On March 21, 1977, "AC/DC" released their fourth album in Australia and their third internationally - "Let There Be Rock".
This is the band's latest album with bassist Mark Evans who will be fired from the band two months after the album's release.
It's amazing to think that just before the release of this great album the band was at the deepest low point of their career. In the middle of the tour to promote the album "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", "AC/DC's" manager received a telephone call from the American branch of "Atlantic Records" informing him that the label did not like the album, and as a result, "AC/DC" was dropped from the label.
However, rather than become overwhelmed by despair, the band decides to show "Atlantic" what a bitter mistake they made. They were going to create their greatest album to date!!! Angus Young, Malcolm Young, and Bon Scott, who wrote the eight songs on the album, with the help of Mark Evans and Phil Rudd, channeled all their rage and anger into the creation process, and it paid off hugely!!!
This album features timeless rock anthems like the theme song "Let There Be Rock", which title alone is worth an induction into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame. The song provides an alternative and fictional version of rock and roll history. It is inspired by a line from Chuck Berry's song "Roll Over Beethoven" that says: "... tell Tchaikovsky the news", "Let There Be Rock". Angus notes that during the recording of the song his guitar amplifier warmed up and almost burned, and Malcolm screamed at him not to dare to stop and continue playing. This passion that took place at the Albert Studio in Sydney, can also be felt four decades later. This song has been played in all the band's performances since 1978, and is always played at a higher speed than the album's version, during which Angus "burns" the stage with solos that sometimes reach up to 20 minutes in length.
The first single released from the album was "Dog Eat Dog", a sweeping boogie piece with a heavy and dirty riffת depicting the band's struggle in the music world where "dog eat dog". It is well known that "AC/DC's" road to glory was bumpy. It took years of hard work on the roads in live shows, but the real difficulty was dealing with industry people and record companies, and the title of this song captures that frustration.
The third single released from the album is "Whole Lotta Rosie", a song about an overweight Tasmanian woman named Rosie, with whom singer Bon Scott spent a night at the Freeway Gardens Motel in North Melbourne. He met her behind the scenes after a show held in Australia. she was called "Big Bertha", but Scott chose to call her "Rosie" in the song's lyrics. Beyond addressing Rosie's dimensions, Scott found her as one of the best mistresses he had ever had. It is interesting to note, that the music is influenced by Chuck Berry's "No Money Down". The band used to put an inflated huge balloon of the same "Rosie" on the stage, during the song performance.
The album features other amazing songs like the opening song "Go Down", which was influenced by one of the band's famous groupies Ruby Lips, which won the title of "super groupie" in Time magazine, "Bad Boy Boogie" a boogie song in three chords developed from jam sessions in the studio, the cult track "Overdose" whose lyrics combine Scott's two loves, drugs and sex and "Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be" which bassist Mark Evans called the "Brown Sugar" of "AC/DC", a sweeping and energetic guitar song, despite its mid-tempo rhythm, which was recorded live in the studio, with almost no production intervention.
"Let There Be Rock" is without a doubt the first, but certainly not the last, masterpiece of "AC/DC". The album elevated the band to the top echelons and turned it from a band of "songs" to a band of "albums". This album was an important step in the band's development process on its way to fame, and it can be said that it's the one that brought the change of perception in "Atlantic Records". It will win the band its first tour in the United States, where it will begin to build its audience, with a lot of hard work on the road and performances, until the American branch of "Atlantic Records" began to believe that the band has the potential to be highly successful in the United States. The rest is history...
For Listening: Spotify, Apple Music.