‘Rock or Bust’ for Real: Inside the Making of AC/DC’s Defiant New Album

It was a surprise, I must admit – I didn’t know which way it was going to go,” Cliff Williams says. The bassist is recalling the moment when he got the call at the beginning of this year at his home in Florida, telling him that his band, the Australian power-blues juggernaut AC/DC, was going to make a new album. “I always hoped for the best. It was great to hear we were going forward – to know for sure.”

Williams is sitting next to AC/DC lead guitarist Angus Young, who is bent over a cup of tea, growling in affirmation in a gnarly Scottish-Aussie accent. It is the first week of October, and the two men are in the small, quiet salon of a London hotel, talking on the record for the first time about their hard road to that new album, Rock or Bust. Singer Brian Johnson will join them after an hour, filling the room with his volcanic, lad-ish bonhomie and equally thick, gravelly diction, cackling at his own jokes from under the brim of his trademark newsboy’s cap.

“Remember, I suffer from CRS, so no difficult questions,” Johnson announces as he sits down. “That’s short for Can’t Remember Shit,” he adds, shaking with mirth. Johnson has been AC/DC’s happy joker since he joined the band in 1980, replacing the late Bon Scott, and he takes that part of his job seriously, lightening the mood whenever he enters a room.

His humor is an extra blessing today. The conversation starts with and frequently returns to a still fresh, resounding absence at the center of AC/DC: the retirement of rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young, 61, who is suffering from dementia and in full-time care in Australia. A few weeks after the London interview, the news gets weirder and worse, with the arrest in New Zealand of drummer Phil Rudd, who faces charges of threatening to kill and drug possession. That leaves Angus, 59 and still a pint-sized blitzkrieg in schoolboy shorts onstage, in charge of the band that he and Malcolm started in 1973 – and alone to figure out how to fill that backbeat chair on AC/DC’s 2015 world tour.

“Every year has its ups and downs, I suppose, but it’s been pretty rough, yeah,” Angus will admit in a later interview. “But we will definitely be out there. We are committed to do this.”

Lost in that trial and uproar is this fact: An album did get finished, and it is impressive defiance. Rock or Bust, AC/DC’s 16th studio LP, is unusually crisp in its trademark brutality, with 11 songs clocking in at barely 34 minutes. Angus solos in hot, terse flourishes, framing the hooks and Johnson’s vocal choruses with declarative concision. “It’s short, snappy and different,” Johnson confirms, noting that Rock or Bust reminds him of “old Beatles albums, where every song was tight and pop-y.” Producer Brendan O’Brien believes Rock or Bust is still business as usual. AC/DC “write great pop songs,” he claims. “They just sound kind of crazy.”

That day in London, Angus, Williams and Johnson speak of the record with good humor and pride. The next day, at a video shoot for the first single “Play Ball,” new rhythm guitarist Stevie Young, Angus and Malcolm’s cousin, mentions with a grin how “I had to clean up my sound a bit for this – I actually play a lot dirtier than Mal does.” And on the phone, O’Brien marvels at how, during the sessions in Vancouver last May, AC/DC cut through the pressures of recording without Malcolm’s firm direction and steely strumming arm. “You don’t get a lot of explaining with those guys,” the producer says. “To them, talking doesn’t get anything done.”

“Malcolm – he always pushed on,” Angus says flatly, “even with Bon,” referring to the Youngs’ decision to keep going after Scott’s death, hiring Johnson and cutting the global smash, Back in Black. “We just did what we normally do – continue what we started.”

Angus notes something another, older brother – George, who played with the Easybeats and co-produced AC/DC’s first albums – told him on the way to Rock or Bust. “He said, ‘It’s really down to what you want to do.’ Maybe I’m punch drunk,” Angus suggests. “This is probably all I know.”

Angus looks up from his tea with a flinty smile. “Hey, I enjoy doing it. That’s why I do it.”