antipodean rock coming their way - the band's sudden absence from the domestic scene in Australia had left AC/DC's live following there diminished. When Browning brought them back to Oz at the end of 1976 for what should have been a triumphant homecoming, they were surprised to discover that things had changed.

The young, mostly female crowd that had come to know them through regular appearances on TV shows like Countdown had deserted them in favour of stay-at-home poptastic local heroes like Skyhooks. Even the rugged fans who populated the thriving pub and club scene that AC/DC now found themselves back playing had developed a certain grudging attitude towards a band that had “buggered off overseas,” as Browning puts it. Even their hometown crowd in Sydney was diminished: when, after their return home, the band headlined the 5,000-capacity Hordern Pavilion on December 12, the place was barely half-full.

“It was a tough tour,” Browning says. “The group didn’t want to be doing it. I copped a lot of shit for making them do it. But it was a financial necessity. We had to do it to fill the coffers up to keep doing what we were doing in England and Europe. But try explaining that to a young rock’n’roll band.” “Our grassroots guys stayed with us,” said AC/DC's then-bassist Mark Evans.” But we got banned from a lot of gigs too. Angus was dropping his shorts, and we had a problem with the tour programme where there was a quote on top of my photograph which said ‘I want to make enough money so I’ll be able to fuck Britt Ekland.’ That nearly derailed the whole tour.” To make matters worse, Atlantic Records in the United States had rejected the band's third album Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, feeling the production was not up to par, and in fact were debating dropping the group from the label entirely.

“In the middle of the tour, I get a phone call saying Atlantic Records in America didn't like the Dirty Deeds album,” says Browning. “That, in fact, they were going to drop the group from the label. And that’s when things got really bad.” Despite their precarious position, the band were typically bullish in their refusal to bow to the label.

“Malcolm’s attitude was the opposite. Total disregard for what Americans think. That’s been their attitude all the way along, which is what’s made them so sustainable and huge, just never ever really compromising in situations like that.”

— Michael Browning

There was no question of them softening their sound to make it more palatable to the American market. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side it was decided the band should hurry back into the studio in Sydney and record a new album, before heading back to the UK. Thus, in January 1977, AC/DC entered Alberts Studios in Sydney, where all their records had been made up to that point, and spent two weeks recording what came to be known as Let There Be Rock.

“There was always a siege mentality about that band. But once we all found out that Atlantic had knocked us back the attitude was: ‘Fuck them! Who the fuck do they think they are?’ So from that point onwards it was: ‘Fuck, we’ll show them!’ We were seriously fucking pissed off about it. It didn’t need to be discussed. We were going to go in and make that album and shove it up their arse!”

— Mark Evans

From the beginning, it appears they intended to make a statement, with guitarist Angus Young telling VH1's Behind the Music in 2000, "Me and Malcolm said, 'Well, we really want a lot of guitars,' you know? Big guitars." The band's first album released in Australia, High Voltage, had contained glam rock elements, while their ensuing releases had been recorded piecemeal as the group toured incessantly and were also altered for international release. Let There Be Rock, on the other hand, was recorded in one go and represented a major evolution in the band's sound, with many critics and fans citing it as the first true AC/DC album. In his book Highway to Hell: The Life and Times of AC/DC Legend Bon Scott, author Clinton Walker observes, "Let There Be Rock was the first fully rounded AC/DC album. The band had finally found itself."

Let There Be Rock was produced by the production team of George Young and Harry Vanda, who had been at the helm of the band’s previous albums (George is the older brother of Angus and Malcolm). According to Murray Engelheart’s band memoir AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll, the album was completed in roughly a two-week time frame and featured a new approach to recording:

Malcolm had noticed that some rock acts, particularly those on the American stadium circuit, had realized the power to be had in slightly longer songs and tapping into extended solos and general guitar hijinks…the temptation to show the competition - the emerging punks on one hand and American soft rock on the other - how rock and roll was really done was too much…The studio set-up at Albert’s was perfect for what was planned. All the amps were in the same room as the drums, which were positioned in the corner. The guitar sound spilt over into the vocal and drum microphones so a perfect precision recording was difficult, but that was part of the charm.

The result was far beyond anything the band had produced before in the studio. The band replicated their live sound, with literally explosive results; as recounted in Clifton Walker's Highway to Hell, one of the most oft-repeated stories concerning AC/DC's studio methods emanates from these sessions: Angus' smoking amp during the recording of the album's final track, "Whole Lotta Rosie". As he was overdubbing the guitar solo, his amp began to fuse out and smoke began to fill the studio. George Young gestured wildly from behind the desk to keep going. "There was no way," Walker quotes the producer, "we were going to stop a shit-hot performance for a technical reason like amps blowing up!" In a 1991 interview with Guitar World, Angus recalled, "The album on which we got to do the most guitar stuff was probably Let There Be Rock. Throughout that album, there are many guitar solos and many breaks. I really like some of them very much. The song "Let There Be Rock" was unusual for me. I remember my brother, George, saying in the studio, 'C'mon Ang, let's get something different here'...I had great deal of fun on that whole album. On the last track, I remember the amp blowing up at the end. I said, 'Hey, the speakers are going!' You could see it in the studio, there was all this smoke and sparks, and the valves were glowing. He kept yelling at me, 'Keep playing, keep playing!'" Another Oz band, The Angels, had recently signed to Albert Productions and were also being produced in the studio by Vanda and Young. Drummer Graham ‘Buzz’ Bidstrup recalls:

“It was all to do with the feel, it wasn’t about perfection. They would play the riff until George said: ‘I think you’ve got the groove there.’ That might be five minutes, it might be 10. Remember, there’s no drum machines, no click tracks, no nothing. They’d just hammer at Phil Rudd.” The only way the band knew how to record back then was simply to play as if they were doing a gig. “If Angus was recording a solo, he would be climbing all over the amps and rolling around the floor,” says Bidstrup. “That was part of what made George and Harry good producers – they could actually get the band fired up to be so excited about what they were doing that Angus would crawl around on the floor.”

It was simply one of those albums, Angus concluded, “where it was all cooking”.

According to AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll, singer Bon Scott wrote the title track's lyrics in an office at Albert's with the help of a Bible from a nearby bookstore. The song provides an encapsulated, fictionalized version of the history of rock 'n' roll. Building on a line from the Chuck Berry song "Roll Over Beethoven": "... tell Tchaikovsky the news", "Let There Be Rock" pays homage to Chuck Berry in the opening lines: the line "but Tchaikovsky had the news" actually means :"Chuck Berry brought "the Goods News" (in other words the Gospel of Rock'n'Roll was written by Chuck Berry"and he stated that in Roll Over Beethoven)". Following rock's birth, rock bands appeared everywhere, musicians found fame (while businesses made money off their efforts), and millions of people learned how to play electric guitar. The third and final verse speaks of a "42-decibel" rock band playing good, loud music in an establishment called "The Shaking Hand". This is usually changed to "92-decibel" in live versions of the song. In addition, light is correctly introduced before sound, unlike on the studio version. After the final verse, the song ends with an extended solo by Angus, which consists mainly of fast picking, string bends, and hammer-ons. Band biographer Jesse Fink describes the song as "six-and-a-bit minutes of beauty, chaos, precision and primal fire. A music video for "Let There Be Rock" was filmed in July 1977 (see 1977 in music) in the Kirk Gallery church in Surry Hills, New South Wales and featured Bon Scott, Angus Young, Malcolm Young, Phil Rudd, and Cliff Williams, who replaced Mark Evans as the band's bassist shortly after the Let There Be Rock album was released. This marked one of Williams' first public appearances with AC/DC. Scott was dressed as a priest and the rest of the band as altar boys, with Angus Young wearing a halo prop on his head. Towards the end of the video it shows Angus and the rest of the band jamming while he goes off on the guitar. In an alternate ending of the video, the colors are morphed and the camera zooms in on the stained glass window. According to an interview with the Young brothers, Bon Scott injured himself in the final jump from the podium. "Let There Be Rock" was also released as a single in 1978, with a live version of the Let There Be Rock album track "Dog Eat Dog" as the B-side, which had been recorded in concert in Glasgow on 30 April 1978. When AC/DC was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003, Scott's replacement Brian Johnson quoted the song "Let There Be Rock" in the band's acceptance speech.

"Whole Lotta Rosie" is about an obese Tasmanian woman named Rosie, with whom the singer Scott had a one-night stand at the Freeway Gardens Motel in North Melbourne. In addition to pointing out the woman's size, the singer finds her to be one of the most talented lovers he's ever experienced. The song's first verse reveals Rosie's substantial physical measurements (42"-39"-56"), and that she weighs nineteen stone (266 pounds/approximately 120 kilograms). On the Live from the Atlantic Studios disc, however, Scott describes the titular woman as "...a Tasmanian devil ...weighs 305 pounds ...," a measurement that differs from the "19 stone" lyric (305 lb being 21 st 11 lb). In 1998, speaking to Vox magazine, Angus Young remembered:

We'd been in Tasmania and after the show [Bon Scott] said he was going to check out a few clubs. He said he'd got about 100 yards down the street when he heard this yell: 'Hey! Bon!' He looked around and saw this leg and thought: 'Oh well!' From what he said, there was this Rosie woman and a friend of hers. They were plying him with drinks and Rosie said to him: 'This month I've slept with 28 famous people,' and Bon went: 'Oh yeah?!' Anyway, in the morning he said he woke up pinned against the wall, he said he opened one eye and saw her lean over to her friend and whisper: '29!' There's very few people who'll go out and write a song about a big fat lady, but Bon said it was worthy.

The song's main riff was also featured on an earlier recording with different lyrics, titled "Dirty Eyes", which saw official release on Volts, part of the Bonfire box set. "Dirty Eyes" features a different chord progression in the chorus and does not contain the "band duel" featured in "Rosie". In AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll, Malcolm Young is quoted, "We were always big fans of early rock and roll, like Elvis and 'Heartbreak Hotel,' things like that - the stop-and-start things, the dynamics. If anything, for 'Whole Lotta Rosie' we were looking for a feel like Little Richard, a good steamin' rock feel, and see what we could lay on top with the guitars. It evoked that, but you're just looking for the vibe, what's exciting, and that's what we were listening to. Simple to put together, but still around like a classic."

According to the 1994 Bon Scott biography Highway to Hell, the album's opening track "Go Down" was inspired by "supergroupie" Ruby Lips.

"Overdose", which features an extended introduction that showcases the symbiotic guitar relationship between the Young brothers, was inspired by a woman named Judy King. The lyrics equate a man overdosing on a woman like an addict would overdose on drugs, with Scott singing, "You're a habit I don't want to break." Whether or not the song had any meaning beyond the metaphor is subject to speculation; by all accounts, Scott was a hard drinker and indulged in drugs. In 2013, keyboardist John Bisset of Fraternity (Scott's band before AC/DC) told Uncut's Peter Watts: "We were drinkers. We got into marijuana, mescaline and mushrooms, but alcohol was the mainstay...He drank heaps. He drank until he could barely stand. But he always remained the same person." According to Jesse Fink's book The Youngs: The Brothers Who Built AC/DC, former bassist Mark Evans reveals that Scott overdosed on heroin in 1975 and was nearly fired from the band: "There were some doubts about Bon at that stage. He'd had a problem or he'd had an OD very early on. It was just a dabble...Bon made a bad decision. It was only one bad decision. From what I was led to believe and came to believe, it was a very, very isolated incident."

"Dog Eat Dog", a song about humanity's cutthroat nature, was released as a single in Australia, and included the non-album track "Carry Me Home" on the B-side, which was later released on Backtracks. The band would perform the single frequently in concert, as well as the album tracks "Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be" and "Bad Boy Boogie", the latter accompanying Angus Young's infamous striptease routine.

The original vinyl version of the album released for international markets contained the same track list as the original Australian release but Atlantic Records removed the racy song "Crabsody in Blue" (about the problems of crabs) from later pressings of the international version. It was subsequently replaced with a shortened version of the song "Problem Child" from the Australian version of the album Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, which was originally released in September 1976. "Crabsody In Blue" was later released on the box set Backtracks.

All international CD releases contain the modified track listing from the later vinyl pressings of the international version.

The Australian cover features the fingers of guitarist Chris Turner, from Australian band Buffalo. "There was a bloke called Colin Stead, who was in Buffalo for about ten minutes," Turner recalled. "He was also the centrefold photographer for Playboy. He phoned me up and said he was doing the album cover for Let There Be Rock, but AC/DC were out of town, so could I help out? He wanted a flash guitar run up and down the neck. Apparently, when he saw it, Angus said, 'He's got fat fingers, hasn't he?'"

The cover of the international version, released on 25 July 1977, marked the first appearance of the band's now iconic logo, designed by Gerard Huerta. The photograph used for the international cover was taken at a concert on 19 March 1977 at the Kursaal Ballroom, Southend, Essex, UK, by rock photographer Keith Morris. The band were on tour in England on the date of the earlier Australian release and were scheduled to perform at Hemel Hempstead Pavilion, UK, although the date was cancelled.

Reception to Let There Be Rock was generally positive; according to Allmusic, which gave the album a rating of four and a half out of five stars, AC/DC played “sweaty, dirty, nasty rock” and the band had “rarely done that kind of rock better than they did” on Let There Be Rock. In 2001, Q magazine named Let There Be Rock as one of the 50 Heaviest Albums Of All Time.

Tracklist:

1. Go Down  ゴー・ダウン 5:31
2. Dog Eat Dog  仲間喧嘩はやめようぜ 3:34
3. Let There Be Rock  ロック魂 6:06
4. Bad Boy Boogie  バッド・ボーイ・ブギ 4:27
5. Problem Child  素敵な問題児 5:24
6. Overdose  オーヴァードウズ 6:08
7. Hell Ain't A Bad Place To Be  地獄は楽しい所だぜ 4:14
8. Whole Lotta Rosie  ホール・ロッタ・ロジー 5:33

Originally released as Atco 36151 on June 23, 1977.

Comes in a CD sized Cardboard Sleeve Mini LP replica, with Obi-strip, printed inner-sleeve and two inserts of notes (one in English and one mostly in Japanese).

AC/DC "High Voltage (2003 Reissue, Remastered, Limited Edition Mini LP Replica, Enhanced CD, Japan, Sony Records, SICP 1700)"

High Voltage is the first internationally released album by Australian hard rock band AC/DC. It contains tracks completed from their first two previous Australia-only issued albums: High Voltage and T.N.T. (both from 1975).

Originally released on 14 May 1976 in the UK on Atlantic Records and on 28 September 1976 in the US on ATCO Records, High Voltage was a commercial success, selling three million units in the US alone. However, the album was initially panned by some critics upon its release, including a review by Rolling Stone magazine's Billy Altman that called it an "all-time low" for the hard rock genre. It was re-released in 2003 as part of the AC/DC Remasters series.

In December 1975, Atlantic Records' UK head Phil Carson signed AC/DC to a worldwide deal. The group's first two albums, High Voltage and the harder driving T.N.T., had been hits in their native Australia – the single "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)" peaked at #5 – and now plans were made for the band to tour England in 1976. The group had already recorded their next single "Jailbreak" (for which they had shot a music video) and had already begun recording their third LP Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap when, in April 1976, they flew out on their first British tour. The international release only included two tracks from the Australian High Voltage release – "She's Got Balls" and "Little Lover" – with the rest of the songs taken from T.N.T. The band arrived in the UK in the midst of the fledgling punk movement, spearheaded by bands like the Sex Pistols and the Damned. AC/DC was never really part of the movement, but got misidentified as such by some observers, as guitarist Angus Young recalled to Guitar World's Alan Di Perna in 1993:

At that time… we were giving punk music a good name. Because that was the word they used to describe us – punk band. They'd get the wrong idea. We weren't punk, but they'd put us on the same bill as punk bands. And they sure got a shock when they started spitting at us and we spat back. We were never ones for getting slumped under a tag or filed under A, B, or C. We started as a rock and roll band. That's what we play – what we do best. We never claimed to be anything else.

In 2010 Malcolm Young concurred, telling Mojo's Phil Alexander, "Punk rock was just a fashion. … It didn't change the music; it changed the fashion, and that's basically all it is." In a 1977 interview with ABC's Countdown, Bon Scott insisted, "We're pulling bigger crowds than they are. I mean, we've got our following here. It's not new wave, it's not punk, it's just people who like our band. We honestly thought that the punk and the new wave thing might spoil it a bit for us but it hasn't at all. It was a big fad, just like anything else, a big fad for a while. … The main thing about it is it gave rock music a real kick in the guts."

"It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)" was edited down from an extended jam by producer George Young (older brother of guitarist Malcolm Young and Angus) and the inclusion of the bagpipes was his idea to add an extra dynamic to the track. Singer Bon Scott had played in a pipe band in his teens, so George suggested he play bagpipes on the song, not realizing that Scott had been a drummer, not a piper. Regardless, Scott – who knew how to play the recorder – learned the instrument and went on to play them on stage with the band for several years. In Murray Engleheart's book AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll, former manager Michael Browning states that the bagpipes became the bane of Scott's existence: "I think they probably put more pressure on him than anything I can think of! They invariably never worked. It's a hard instrument to time to guitars, because you're pumping them and they kind of kick in when the bag's full – very difficult to time to guitars." The chanting in "T.N.T." was also George Young's idea, added after he heard Angus ad-libbing the "oi" chant to himself, and suggested he record it.

The production team of George Young and Harry Vanda was crucial in the development of AC/DC's sound. Vanda was a bandmate of Young's in The Easybeats and the pair were the main songwriters of The Easybeats' later hits, including their international hit "Friday on My Mind". In the 1994 book Highway to Hell: The Life and Times of AC/DC Legend Bon Scott, Chris Gilbey, who was the promotion man at Albert Productions at the time, recalls to author Clinton Walker, "The great thing George and Harry taught me, as a producer, was that if you got a good rhythm track, you've got the beginnings of a record. If you don't, you've got nothing." In the same memoir Michael Browning confirms, "George and Harry's most important criterion was rhythm, the whole thing had to just feel right. If you listen to those records today, they feel good."

AC/DC's second album T.N.T. was a breakthrough for the band composition-wise and sound-wise, containing more of the twin-guitar assault that the band would become famous for, and this may explain why only two songs were included from the glam rock – leaning 1975 debut. "She's Got Balls" (about Scott's ex-wife Irene) was the first song that Scott and the Young brothers put together, while "Little Lover" had been a song Malcolm had been tinkering with since he was about 14 and had been originally titled "Front Row Fantasies" (Scott claimed to have written the song about Angus). "Can I Sit Next to You Girl" predated Scott's involvement in the band, having been recorded as a single with former vocalist Dave Evans; it features a different arrangement and slightly different lyrics from the original version. It also runs almost a minute longer. In 1993, Angus Young shared the origins of the title track with Vic Garbarini of Guitar For the Practicing Musician: "I remember sitting home one night before going into the studio and playing around with some chords, and I suddenly thought, let's try playing...A...C...D...C. Sounded good. And then I thought AC/DC...power..."High Voltage"! I sang the chorus part to my brother in the studio and he thought it sounded great." Lyrically, the LP features Bon Scott chronicling both the good and the bad about the rock and roll lifestyle, warning aspiring musicians that "it's harder than it looks" ("It's a Long Way to the Top") but also defiantly telling the moral majority to "stick your moral standards 'cause it's all a dirty lie" ("Rock 'n' Roll Singer"). In 1994 biographer Clifton Walker observed that Scott was "virtually encapsulating his entire life" in both songs. The lyrics of "The Jack" (sometimes titled "(She's Got) The Jack") were developed by Scott who was inspired by a letter Malcolm Young received during a tour of Adelaide. The letter, from a woman in Melbourne, implied that Malcolm had given her a venereal disease, although he claims that when he got tested, he was clean. Scott's original lyrics were far more explicit than those heard on the album, which he deliberately toned down in case the song got played on radio. The bravado-driven "Live Wire", which was also sexually suggestive, would be the band's show-opener for several years.

The international release of High Voltage also had two different album covers from the original: one featured a picture of Angus Young as he appeared on the cover of the German single for "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)". An alternative cover was used on the international version's European release. Most editions of the international album have a version of "It's a Long Way to the Top" that is shorter than the original album version. The full length version is 5:10, while the edited version shortens the last chorus causing the track to fade out early at 5:01. Vinyl editions of the international album contain the edited version. The 1994 remastered CD on Atco Records replaced the edited version of the track with the full length version. The 2003 remastered CD on Epic Records reverted it back to the edited version.

The track "T.N.T." is used in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4.

The High Voltage Arc in the seventh part of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run by Hirohiko Araki is a reference to this album and song.

The album sleeve was used as a prop in a first season episode of The Cosby Show, titled "The Younger Woman". In the story, the fictional musician named with the album is "Clyde", and is described on the album cover as "sticking his tongue out," which is an accurate description of Angus Young's actual expression on the cover, although the album and band's names in the upper left corner are both stylistically covered up.

The album received mixed reviews when it was released in the United States. Billboard listed it in its "Recommended LPs" column, calling it a cross between Led Zeppelin and the Sensational Alex Harvey Band. However, the album was trashed by Billy Altman in his infamous review for Rolling Stone: "Those concerned with the future of hard rock may take solace in knowing that with the release of the first U.S. album by these Australian gross-out champions, the genre has hit its all-time low. Lead singer Bon Scott spits out his vocals with a truly annoying aggression which, I suppose, is the only way to do it when all you seem to care about is being a star so that you can get laid every night. Stupidity bothers me. Calculated stupidity offends me." Initially they had given the album two stars, but in recent years have warmed up to it and given it three stars out of five, (which means in their terms, "Good: a record of average worth, but one that might possess considerable appeal for fans of a particular style.")

Retrospective reviews have been more positive. AllMusic's review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine praised Angus Young's "monster riffs" which appear to be easy but give the music its strength and this allows Scott to be "somebody who never hid the notion that lurking behind the door are some bad, dangerous things, but they're also fun, too." Classic Rock magazine meanwhile praises the albums' production as well as the unique usage of bagpipes in a rock song and the quality of Bon's lyricism, hailing it overall as "An international debut to savour." and Ultimate Classic Rock praises it in a combined rating of T.N.T. and this international album calling it their coming-of-age album and stating "the core musical signature that would carry and sustain the band’s amazing career rise was set right here."

Track listing

All tracks are written by Angus Young, Malcolm Young and Bon Scott except where noted.

1. It's A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock 'N' Roll)  ロング・ウェイ・トゥ・ザ・トップ 5:01
2. Rock 'N' Roll Singer= ロックンロール・シンガー 5:03
3. The Jack ジャック 5:52
4. Live Wire ライヴ・ワイアー 5:48
5. T.N.T.  T.N.T. 3:34
6. Can I Sit Next To You Girl  キャン・アイ・シット・ネクスト・トゥ・ユー・ガール 4:11
7. Little Lover  リトル・ラヴァー 5:38
8. She's Got Balls  シーズ・ガット・ボールズ 4:51
9. High Voltage  ハイ・ヴォルテージ 4:14

Total length: 44:23

Original release: Atco 36-142 on September 28, 1976.

© 1976, 2003 J. Albert & Son (Pty) Ltd. / ℗ 1976 J. Albert & Son (Pty) Ltd.

This CD takes advantage of ConnecteD technology and will work as a key to unlock exclusive bonus music, videos, photos and more at www.acdcrocks.com

Comes in a CD sized Cardboard Sleeve Mini LP album replica, with Obi-strip, two inserts of notes/photos (one in English with 15 pages and one mostly in Japanese with 36 pages) and printed inner-sleeve.

Remastered in 2003.

Recording information:

Harry Vanda – producer

George Young – producer

Michael Putland – cover art

Dave Field – cover art (European version)

Gerard Huerta – cover lettering

Richard Ford – artwork

Produced at Albert Studios, Sydney, Australia.