Let there be rock
The road to glory is paved with suffering, Matthew reckoned in the Bible. But AC/DC said it better — It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock’n’roll.
The mighty Accadacca went to war, winning over drunken Aussie pub crowds of the 1970s with their high-voltage rock, and fighting hand-to-hand battles across America and Europe during early campaigns.
The iconic band, led by Fremantle- raised larrikin Bon Scott but fuelled by the twin guitar attack of Angus and Malcolm Young, were finishing battles started by the Easybeats, who after initial victories could not sustain their attack on the music world.
A new two-part rockumentary, Blood + Thunder: The Sound of Alberts, recasts this well-trodden tale as a heroic quest launched out of remarkable family-owned Sydney record company Alberts, irreverently labelled “bogan Motown” in the series.
AC/DC and the Easybeats — featuring guitarists George Young (Angus and Malcolm’s older brother) and Harry Vanda, his Dutch mate from Villawood Migrant Hostel — were the shining knights of the storied label.
“The Youngs were the army and Alberts was the castle,” says writer and director Paul Clarke, who returns to this fertile battleground after making acclaimed 2001 series Long Way to the Top and the pop-leaning follow-up Love is in the Air. (Both titles are taken from Alberts releases.)
“Is there any career that is worse for you, apart from being in the army and going to war, than rock’n’roll,” Clarke asks rhetorically.
Scott, dubbed a “toilet wall poet” by George Young, died in 1980. Billy Thorpe, Ted Mulry and the Angels’ Doc Neeson followed while other Alberts acts have been decimated. Angry Anderson is the only survivor from the original Rose Tattoo line-up.
Malcolm Young recently retired from AC/DC due to worsening dementia, while years of drug abuse have left Easybeats singer Stevie Wright a shell of his charismatic self. Wright gives a rare interview for Blood + Thunder. “He’s not the person that he was,” Clarke says, “but he is still full of charisma. He’s the most endearing person I met on the whole shoot. I just loved him.”
Despite casualties, Blood + Thunder is very much a celebration of the unlikely “blood pact” between two families — the well-to-do Alberts led by savvy music lover Ted Albert, and the blue-collar Youngs, a sprawling clan of £10 migrants from the outskirts of Glasgow.
Remarkably, the Young family of Cranhill produced three of the best rock guitarists of all-time in George, Malcolm and youngest brother Angus, who spoke on camera for an hour in Los Angeles between AC/DC’s performances at the two-weekend Coachella festival earlier this year.
The affable Vanda, Easybeats drummer Gordon “Snowy” Fleet, Alberts pop star John Paul Young, You Am I rocker Tim Rogers, Midnight Oil’s Peter Garrett, Colin Hay and Molly Meldrum are among the impressive talking heads in Blood + Thunder.
A dyed-in-the-wool Accadacca fan whose first album was 1975 opus TNT(“I just tortured my parents with it”), Clarke, 53, says he was a little perplexed and amazed the notoriously insular Alberts threw open the archives, allowing him to use rare photographs of the Young family. “I’m still a little perplexed and amazed that I got that opportunity., to tell you the truth,” the 53-year-old says.
The time frame of Blood + Thunder, narrated by veteran actor David Field, spans from the Young family emigrating to Australia in 1963 — the year before Ted Albert takes over the struggling family business and releases Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs’ single Mashed Potato — to the patriarch’s death in 1990. By then, AC/DC had literally left the planet Thunderstruck with the major label sharpened sound of The Razors Edge.
Clarke’s documentary doesn’t focus on stadium tours or platinum records, preferring to home in on the songwriting and studio wizardry of Vanda and Young, the sheer bloodymindedness of AC/DC’s Young brothers and unlikely rock patron Ted Albert. “What fascinates me is the way individuals can move a culture,” Clarke says.
The other, less amplified strand of Blood + Thunder is the enormous contribution these working-class immigrants made to Australian culture.
Clarke, whose family emigrated from Northern Ireland the same year as the Youngs, visited Villawood to film where George met Johannes van den Berg, and renamed him Harry Vanda.
He found the former migrant hostel, and ground zero for Australia’s Lennon and McCartney, is now a detention centre. “It is like a high-security prison,” Clarke says. “Police came running. They had the camera off me within 10 seconds”.
The film-maker wonders whether current and future generations of immigrants will be allowed to make a similar impact.
Once again, AC/DC said it best: Let there be rock. Clarke laughs: “I can’t think of any Australian music that gives you more joy.”
Blood + Thunder: The Sound of Alberts airs on June 25 and July 2 at 8.30pm on ABC.
