AC/DC “Stiff Upper Lip”
I drive a 2007 grey Toyota Yaris. It’s a pretty shitty car. People make fun of it. I make fun of it. It’s uncomfortable and, aside from power windows, has zero bells or whistles. But it drives fine, uses little gas and never breaks down. Part of me would love to upgrade, but I can’t seem to quit it. That part of me that would love an upgrade occasionally fantasizes about a late 70s Ford Bronco convertible. Probably green or blue. Occasionally I will peruse online sales and auction sites to see what’s available. Without fail, I run into a hypothetical conundrum: do I prefer the Broncos that are well worn, sturdy, structurally at risk, and environmentally unsafe or do I prefer the obsessed over, fully restored, upgraded, immaculate variety?
I’ve browsed and considered this question enough to have concluded that the restored version reminds me a bit of AC/DC’s “Ballbreaker” from 1995 while the well worn version resembles 2000s “Stiff Upper Lip.” “Ballbreaker” was famously, lovingly, obsessively, produced by Rick Rubin. As is his wont, he created more space between instruments. You can hear each player cleanly. The sound is immaculate and loud. The production sounds just slightly dressed up, like AC/DC recorded for an episode of “Friends.” It sounds like a show pony and not a racing horse. It has some old parts but also some upgrades. It’s the Bronco that you drive on weekends and include in a local auto show on the fourth of July. “Stiff Upper Lip” is the road trip Bronco. It’s noisier. It doesn’t smell awesome. It’s on the verge of breaking down. All of its parts are original. It doesn’t drive perfectly. But it drives great. It does exactly what it’s supposed to do.
This debate between “Ballbreaker” and “Stiff Upper Lip” is not specifically an argument of authenticity. It’s less an aesthetic argument and more one of engineering and design. AC/DC, like many organisms, was not designed for mid-life augmentation. They were designed to wear naturally, getting bigger in some parts and tighter and more knowing in others. They were not designed to look or sound quite as vital in middle age, but they were expected to resist decline and fatigue. They were designed to age naturally but change nominally. Perhaps more than any other band in the history of Rock music, the end for AC/DC was always clear. They were destined to ejaculate to death in a ball of flames. “Ballbreaker,” the band’s first “middle age” album tried, ever so slightly, to fight this imperative. “Stiff Upper Lip” embraces it.
The Beatles were far more musical. The Stones were more ambitious. Led Zeppelin was grander. But none of those bands rocked harder or better than the punks from Sydney. And, moreover, no band was better engineered to achieve its end goal than AC/DC. Part teenage erection and part auto factory, AC/DC only knew how to do two things -- rock and roll. But they did those two things louder, faster, harder and with more commitment than any band had done before or since. Their impossible commitment to drive, amperage and minimalism is so effective that they stand, just behind Led Zeppelin, as the greatest selling Hard Rock band of all time. “Back in Black” is the single greatest selling album ever released by a band. Decades and trends changed, but AC/DC just kept being AC/DC, selling millions and millions of albums.
Nonetheless, 2000 could have been a watershed moment for the band. It was a new millennium. Internet music piracy was rampant. Album sales were rapidly declining. Rock radio was filled with decidedly softer acts like Barenaked Ladies and Matchbox 20 and Rock-Rap and Rock-Scream acts like Korn, Slipknot and Limp Bizkit. The Pop charts were owned by Celine, Shania, N’Sync and Britney. The members of AC/DC — Malcolm and Angus Young, Phil Rudd, Cliff Williams and Brian Johnson — were all approaching (or beyond) fifty years old. In promotional photos from the era, though, they look largely the same as the band that made “Back in Black,” right down to the sneers and the cigarettes. In their thirties, the band looked mostly like shit. In their forties and fifties they looked equally shitty. The difference, however, was that in 2000, in their collective middle age, Hard Rock was simply not a popular concern. So, if there was ever a moment for AC/DC to reconsider themselves, it was then.
It goes without saying that the band did nothing of the sort. They moved on from Rick Rubin and handed the studio keys back to George Young, the eldest of the brothers and the man who produced some of their mid and late 80s albums. Whereas Rick Rubin’s production bordered on “artful,” Young’s is somewhere between “professional” and “comfortable.” It was quite literally familiar. The very same band that first detonated in 1980 met up in Canada this time and recorded twelve hard and loud songs about sex and danger. Like every AC/DC album, the sex in “Stiff Upper Lip” is as imagined by a young man before he’s actually had sex. It’s titanic. It’s exciting. It’s fast. It’s imperative. It’s aggressive. It’s silly. And, like every AC/DC album, the metaphors can range from funny to kind of clever to childish to awful. In all of them there is a certain sexism. But, even in the awful ones, there is also a knowing irony and humor that is unmistakable.
Some AC/DC albums rock slightly faster and some rock slightly bluesier. “Stiff Upper Lip” is a notch closer to the latter. The formula is still the same in either version: Malcolm or Angus introduces the idea of a riff or a line in the beginning. Then the drums kick in. Then bass. Then the twin guitars interplay as a bed for an eventual solo. Then, in the back half, the singer begins to repeat the refrain until it culminates either in a full on scream or a band chant. Finally, the fire gets too hot and the band explodes. Every AC/DC song works this way. It’s how the formula is designed. And it is the most effective Rock and Roll formula ever made. No band is more linear in their path and more gratifying in their obvious payoff than AC/DC. Oddly, in how they add in separate layers and then remove them at the exact right moment to indulge a deep sonic need, they remind me of LCD Soundsystem. Like the Young brothers, James Murphy has a sixth sense for when to pile on or pull back. Both bands toss out an idea, build it up and and keep their feet on it. Both bands promise and pay out sonic gratification. However, while the Brooklynites might be hipper in their image or headier in their ideas, it’s the Aussies who most satisfy the desire.
Though they are frequently and rightfully accused of sameness, there are at least three sorts of AC/DC songs on “Stiff Upper Lip,” There are the bluesy numbers, which have the slightest sway in the groove, but are musically simple Blues progressions, just played much louder and with more treble and distortion. Think of “The Jack.” In this version of the band, they sound like ZZ Top with a nuclear reactor. Then there are the harder, faster, fist pumping, foot stomping numbers that are built around deconstructed Zeppelin riffs. Think of “Back in Black.” These songs only go in one direction. They get bigger and louder until they explode. And then, lastly, there are the more frenetic songs wherein the melody is produced by Angus racing around the fretboard and, if only because the band can barely keep up, they simply cannot slow down. Think of “Thunderstruck.”
All of these versions of the band show up on “Stiff Upper Lip.” And there is not a single song here that would suffer if placed on their iconic 70s and 80s albums. “Meltdown” and “Damned” sound like the world’s best bar band discovered weapons of mass destruction. “Can’t Stop Rock ‘n’ Roll,” “Satellite Blues,” and “Give it Up” remind us that, even in middle age, Angus and Malcolm can find the heavenly mountain top where Jimmy Page got his riffs almost thirty years earlier. And “Can’t Stand Still” and “Safe in New York City” conjure the reckless abandon of Angus, in full schoolboy uniform, hopping around the arena, exercising his fingers on the guitar while he exorcises the melody. There is almost nothing new on “Stiff Upper Lip.” There are also no obvious missteps. If I were being ungenerous, I’d say that “Damned” and “Come and Get It” suffer in comparison with the rest of the album. But if any Hair Metal band of the late 80s or if Greta Van Fleet released those songs as singles todays, the entire world would freak out and fawn in equal doses.
As lyricists, Malcolm and Angus would never be mistaken for Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen. But, in terms of how profoundly and consistently their words serve their music, the Young brothers rank alongside James Brown in their ability to say what the music demands. You may never impress a girl with these words. You may never spend a moment unpacking them or swimming in them. But you will shout them with your headphones on when nobody is around and scream them in the shower. It's poetry that means exactly what you think it means and nothing more. On “Give it Up,” the ninety-five mile per hour victory lap that closes “Stiff Upper Lip,” Brian Johnson’s ends with perhaps the most rhetorical question ever posed in a Rock song:
I'm goin' crazy on a wild man night
Take your pick of anything you like
Give it up
Give it up
Sitting pretty, all ready to bite
She givin' up a bit of cream delight
Give it up
Give it up
Give it up
Give it up
You gotta give it up, give it out
Whip it up, all about
You gotta stick it up, shout it loud
Give it up, all around (give it up)
Give it up, give it up, give it up (givin' it up)
Whippin' it in, whippin' it out (givin' it up)
Stick it up, stick it up, stick it out (givin' it up)
Give it up, all around
Give it up, give it up
Give it up, give it up
Givin' it up, stickin' it out
Givin' it up, givin' it up
Give it up
Do I make myself clear?
“Stiff Upper Lip,” like every AC/DC album, went on to sell millions of copies at a time when Rock bands simply did not sell millions of albums. They would tour the world in 2000 and 2001, as they had for a dozen times before. But the record also marked the beginning of several endings. They would not record their follow-up for another eight years. In the interim, the band would leave the record label that they had been with for decades. They would hold their music back from digital services. And they would begin to see the seeds of physical decline in Malcolm Young and Brian Johnson that would eventually take them from the band. “Stiff Upper Lip” was, sadly, and inarguably, the last great album that the original, post-Bon Scott line-up would make. It may also be the last time we hear four grown men sounding like hormonal teenage boys, high on Viagra, plugging their guitars into a Marshall Super Bass amps and their penises into the electrical panel.