AC/DC | For Those About to Rock We Salute You (1981)

My musical weekend began in the early 1980s on Thursday evenings with the BBC’s teen TV favourite Top of the Pops. It concluded on Sunday evenings with BBC Radio 1’s Top 40 singles chart countdown.

Its centrepiece — also from Radio 1 — was the late-night Friday Rock Show hosted by Tommy Vance.

It would be cooler to claim to have been a disciple of John Peel’s regular weeknight programme that occupied the same after-hours slot on Radio 1, but the truth is that Peel’s pick of discs from the emerging music scene was a bit bleeding edge for my taste. Also, Peel’s show was on school nights, so I did my past bedtime radio listening on a Friday.

In his ten-to-midnight show, Vance aired a mix of new rock releases, sessions, interviews and tracks from yesteryear. While not as innovative as Peel’s output, I was forming my musical taste, so even Vance’s more rearguard spins were new to me. Catching up has been the hallmark of my music listening and I got to the breakthrough music that Peel championed initially in the fullness of time.

The title track of For Those About to Rock We Salute You was an obvious Friday Rock Show opener, and although I can’t swear that Vance ever kicked off with the number, it was certainly on his programme that I first heard the track and others from the album.

The production on this record is more lavish than its predecessor’s with producer Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange giving the band a stadium-sized sound.

AC/DC cuts were never underpowered and I prefer the cleaner recordings on the earlier LPs. Including a 21-gun salute on the opening track, though, demands that the cannon fire doesn’t dwarf the band and the heftier production keeps it in proportion.

The title track is another of those rock songs that if AC/DC hadn’t done it, someone would have had to. The uneven spacing of the 21-gun salute that extends to the song’s closing crescendo and forms a part of it is ear-catching not only because of its explosive bombast but also because it’s hard to stop yourself counting off the blasts.

I’d forgotten that Let’s Get It Up was the album’s lead single — or even that there was such a song — and it’s the LP’s obligatory innuendo fest: ‘The moon is rising and so am I.’ Ahem!

Put the Finger on You and the riff of Inject the Venom struck more chords in my memory. I also recalled and enjoyed the acronymous wordplay in C.O.D. and Brian Johnson’s throaty chuckle following his line ‘I sometimes wonder where you park your broom’ in Evil Walks.

I remember buying this record in W H Smith as one of my Christmas presents in December 1981 and it was the band’s last new release I bought. This might be partly because the album’s follow-up, Flick of the Switch, didn’t come out until 1983 and my tastes had moved on in the interval between LPs.

I like AC/DC best when they’re a harder-edged version of the Stones. While I’m more likely to spin or stream the older band, both are vintage acts and I’m ready to cue-up AC/DC now and again. Despite its tribute to those about to do so, I’m unlikely to rock with this album.