Music Magazine Classic Rock Special: AC/DC Seventh Edition Vorige editie

Are AC/DC the greatest rock band of all time? They just might be. They’re certainly the band that brings the Classic Rock office together – the one band we all agree on. For some people, Led Zeppelin are too poncey – too trendy and celebrated. To others, Deep Purple are too artless, Guns N’ Roses overrated, Black Sabbath too inconsistent, The Who too mod, Iron Maiden too juvenile, Metallica too puerile, blah blah blah… Hey, you can’t please everyone. Unless, of course, you’re AC/DC.

AC/DC brings people together. Exciting, heavy, groovy, funny, unpretentious, timeless, they were the cover stars of Classic Rock’s best-selling issue ever (CR125 in November 2008), which came out just as the band returned with Black Ice. For another cover (CR115), Art Director Brad Merrett spent an unhealthy amount of time looking at the bulge in Bon Scott’s trousers – and Photoshopping it out (it was so pronounced, our publisher feared that WH Smith might take us off the shelves. If you’re up there, Bon, please forgive us).

Over the years, we’ve covered Bon’s death – a story that gets a brief update here – and the band’s resurrection with Back In Black, and everything in between. Some of our writers got drunk with Bon (the late Harry Doherty, for one, whose drunken day out with Bon is recounted here), and were there at their first UK gigs. Prog magazine Editor Jerry Ewing – an Aussie by birth – saw them in Australia when he was 10. When the band announced that Brian Johnson had left and was to be replaced by Axl Rose, we were there for their first European shows with him.

What next for AC/DC? Who knows. In late 2020, the band announced a reunion with Brian Johnson and launched a chart-topping new album, Power Up, heralding a new era for the legendary rockers. But what will that era bring? We’ll have to wait and see.