Are AC/DC Still An Australian Band?

A lot has been happening of late in the world of rock icons AC/DC, and strangely it’s all culminated in some people questioning the heritage of the great band and whether we can any longer – if we ever could, some will argue – claim them as Australian.

Their brand new album Rock Or Bust debuted at the top of the Australian album charts – this feat described on Billboard.com as having “opened at No. 1 in their homeland” – having been released a week earlier in Australia than in the US (and most other territories). It’s their fifth ARIA number one album, no mean feat (only nine other artists have achieved the milestone, including Aussies Powderfinger and Silverchair).

But recent promo photos of the group have not included the mug of recently infamous drummer Phil Rudd, who – despite calling New Zealand his place of residence these days – is the only Australian-born member left in the current incarnation of AC/DC. Is he still in the band? Probably. But this doubt has been compounded by the recent retirement for health reasons of founding guitarist Malcolm Young, which leaves his baby brother Angus as the only remaining original member. This no doubt lessens their ties that the band forged with our nation in its formative years (even though Angus and Malcolm both have abodes here and spend a lot of time at “home”), but does this actually change anything?

The history of AC/DC is so long and convoluted due to their longevity that it’s difficult to objectively condense, but here goes; they formed in Sydney in 1973 around the core of the Young brothers, who had been born in Scotland but moved to Sydney in 1963 (when Malcolm was 10-years-old and Angus but a wee eight). Their revolving cast of bandmates included both Aussie natives and imports, but the other pivotal member of the early years was of course Ronald Belford “Bon” Scott, who was also born in Scotland in 1946 (and sported a ‘Scotland Forever’ tattoo on his forearm long before ink was a fashion statement) but who had moved to Australia in 1952 at the tender age of six, eventually settling with his family in Fremantle.

"If Redfoo decides to stay in Australia are LMFAO all of a sudden eligible for the AMP?"

So by the time they all got together and started taking over the world with their blues-based, riff-heavy rock’nroll they’d all been educated in Australia (musically and otherwise), started their first bands on these shores, presumably lost their virginities here (chances are with nice Aussie lasses), cut their teeth on the powerful Aussie pub circuit, were peers and contemporaries to a coterie of other Australian bands – you could go on forever. You have to assume that all of Angus’ early school uniforms had Aussie school logos on them. Their 1975 debut album High Voltage only came out in Australia (on an Australian label, Albert Productions), so it’s difficult to argue that in their nascent era they weren’t a completely Australian band. Like many other bands of the time (and later) such as The Easybeats (who contained another Young brother, George), Cold Chisel, Radio Birdman and The Church (to name but a few) the band’s members were not all born in Australia, but if anything that just represents the tenets of multi-culturalism and the fact that – our Indigenous forebears aside – our country is a nation of migrants, people who came here for a better life and started identifying as Australians in the process.

So presumably, if we’re to believe the naysayers, at some time during AC/DC’s (successful) quest for world domination they forfeited this right to be identified as an Aussie band. What attributes dictate where a band’s from anyway?

DOES IT MATTER WHERE YOU ARE BORN?

I fucking hope not, because we’d have to rewrite music history. Do Red Hot Chili Peppers qualify as a local band because Flea was born in Melbourne? No thanks. Was Colin Hay hiding his Scottish accent when he sang, “I come from a land Down Under” in men at Work’s classic hit Down Under (although I bet he wishes they didn’t pilfer the tune of an Aussie kids’ song)? Are The Clash Turkish because Joe Strummer was born in Ankara? Are Queen the greatest band ever from the Sultanate of Zanzibar because that’s where Farrokh Bulsara (sorry, Freddie Mercury) first used that voice in anger, assumedly crying? Nick Cave lives in England now but he’s still considered an Aussie muso by all and sundry because he cut his teeth here. The footage on the Family Jewels DVD of a young AC/DC running around London in the mid-‘70s wearing only footy shorts speaks volumes really – it’s not where a band’s members were born but where the band started as its own entity that ultimately determines its nationality.

CAN A BAND CHANGE NATIONALITIES MID-CAREER?

There’s no doubt that as the years have passed AC/DC’s Australian ties have lessened. Bon’s sad passing in 1980 found him replaced by a full-blooded Pom in the form of Brian Johnson, but can that change of membership change the band’s nationality? You wouldn’t think so. When bassist Cliff Williams – another Pom – joined the band back in 1977 he initially struggled to get a work permit here because unlike the other members of the band he “wasn’t Australian”. If Redfoo decides to stay in Australia are LMFAO all of a sudden eligible for the AMP? If one of the Maddens lives here too long can Good Charlotte get an ARIA? I’m sincerely sorry for extrapolating too far, but you get the gist.

IS WHERE A BAND HAS BEEN RECOGNISED RELEVANT?

Surely which nations honour a particular band has to be relevant to this discussion. AC/DC were inducted into the ARIA Hall Of Fame in 1988 – the first batch of inductees – but they didn’t make the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in the States until 2003, plus importantly the former gong is only for Australian bands. Melbourne proudly houses AC/DC Lane (and was also the location of many iconic early film clips, like It’s A Long Way To The Top (If You Want To Rock’N’Roll) with its flatbed truck rolling along Swanston St... even if Bon was blaring bagpipes). Fremantle has Bon’s statue (and is his final resting place, despite him passing in England). In 2012 Australian Guitar magazine named Angus Young Australia’s greatest ever guitar player. Australian marine biologists have discovered that playing AC/DC’s music underwater attracts Great White Sharks (for research purposes) while the Americans used the same music at Guantanamo Bay to torture inmates. See the distinction? Furthermore, Aussies are the only people (purportedly) to call them “Acca Dacca”… I think we’re nearing the truth.

At the end of the day it really all comes down to how much we rate a band and whether we want to claim them or not. AC/DC are righteous, so with their local background of course they’re Aussies. Other times it’s not so cut and dry – take

Rick Springfield (please); Jessie’s Girl is definitely Aussie, and maybe I’ve Done Everything For You (and the best bits of Zoot), but the rest is presumably not Aussie (thankfully we’ll never know).

And, you know what? Maybe what we think matters jack shit anyway, maybe it’s how the band identifies themselves which is the only important consideration. Back in 2009 Angus himself, when asked “do you still consider yourself an Australian band?’, told Paul Cashmere; “Sure, that is where we started and where we were first recognised as coming from. For us, for sure [we identify as Australian]. If it wasn’t for Australia we wouldn’t be here”.

So there you have it: anybody who alludes that AC/DC (sorry, Acca Dacca) aren’t an Aussie band aren’t just being jerks and pushing buttons but they’re also calling Angus Young a liar, and that’s just... un-Australian.

AC/DC's new album Rock Or Bust is out now.