In 1984, between the releases of Flick Of The Switch and Fly On The Wall, the insatiable thirst in America for all things AC/DC-related saw the release of ’74 Jailbreak, an EP of vintage Bon Scott-era garage rock material. Jailbreak itself, which had already been released on the Australian (but not the British or US) version of Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap was backed up with other material only previously available on Antipodean versions of the High Voltage album. The album was a particular treat for die-hard fans who were used to hearing the band play these songs – especially the title track – live.
The album came out at an interesting point for the band in America, as AC/DC were a bigger live draw than ever before and people were still interested in the history of the band. However, the recent albums were not quite the draw that Back In Black and For Those About To Rock, We Salute You had been in terms of sales.
But first and foremost, ’74 Jailbreak provided a useful snapshot of the group’s history for those who had never gotten their hands on the original Australian releases. Just a few months before some of the tracks that make up this EP were recorded, the group was a shambolic mess (albeit one with great potential) with a completely unsuitable, stack-heeled, rhinestone-encrusted, glam rocker frontman in the person of Dave Evans – not exactly fulfilling the Young brothers’ vision of uncomplicated, party-friendly, blue-collar rock. These songs reveal what a massive impact that Bon Scott must have had on the band, given that some of them were recorded just six weeks after he joined.
In some ways, Bon Scott was a traditional Dionysian frontman in the style of Jim Morrison or Ozzy Osbourne – a man so deranged on drink and drugs that he was at times almost a liability. In fact, given that when Scott joined the band he was much older than the rest of the group, he was already fairly well practised in the ways of “relaxation”.
Angus recalled Bon’s routine for getting in the mood for singing when they first met. “For the first gig, the only rehearsal we had was sitting around an hour before the gig, pulling out every rock’n’roll song we knew. When we finally got there, Bon downed about two bottles of bourbon with dope, coke, speed, and says, ‘Right, I’m ready’. And he was, too. He was fighting fit.”
Despite such tales, it is rarely commented on that Scott, in the early days at least, was also a galvanising figure. He was probably the person who was responsible for them getting their shit together. The fact that he had already been in bands, recorded songs and been on tour was important and influential on the other, less experienced members.
On the first of many occasions, one of the older Young brothers, George, and an immigrant Dutchman, Harry Vanda (both of whom had experienced a fair amount of success in Australia with their own group The Easybeats), would take their positions behind the mixing desk. They would be crucial to the development of the band and, when either Malcolm or Angus would come up with a half-realised riff, George would pound it out for hours on the guitar and sometimes even on the piano, trying to refine it as much as possible; trying to boil it down until it was as primitive and powerful as it could be.
Of course, the title Jailbreak ’74 was more of a marketing ploy than anything else. It was supposed to be a celebration of 10 years of AC/DC, but anyone who had forked out for the first two original Australian imports would already know that the title track didn’t see the light of day until the original Oz pressing of Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap in 1976. It goes without saying that Jailbrea’ itself is a classic, and it’s puzzling to see why it took so long to get a worldwide release. Angus is experimenting with a very stiff but effective choppy power chord style, but this apparent simplicity doesn’t hamper the development of the song structure at all.
One of the many bands that Angus and Scott mistrusted for becoming too bloated, too distanced from their audience, and too obsessed with mythology and other self-inflated bunkum, were Led Zeppelin, but you can hear their influence here. However, this was the influence of the Zep as the Young brothers thought they should have been, rather than as they were. This is the sound of young, angry men, demolishing the blues and reassembling its ragged and bloody parts into a warmly overdriven and hook-heavy whole.
Lyrically, the song draws from the history of the blues given that the jailhouse, and people spending time in jail, were typical subjects – but here the story is given a pre-punk dose of righteous anger. Bon Scott’s narrator is telling the story of a friend who has served 16 years’ time “in hell” for murder. It eventually becomes clear that the prisoner was sent down for killing a bigger man who made a move on his girlfriend/wife and now they are about to spring him loose.
The lyrical matter makes a gloriously unreconstructed and violent prop to the newly primitivised chordage. But the thing that always separated AC/DC from just being a bunch of thugs with six strings is their charm and sense of humour. The jailbreak scenario – already slightly daft – is rendered almost camp by their use of literal guitar scraping noises to signify “spotlights!”, “sirens!” and “rifles… firin’!”
Actually recorded in 1974 are You Ain’t Got A Hold On Me, Show Business and Soul Stripper, all smoking blues numbers given the pared-down Young and Young treatment. The EPs last track is a blistering cover of Big Joe Williams’ Baby, Please Don’t Go, the frantic R&B standard that AC/DC made so much their own that when they released it as their first ever single in 1975, it made the Top 10 of the Australian national charts. The fact that the band had been playing this song live longer helped. Onstage, it was often the
precursor to some form of onstage madness; most usually Angus Young tearing most of his clothes off and then riding around the audience on Scott’s shoulders. There was already confusion in their homeland over the gay/bisexual overtones of the name AC/DC, and this amount of fleshy abandon didn’t help.
’74 Jailbreak was an interesting release. It proved how hungry AC/DC had been at one point, and to older fans it reminded them how raw they had been before they became millionaires.
Originally published in Classic Rock & Metal Hammer Present The Story Of AC/DC
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