Credit: Far Out / Publicity Still / Paramount Plus
October 26th, 2026 · 2:00am GMT
The beauty of rock music is the versatility of it. Plenty of people, past and present, have taken the genre and twisted it so that it fits in a completely new mould.
One example of this is Black Sabbath. The band are famous for putting together the genre of heavy metal, with the pained lyrics of Ozzy Osbourne really acting as the driving force behind this new and exciting sound. It was rock music, sure, but it felt doomier than that, with a low-rumbling guitar sound and terrifying themes piercing through tracks.
Contrast that with a rap group like Run DMC. There were a lot of people in 1984 who thought that rock music and hip-hop had no business interacting, but Run DMC cast away those notions when they released the song ‘Rock Box’. They took this new innovation within the genre even further a couple of years later when they teamed up with Aerosmith to release the global phenomenon ‘Walk This Way’. Joe Perry from the band admitted that he was surprised by just how little the rap group changed the song and fully embraced the rock sound of the original.
“It took me all of a minute to say yes,” he said, “I didn’t know what was gonna happen when I walked in the studio. I thought they’d show us some ideas on how to rearrange it, but all they had was a drum track. Rubin said, All you gotta do is play the song the way you play it. So I sat down and played it.”
Black Sabbath and Run DMC took rock music in completely different directions. Their sounds are both a clear offset from the world of rock, but they also don’t overlap in the slightest. How sweet, then, that both of these contrasting artists can find common ground both in the world of rock and with one very specific album that they agree is one of the best out there. Two innovators of rock, it turns out, are drawn to the genre in its simplest form, as they adore the straightforward guitar styles of AC/DC and their record, Highway To Hell.
For Run DMC, the album pulled them in so much because it was unlike anything they had come across before. They liked other forms of rock, sure, but there was a grit and an aggression on Highway To Hell that they had never heard prior.
“I first heard Highway To Hell on the radio,” said Darryl Matthews McDaniels (otherwise known as DMC), “It was a New York City station that played it and it was just so captivating and gravitating! I was like, ‘this ain’t no Beatles!’ It sounded like a movie! Very scary and powerful, but inviting!”
Further reading: From The Vault
Ozzy Osbourne said that he was drawn to the simplicity of the band. There is nothing to read into with AC/DC; they’re just a great guitar band who like to put together stellar riffs, and that’s the thing that the Prince of Darkness latched onto, describing them as “meat and potatoes”. When he was asked if he had any AC/DC albums in particular that he would consider a favourite, he said that while he loves the work of Brian Johnson, Bon Scott’s vocals on Highway To Hell are a real musical standout.
“I love Brian Johnson, but to me, my good friend, the late Bon Scott, was the best singer AC/DC ever had,” he said. “This album was like an addiction to me,” Osbourne concluded when discussing Highway To Hell.
“Bon Scott was a great singer. I mean, Brian [Johnson] is good. But I prefer Bon.”
