• AllMyVinyl #22
• Band: AC/DC
• Album Title: Back in Black
• Release Date: 25 Jul 1980
• Date purchased: 22 Apr 2020
• Location purchased: Amazon
• Color of vinyl: black
• Number of discs: 1
• Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | Complete album on Youtube ]

What can I say about this one?  It was certified 27 times platinum this year.  It’s sold an obscene amount of copies in all the time it’s been out (something like 50 million copies according to Wikipedia).  For good reason too.  It’s an amazing record.   For me it’s a foundational piece of music.

By that I mean prior to this album I wasn’t listening to hard rock.  I was already into Pink Floyd by now, but Floyd is not hard rock.  AC/DC is.  I got Back in Black in 1980, and holy cow, it changed my life.  I’d never heard anything like this at the time – I was just 15 when it came out.  After this album I bought my first Black Sabbath album, and that was it – hard rock / metal was my preferred genre.  But Back in Black was a foundational record – it formed what remains my musical identity to this day.  I didn’t have much money then, so it’s not like I could go out and get the other AC/DC records, I digested Black in Black FULLY in 1980.  Played it SO many times.  What I don’t remember is whether I bought it on vinyl or cassette tape first.  It was probably vinyl, as I didn’t get my walkman until later, but I can’t remember one way or the other.  I know at some point I had both vinyl and cassette of this back in the day.

When I got a record player again in March of 2020, this was one of the first ones I bought (as I assumed my old collection was gone).  Picked up a new pressing of this album from Amazon in Apr of 2020, this says it was a 2003 remaster, not a surprise they were still pressing that version in 2020.  But I had to have this one.  Later on I found my original vinyl still existed, and I either gave that to my brother or sold it to Half Price Books, I can’t remember now.  But the one I have in 2024 is the one I bought in 2020.  When I got it out today to listen to it, I didn’t just listen to it in full, I played it through a second – and a third time.  It’s just that good where three consecutive listens don’t make you want to stop.  Considered a fourth, but I had to do some work stuff at the time and needed quiet.  :)

Given I was just 15 when this came out, I didn’t recognize that pretty much the entire album was about partying, drinking, and sex.  I mean heck at the time it came out I thought “Given the Dog a Bone” was about dogs and didn’t pick up on the bashing you over the head of “Let me Put my Love into You”.  Yeah, OK Brian – you like sex.  We get it.

I’m not getting into thoughts on each individual song here as I’ll lay money that if you’r reading this you know this album yourself, and have your own thoughts.  Mine mostly aren’t that prophetic beyond “Wow, that was awesome”.  You know the songs are awesome.  But I can’t let it pass without saying a few things.

Hells Bells – the bell at the start was always a focal point for the album.  I thought it was a great start to what is to come.

Back in Black (the song) was the first time I ran into incorrect lyrics.  There was no lyric sheet with the original album, and as such I had to try and figure them out on my own.  Not super easy to be honest, I got a few of them wrong, wasn’t until much later that I got ’em right (from official sources).  It’s also to me the riff that hooked me.  It’s the first song on side 2, but I recall all these years later that was the one that made me go “Oh yeah, this works”.  it’s a simple riff, but then most AC/DC riffs are – that’s the mastery of Angus Young – the riffs are simple, but powerful and work.  Back in Black (the song) is this personified.

Shake a Leg is one of my favorite tracks – it’s not a fast driving riff, that is faster than most stuff on this album.  Not like they’re doing speed metal like early Metallica or something, but for AC/DC it’s a fast song.  It never got the attention most other songs did, so I thought I should single it out.

You Shook Me All Night Long was another big single at the time, and was one I always liked.  It also holds a personal connection for me.  When my wife and I got married this album had been out for 16 years already, so it was well into my musical landscape by then.  For our reception, we tried to be considerate of the people AT the reception.  Didn’t want to blow them out with a lot of quirky tracks, so we kept it to stuff we liked that was more socially acceptable.  However, Shook did get played at the reception – it was the nod to my harder side of music.  I did spot my grandparents (whose jam was 1930’s big band type of swing music) stand there and watch us all get crazy for five minutes listening to this song.  That’s a pleasant memory these years later as my grandfather is no longer with us.  They said nothing, but I know they didn’t like it.  haha.  Also in 1986, the band put out a soundtrack album called “Who Made Who”, and on it was this song.  They made a fully conceptual music video for the song, which again – is about sex. It’s fairly over the top (and objectifying) in its message delivered by video.  I’ve included that below (along with the original video), so you can check it out if you want.

In fact, there were six videos released from this album in 1980 – but all of them were performance videos.  No concept, just the band on a stage miming to the music.  They’re all on this page, on the off chance you forgot what any of these songs were about.

The rest of the songs are all bangers, but I wanted to point out how “Rock & Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution” ends.  I don’t know if that was up to Mutt Lange or the band or what, but I always thought it was a perfect closer to the album.  The song isn’t fast, it’s mid range to slower, but the end – those last few notes close out the song and the album perfectly.

I ended up writing a bit more than I thought I would, but I wanted to get some personal thoughts on it.  It disturbs me a bit that this – my first hard rock album by any band is now 44 years old.  I mean good lord.  But it’s just as killer 44 years later as when I first heard it back in 1980.