ACDC Night Prowler

       In 1978 the Australian quintet calling themselves ACDC was still under the radar in America but gaining altitude quickly.  In the fall of that year they released a live album called If You Want Blood You've Got It.  The album cover was a blurred picture of Angus Young and Bon Scott in a classic rock and roll stage pose except Young was impaled through the front by a guitar. The picture was macabre and yet compelling enough to get me to buy the record.  This record chronicled the bands early years and pointed the way forward both musically and lyrically.

       ACDC is a pretty straight forward rock and roll band except they're thunderously loud.  Back then the singer was a guy named Bon Scott whose voice shrieked like it was being dragged behind a car.  But the real driver behind this over-driven music was a frenzied guitar wielded by a guy in schoolboy short pants, jacket, and short billed cap named Angus Young. Behind Scott and Young was one of the most powerful rhythm sections in rock history.  Malcom Young, Angus's older brother, is one mean rhythm guitar player & is still considered one of the best side men in rock history.  He was accompanied by Cliff Williams on bass and Phil Rudd on drums.  Rudd's drumming is a classic example of power drumming.  The fills are, direct, and effective without being simplistic.
       The following summer the album Highway to Hell showed up in the stores and I bought it (on 8 track).  The album was a giant step forward for the band.  The song writing was better, the music was better performed, produced, and recorded and yet maintained the same drive and themes featured on Blood. 
        The record opened with the classic rock song Highway to Hell.  That song, despite peaking at only 47 on the charts, put the high school kids on notice that this was a band to watch.  The reason the song, and the record, peaked lower than, at least I expected, is because it scared parents, radio program directors and their sponsors with it's references to hell and it's thematically violent under-toe.  But the kids knew that this was just plain great hard rock and it would not, could not be denied.  
       The album ended with a blues song called Night Prowler, featured here, that confidently strutted through the dark and dangerous streets made famous by the Rolling Stones with such classics as Jumping Jack Flash, Street Fighting Man, and Sympathy for the Devil.  Night Prowler comically ends with Bon Scott saying "shazbat nanu nanu" which came from the Robin Williams tv show Mork and Mindy which was popular at the time.  It was the last sounds committed to record by Scott.  
       Night Prowler, despite getting almost no radio airplay, helped to drive the bands rise to fame when a deranged serial killer claiming to be a satanist named Richard Ramirez, dubbed ironically the "Night Stalker" by the press, claimed the song as one of his inspirations for his crimes.  The band was naturally horrified and denied the song meant what Ramirez claimed.  But the negative press coverage helped to keep ACDC's drive to the top of the rock and roll mountain alive. 
       Sadly Bon Scott died shortly after recording Highway to Hell from alcohol poisoning. His replacement was a screamer named Brian Johnson and it's Johnson's voice that helped to make the rest of ACDC's career Hall Of Fame worthy.  The next 2 records, Back In Black, and For Those About To Rock, became certifiable rock classics.  But it's Bon Scott's voice that introduced ACDC's music to American audiences.  And the song Night Prowler best exemplifies Scott's power as a singer and ACDC's way forward towards super-stardom.