Watch AC/DC’s no nonsense video for Realize

AC/DC have shared the video for their latest single, Realize, the hard-riffing opening track to 2020’s hugely successful Power Up album.

Directed by Clemens Habicht and Josh Cheuse, the video shows the rejuvenated quintet - Brian Johnson, Angus Young, Stevie Young, Cliff Williams and Phil Rudd - rocking out in a straightforward performance shoot, enlivened by some fancy camera work.

Stevie Young might want to have a quiet word with Angus about sharing out those Marshall cabinets more fairly though…

Speaking about the track in Classic Rock, Angus Young says: “I remember the first time Malcolm [Young, AC/DC’s late bandleader] played me his idea of it, and I said at the time: ’You got some lyric ideas?’, and he sung what he had to me. I wished I’d had a tape recording of that. But anyhow, it was so hooky it just stuck in my head, so it was easy to put it together.”

AC/DC’s comeback album Power Up was voted the best album of 2020 by the writers of Classic Rock magazine.

Speaking about the album to the magazine, Brian Johnson says, “It’s just rock’n’roll, you know? It’s a powerful thing. Everybody loves rock’n’roll. And by crikey the world needs it right now, my son!”

Meanwhile, AC/DC guitarist Angus Young has paid tribute to Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose for stepping in to cover for Brian Johnson when the Geordie singer was forced to quit touring due to issues with his hearing. But Young says that, whatever rumours might suggest, Rose never recorded any new music with the Australian rock legends.

Speaking to Rolling Stone, Young is generous in his praise for Rose, and states that he will be “forever grateful” to the vocalist for filling in for long-standing frontman Johnson on the Rock Or Bust tour, at a time when there was huge speculation as to what might happen next for AC/DC.

“Sometimes when you’re in the thick of something, it is hard to make decisions,” admits Young, “but you try and go, ‘Well, I’ll try and do the best with a bad situation.’ And when Brian got his hearing problem, he was advised he shouldn’t be continuing [touring]. We had a few commitments that we were locked into and I didn’t want to sit in a room full of lawyers and battle [cancellations] out with a lot of people. So the suggestion was, ‘OK, maybe somebody might be able to fill in and do those dates.’ And Axl Rose contacted us. I’ll be forever grateful for him for doing that. He was very pro about doing it. He really gave a great performance.”

When Rolling Stone writer Kory Grow says to Young ‘Axl said that he thought you and he might work on some music together. Did that ever come about?’, Young says “No, no. That never happened.”

“Nothing really came out solid,” the guitarist says. “I know that he [Axl] has a lot of things he’s involved in. I don’t even know if you would say it was music.”

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.