AC DC's Highway To Hell (33 1/3)

Great read about band and album

I am one of those annoying Bon Scott people: I admit, when he died, so did my interest in AC/DC. His drunken Donald Duck vocals, and loopy, winkingly, silly-stupid-goofy lyrics were what made the band great. All due respect to the Young brothers (and Phil Rudd and Cliff Williams), no matter how catchy, driving and (yeah) rocking the music, Scott was the cement. Brian Johnson seems like a wonderful guy and I suppose he has his charms, but for me, his voice is just shrill and his lyrics just stupid-stupid.My personal favorite has always been  Let There Be Rock (Dlx) , but Highway to Hell is probably the one most people would choose as the Bon Scott classic and defining moment. I won't argue with that. Nor will I argue with this book.Like most everything else I've read in this series, the book is personal, a little quirky and an attempt to bring the reader a sense of being the listener. To it's credit, is does this better than many. The book is simply fun, catchy and has a driving beat - like the album it is about. It looks at the band, their career up to this (the album's) point, the circumstances of recording it and the pressures on it and the band to be the one that put them over the top. It did.Of course, Scott seems to have been BORN over the top, and the books portrait of him does him proud and, despite this in no way attempting to be a biography, this is a pointed and thoughtful view of him and what he brought to the band.And it is just fun to read. It is thoughtful without being ponderous, well-researched without straining to show off its' authors bona fides or academic prowess. A very strong entry in the series and a fun book about the album as a standalone.

The writer is a HUGE Bon Scott fan. And he makes his arguement for Bon very convincingly throughout the pages of the book. His personal testimony, as well as analysis of the album, and its relevance to the AC/DC discography, is to the point and free of pretension. My complaint is this: I too prefer Bon to Brian Johnson. I believe you could take everything from the Bon years and put together an album of your choosing that would make up the best AC/DC album. As such, it still remains that "Back In Black" is their best album. Yes, as a whole they were better and much more entertaining with Bon, but if it wasn't for his death, they wouldn't have had the inspiration to create their best-selling and most realized album. There's a reason "Back In Black" is their best-selling album. While it is easily their most over-played album on the radio, he still blows the album off a little too easily. I can agree that after "Black" they were a little over-blown, but he still dismisses "Black" a little too easily. Still, a great book in a great series.

Highway to Hell is a solid 33 1/3 entry, with Bonomo writing an excellent thumbnail of AC/DC’s history up to the album, then a great dissection of the album itself. As with most of the 33 1/3 books, there’s also plenty of personal remembrances of the album in the writer’s own life, which tends to annoy some people; but, for me, I think the personal angles add to the appeal of many of these books. Bonomo stretches the book a bit to make it a respectful 121 pages, but the things he adds, such as a small section looking at a few pictures of the band in that era, and a pseudo-psychological assessment of why older men and women listen to music essentially geared towards adolescents, is interesting enough.

Love the books

I expected WAY more from this little tome: I thought we would get a blow by blow of THE MAKING OF HIGHWAY TO HELL. Maybe 5% of the book discusses this. For the rest, we get descriptions of what the author thought of the songs during his teenage years. And which of his friends still like the album now. And a brief history of Bon Scott.I know there's precious little info out there on the making of this album. Writing a book like this is not easy. But when so little of the book covers the making of the album in the studio.... we get stuck with filler material that adds very little to the historical importance of this album. Do not buy this if you are a behind the scenes fan. Or even a MUTT fan.

I like that it was downloaded to Kindle.

Thoroughly enjoyable.Rather than sticking to the song-by-song, blow-by-blow account, Bonomo butterflies around the AC/DC story, personal accounts, a couple of unexpected and amusing anecdotes and some very incisive interpretations of choice photographs from back in the day.You can tell the author is no mere fanboy, but understands the importance of Angus and the lads, firmly framed within the context of an era that desperately needed real rock and roll, completely free of obvious adornment yet swathed in self-effacing charm, yet rocking as all hell.From a personal standpoint, this took me back to high school, when I anxiously awaited its release, and reminded me of the loss I felt felt when I heard Bon Scott had died, as well as the sheer joy of driving around San Diego as fast as possible with the windows down on a hot night, believing I would live forever.

The idea of these 33 1/3 essay/books is a very good one, especially when it covers one of your favourite albums. The 120 pages of this book cover a little more than strictly focusing on Highway to Hell, and I agree that the later AC/DC is mostly dire (not exactly the author's words, but that's the intent). Somehow this brief book conjures up strangely wistful memories of how wonderful the Young/Young/Scott combination was on stage and on record, and the apparent simplicity of the 70s era for teenagers into hard rock/metal (great times, glad I was there to enjoy it!). The author avoids a simple track by track critique of each song, all get mentioned but intertwined with other relevant topics such as the photo shoot for the album. Personally, I'd like to see a little more detail about the song structures, the little background things you may not have noticed, but perhaps a different group to AC/DC warrants this a little more. A great album no doubt, but all are in the shadow of Powerage and Let there be rock...A nice little read, just takes a few sittings to get through the whole book. For the price...get it (hot)...