Recommendations of the Editorial team
An archive text from 2022.
In conversation with “Guitar World”in which the guitarist also spoke about the death of Bon Scott, as well as the strengths of his successor Brian Johnson, Angus Young was also asked about the debate about “Highway to Hell”.
Especially in the United States, the title and the entire metaphor of songs in 1979 provoked the outrage of the “religious majority” of America. The famous cover, on which Young was depicted with devil horns and a devil’s tail, also triggered intensive controversy.
Suddenly spectators appeared with Bible verses
“When we called the album ‘Highway to Hell’, the American record company immediately panicked”. So the 65-year-old today. “With religious things I thought that it was like in Australia everywhere. There they are called ‘Bible Thumers’. And it is a limited species. Very limited! Christianity was never a popular movement. It seems to be the punishment background! But in America there were people who had appeared at our concerts with bed sheets and wrote prayers on posters. ”
There was also the rumor that Satanic messages would be obtained if “Highway to Hell” were played backwards. For Angus Young an madness. “Holy shit. Why play backwards? Everything is said straightforward. ‘Highway to Hell!’.
“Highway to Hell” is one of the best-selling albums of hard rock music. And brought AC/DC the breakthrough in the USA. The band, which were not produced for the first time by Vanda/Young, deliver, as Gunther Reinhardt wrote in the Rolling Stone, an amazing party full of sex, drug and rock’n’roll, dirty, scratched, shabby, sexy, ironic. And the legacy of the Bon Scott, which should die one year after the recordings. With the “Mark of the Ork” greeting “Na-Nu Na-Nu”, he says goodbye when the album ends with “Night Prowler”.
The title song has long since become a classic hymn. Which is also liked by people who would never hear another song by the Australians.