(Credits: Spotify)
Fri 16 January 2026 17:09, UK
Everyone who has ever listened to an AC/DC record knew exactly what to expect before they even put the needle down.
Angus and Malcolm Young had pinpointed the exact sweet spot for rock and roll, and while it could get a bit monotonous after a while, you couldn’t blame them for making the best riffs that they knew how with the sleaziest lyrics anyone had ever heard over top of them. So when they saw some of their contemporaries cashing in to earn some hits, they weren’t going to roll over when asked about them.
Then again, there is also a very specific genre of rock and roll that the band always catered to. In their minds, the core essence of rock and roll began with the blues and ended a little bit before The Beatles came to town. They had little time for the pinup stars of the 1950s, and after Elvis Presley got drafted, that was where they stopped listening. It wasn’t much to go on, but that was all they needed when they started woodshedding their songs with Bon Scott back in the day.
Because when you think about it, the beauty of AC/DC was that it sounded so simple. They weren’t going to overstay their welcome or have Angus play a long sweeping solo that lasted 20 minutes or anything. They had their fans’ best interests at heart, and it was better for them to give each crowd the best show they’ve ever seen rather than bring out the acoustic guitars or working with rappers.
That simply wasn’t their style, so when rock and roll started changing in the 1980s, they burrowed ahead as only they knew how. Back in Black secured them a place in rock and roll history right as the decade started, but even if a few of their songs managed to get traction on MTV, they weren’t the type to be photogenic. They saved that for the poodle-haired “rock stars” on the Sunset Strip, but it had to be disheartening seeing David Coverdale do the same thing.
While Angus admitted that he wasn’t interested in any particular era of Deep Purple, it’s not like Coverdale started life as a pinup star. He had studied all those bluesy vocalists that came before him, and while he did inject a bit of soul into the beginnings of Whitesnake, hearing him go from a song like ‘Slow an’ Easy’ to breaking out the shimmering guitars on a song like ‘Is This Love’ was enough for the band to wash their hands of him.
Malcolm had already seen what Coverdale could do, but watching him with mile-high hair in the video for ‘Here I Go Again’ was the final straw, saying, “David Coverdale’s got success, but he’s had to become a pop singer to get it. There’s always your glamour bands and your denim-clad groups. And you usually find out that your denim-clad groups are still surviving and the glam ones fade away.” He’s absolutely correct, but it took the rest of the world a little while to get the message.
The era of Blow Up Your Video was right in the thick of hair metal, but when Nirvana set grunge in motion at the start of the 1990s, everyone realised how silly those bands looked. Whitesnake may have been one of the many bands that were getting glamorous, but when people like Winger and Warrant started gaining traction, it was time for everyone to start changing their minds on what was cool.
So when AC/DC stormed up the charts one more time with ‘Thunderstruck’ in the early 1990s, it wasn’t that hard for the alternative crowd to get in on the action as well. The Australian rockers never bothered to change their look or sound whenever they played, and if they could still bring the riffs, they were more than welcome on rock radio.
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