Rock 'N' Roll Damnation Kicked In The Teeth What's Next To The Moon Downpayment Blues Ac Dc

Rock 'N' Roll Damnation Album: Powerage (1978)
Kicked in the Teeth Album: Powerage (1978)
What's Next to the Moon Album: Powerage (1978)
Downpayment Blues Album: Powerage (1978)
by AC DC

Powerage is the fifth studio album released on 5 May 1978 in the United Kingdom and 20 May 1978 in the United States. This was the band's first album to feature Cliff Williams on bass guitar, and it was also the first AC/DC album not to have a title track (aside from the Australia-only High Voltage album) and the first worldwide not to be released with a different album cover. Powerage was re-released in 2003 as part of the AC/DC Remasters series.

After a 12-date European tour opening for Black Sabbath in April, bassist Mark Evans was fired from AC/DC on 3 May 1977.[4] In the AC/DC memoir AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll, former manager Michael Browning states, "I got a call one day from Malcolm and Angus. We were in London, I went to their apartment and they told me they wanted to get rid of Mark. Him and Angus didn't see eye to eye. They used to have a sort of tit-for-tat thing going, but nothing that I would have ever thought was going to be gig-threatening." According to Browning, the Young brothers were seriously considering Colin Pattenden of Manfred Mann's Earth Band fame.[5] Browning feared that Pattenden was too old and didn't fit the band's image, so he instead pushed for Cliff Williams, who had previously played with Home and Bandit. Williams, who could also sing background vocals, passed the audition and was asked to join the band. In a 2011 interview with Joe Bosso that appears on MusicRadar, Evans reflected on his ousting from the group:

"With Angus and Malcolm, they were put on this earth to form AC/DC. They're committed big-time. And if they feel your commitment is anything less than theirs, well, that's a problem. Angus was intense. He was AC/DC 100 percent. His work ethic was unbelievable. When I was with him, he expected everybody to be just like him, which is pretty impossible... At the time, Malcolm said something about them wanting a bass player who could sing, but I think that was a smokescreen. I don't know if there was any one reason. It's just the way it went down. I felt the distance growing between me and Angus and Malcolm. When I was fired, it wasn't so much a surprise as it was a shock. There was a lot of tension in the band at the time. We'd just been kicked off a Black Sabbath tour, and this was right when a trip to the States was cancelled because the record company rejected the Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap album. So it was a hard period."

The band finally toured America for the first time in the summer of 1977, focusing on smaller markets at first but eventually playing CBGB in New York City and the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles. In December, they played a set in front of a small audience at Atlantic Recording Studios in New York City which was broadcast live over Radio WIOQ in Philadelphia and hosted by Ed Sciaky. The promotional album, Live from the Atlantic Studios, was later released on the 1997 Bonfire box set. In early 1978, the band returned to Sydney to record their next album.

According to the Murray Engleheart book AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll, several songs that appeared on Powerage were started in July 1977 during the band's first rehearsals with Williams at Albert Studios, including "Kicked in the Teeth", "Up to My Neck in You", an early version of "Touch Too Much" (which later appeared on the follow-up album Highway to Hell), and possibly "Riff Raff". The Powerage sessions officially got going in January 1978 and stretched over a period of about eight weeks. Atlantic Records executives in the United States complained that the album did not contain a radio-friendly single, so with the first pressings of Powerage ready to go in the UK, the band complied and recorded "Rock 'n' Roll Damnation". The song, which features handclaps and maracas and does not have a traditional guitar solo, was released in Britain at the end of May and reached #24, the best performance yet by an AC/DC single. However, Powerage was ultimately the final Bon Scott-era studio album the band recorded with the team of Harry Vanda and George Young, who had produced all of the band's albums up to that point (George was the older brother of Angus and Malcolm; he and Vanda had enjoyed their own pop success with the Easybeats in the 1960s), the feeling from Atlantic being that a more commercial producer might do wonders for the band's profile in the lucrative American market.

Biographer Clinton Walker wrote in his 1994 Scott memoir Highway to Hell, "'Gimme a Bullet' was perhaps Bon's most accomplished piece of writing to date, in which his penchant for hardcase metaphors finds even more genuine pathos and humour than it had before." "What's Next to the Moon", with its allusions to Casey Jones and Clark Kent, as well as the elusive "Gone Shootin'" and the unapologetic "Down Payment Blues" ("I know I ain't doin' much, but doin' nothin' means a lot to me"), clearly show that Scott's writing, much like the band's sound, had evolved from the novelties of the group's early albums.[citation needed] "Bon was a street poet – he described it as 'toilet wall' poetry," former AC/DC manager Michael Browning explained to Peter Watts of Uncut in 2013. "That was unknown. They signed a singer and got a lyricist, as well." "Sin City", which the band performed frequently in concert, explores the seductive charms and dangers of Las Vegas, while "Kicked in the Teeth" addresses a two-faced woman with "two-faced lies". In an interview with Bass Frontiers, Cliff Williams recalls the sessions fondly: "The guys had already been in the studio for a while and we went in to do what turned out to be the Powerage album. Great work environment. Albert Studios there in Sydney was a great little rock and roll room... Great producers. Obviously a lot of chemistry there being brothers. Just a real fiery, energetic work environment. And we had about three weeks to do it, 'cause that's about all the money we had... It was really a tremendous experience."

Many of AC/DC's early albums were altered for release in other markets, and this practice continued with Powerage, although it was the first LP to be released nearly simultaneously in both Australian and international markets and the first to use just one cover image for both.

In 2005, Powerage was ranked number 325 in Rock Hard magazine's book The 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time. Kerrang! magazine listed the album at No. 26 among the "100 Greatest Heavy Metal Albums of All Time".

"Rock 'n' Roll Damnation" is a single and the first track on their Powerage album, released in 1978. The single version is an abbreviated version of the album track, with a time of 3:05, as opposed to the album track's length of 3:37. The album track "Sin City" was the B-side in the UK, Germany, Belgium, and Japan. In the US, Canada, and the Netherlands, it was "Kicked in the Teeth," also from the album. In Australia, however, the B-side was "Cold Hearted Man," which appeared on initial UK and European pressings of the album, and was eventually removed when "Rock 'n' Roll Damnation" was added.

Written by Angus Young, Malcolm Young and Bon Scott, it was played live by the band during the Powerage tour, and was also played live during the 2003 world tour, sung by Brian Johnson, Scott's replacement since his death in 1980. It also appeared on the 1978 live album If You Want Blood You've Got It. The song also featured on the soundtrack album for Iron Man 2.

"Rock 'n' Roll Damnation" was the final track recorded during the Powerage sessions, after the record company persuaded the band to go back into the studio and come up with a radio-friendly single that could garner some airplay. The move found some success, giving the band its first charting single in the UK where it peaked at #24. The song features handclaps and maracas and does not have a traditional guitar solo, unlike most other AC/DC songs.

Record World said the song "has a monster guitar hook and rocks harder than just about anything around."

On the first pressing of the UK version of Powerage, "Rock 'n' Roll Damnation" does not appear; side 1 opens with "Gimme a Bullet". Some later UK and European pressings tacked the single version of "Rock 'n' Roll Damnation" on as the opening track of the album. Eventually the full version of the song became the standard.

"Cold Hearted Man," which had appeared on initial UK and European pressings, was removed from the album around the time that "Rock 'n' Roll Damnation" was added. However, a 10-track LP including both songs does exist in (at least) the UK (catalog number K 50483 (SD19180), which is identical to the 9-track version), Germany (ATL 50 483), and Portugal (ATL 50483 SD 19180).) These versions contain the single version of "Rock 'n' Roll Damnation" and have a fade out for "Riff Raff" (UK Cassette Versions had the full version of "Riff Raff" up until the 1994 remasters).

In a 1979 interview, Angus Young explained how What's Next to the Moon came together: "We were in studio, and I had just broken a string. Instead of changing my guitar, I preferred to keep the one I had, because that day I had a hell of a sound! So I changed the string and, in order to test the arrangement, I played a few notes followed by a chord. That was exactly the intro to 'What's Next To The Moon.' Malcolm said, 'This would be good to start a song.' And here it was."

Bon Scott – vocals
Angus Young – lead guitar
Malcolm Young – rhythm guitar, backing vocals
Cliff Williams – bass guitar, backing vocals
Phil Rudd – drums