Garbage Days Revisited #44: AC/DC - "Stiff Upper Lip" (2000)

 

"Now I warn all you ladies, I shoot from the hip. I was born with a stiff...a stiff upper lip!" - AC/DC - Stiff Upper Lip

Happy New Year everyone and hope you're all having a great 2022 in the two days we've had of it so far. As you might have guessed, we're entering what's known as the new release graveyard part of the year so we thought we'd keep the content on here up with a few more retrospectives this week. And what better way to start than with a look back at arguably the first rock band your correspondent got into and one of their more underappreciated moments.

I really wish I could say that my introduction to Accer-Daccer came with their imperial years stuff but the truth is that Bon Scott died three days before my first birthday so it was when I was first watching Top of the Pops as an eight-year-old that I remember seeing the brilliant video to Heatseeker (the group's joint biggest hit in the UK until the Christmas re-release of Highway To Hell made the Top 5 over two decades later) featuring Angus Young jumping out of a missile to play his guitar solo. I thought it was great but given that I had a similar attention span to most eight-year-olds, I forgot about it fairly rapidly.

It was two years later listening to the Top 40 as an 11-year-old in the summer of 1990 that the fateful moment happened - in amidst all the PWL rubbish like Kylie, Jason, Bros, Big Fun and Sonia that was clogging up the charts around this time I first heard that snaking opening riff of Thunderstruck. In amidst the aforementioned dross it stuck out like a sore thumb and I was well and truly hooked as it built from that "wo-ah-woah-wo-ah-woooo-ohhh!" opening to the drums kicking in, Brian Johnson's screeched vocals, that razor-sharp solo from Angus Young. I mean, that song's just five minutes of perfection if you ask me and I think it's safe to say even at that young age I knew there was gonna be no way back.

I saved up my pocket money for a month and a bit and promptly bought the parent album The Razor's Edge once I had enough pound coins in my piggy bank. Handily they had a copy of its predecessor Blow Up Your Video (the one with Heatseeker on it) in the bargain bin at the same time so I bought that as well. Although I thought Blow Up Your Video was decent (though it's well and truly been eclipsed by subsequent AC/DC albums that I bought), it was The Razor's Edge that well and truly sealed the deal for me - songs like Fire Your Guns, Are You Ready? and the brilliantly silly Mistress For Christmas sounded brilliant to my ears - pure simple rock 'n' roll that hit every time.

My introduction to the classic AC/DC catalogue came a year or two later with the Live At Donington album which featured the band's set from the titular festival the year before. The live version of Highway To Hell from there gave the band another Top 10 hit and it was my first time hearing the likes of Whole Lotta Rosie, Back In Black, You Shook Me All Night Long and TNT as well as the live version of Heatseeker which well and truly smoked its studio counterpart. Again, it was on my stereo for months afterwards but for some reason it would be several years later before I went out and chased the original versions down. I think the reason for this is that after this album the group went on a lengthy hiatus and, with my music tastes drifting from the heavier likes of W.A.S.P. and Guns 'n' Roses to the more down to earth likes of the Wonder Stuff, Carter USM and the Senseless Things, I suppose I kind of temporarily forgot about them.

As daft as it may seem to think that a group who've endured as long as AC/DC could be affected by musical trends, by the time they returned in 1995 with new single Hard As A Rock, the musical landscape had shifted massively - grunge had come and gone and Britpop and Britrock were now in the ascendant. By this point, I was listening to the Wildhearts, Therapy?, Terrorvision, Baby Chaos and Kerbdog on the one hand and Oasis, Pulp, Shed Seven, Suede and Gene on the other and AC/DC just seemed a bit...I dunno...old-fashioned by comparison maybe? I did buy the single but it didn't really grab me the same way that Thunderstruck had all those years before and whereas the lead-off singles from the previous two albums had both narrowly missed the Top 10 with Heatseeker and Thunderstruck both reaching number 12 not to mention the live version of Highway To Hell making number 14, this one only just to say scraped the Top 40.

The subsequent Ballbreaker album had been produced by Rick Rubin (himself a card carrying AC/DC fan) but it would be a year or two later before I actually checked it out after picking it up in a New Year sale in HMV. It's...alright I guess but it did feel a bit AC/DC by numbers. Infamously I remember the Wildhearts supporting them on that tour at fellow Geordie Brian Johnson's behest (plus the fact that both bands were on EastWest at this point) but the label pulled Ginger and co from the support slot due to fears over the band's worsening drug issues at this point and apparently this was yet another nail in the coffin between band and label - by the end of the year the Wildhearts would have finally bailed from their deal and moved to Mushroom for Endless Nameless.

Fast forward again to the year 2000. Once again, the musical landscape has changed a lot but this time there really isn't much to speak of. In terms of metal, Britrock has long gone and it's the horrible age of Limp Bizkit, Korn, Blink 182 et al while post-Britpop, "indie" is pretty much flatlining with the rise of the post-Strokes wave of dullard garage rock around the corner. And what should drop into the new releases tray at KUBE but a copy of a new AC/DC album. Maybe I was just a bit more receptive than I'd been in 1995 but similar to The Razor's Edge a decade before, that snaking opening riff before the song properly kicked in well and truly snared me in and I've always regarded Stiff Upper Lip as the great underrated gem in AC/DC's back catalogue. While The Razor's Edge, the other album I could've put in as the group's GDR entry seems to have been given a critical re-evaluation of late with Thunderstruck being used on several film soundtracks, Stiff Upper Lip seems to have been largely forgotten about and, in my humble opinion, it deserves a bit of rediscovery.

Sure, there's an argument to be made that by this point AC/DC had found their formula and were resolutely sticking with it but when they hit the target as often as they do here from the lurching riff of Meltdown to the sleazy blues of Come And Get It and the brooding sinister Safe In New York City, you really can't argue. Although it didn't spawn a hit single, Stiff Upper Lip still got good reviews across the board with even the normally rock-unfriendly NME giving it a 9/10 and proclaiming it their best since Back In Black. Which is maybe an over-exaggeration but I'd definitely put it in my Top 5 post-Bon albums from the group.

AC/DC are of course very much still out there and long may it remain so although albums have become a lot more spaced out in recent years - there wouldn't be a follow-up to Stiff Upper Lip until 2008's Black Ice which was a reasonable effort but maybe a bit over-long at 15 tracks. By contrast, 2015's Rock Or Bust was a lot more compact at just ten tracks and lasting just over half an hour but the tracks felt a bit by-numbers and with the passing of Malcolm Young and Brian Johnson taking a (as it turned out temporary) hiatus from the group, it appeared that they were winding down, a feeling not helped with long term drummer Phil Rudd being fired after getting into what Angus rather understatedly referred to as "a spot of bother" (ie drugs and firearms offences) with the police and bassist Cliff Williams retiring as well. A tour was completed with Axl Rose standing in on vocals (reviews were, erm, mixed shall we say) but it seemed that was that.

Of course, if history's taught us anything though it's that you write AC/DC off at your peril and sure enough, 2020's Power Up not only saw Beano, Williams and Rudd all return but the group turn in a proper return to form with their strongest album since Stiff Upper Lip proving that there's still fire in the old buggers yet. And long may it remain so. Anyway, as I say, as far as unsung AC/DC albums go, you can't really get much better than Stiff Upper Lip, the sound of a band locked in and doing what they do best. Shooting from the hip indeed.