Their American record company Atlantic decided at this time to release an EP called “‘74 Jailbreak”, that contained the tracks that they had cut from their own release version of “High Voltage” back in 1976, of the songs that had appeared on the original Australian versions of their first three albums, included the song “Jailbreak” that somehow they thought wasn’t a good fit... idiots. This EP with songs with Bon Scott on vocals, seemed like a desperate effort to retain their US fans in a period where they were obviously concerned about the AC/DC fan base.
For the follow up album, it was again decided that the Young brothers would produce, hoping to reconnect with a sound closer to the first two Johnson-helmed albums than their most recent. This was offset by a period out of the studio when the band headlined two nights at the Rock in Rio festival in January 1985, on one night to over 250,000 people. The reception the band received at the festival proved that the band still had plenty of credits in the bank, and that the fan base was ready for what was to come on their new album, titled “Fly on the Wall”.
AC/DC has built a career on creating a formula for their music that is based on a number of characteristics that are similar in execution and yet still manage to appeal to their fan base and those on the periphery who just enjoy a solid rock song. This is perhaps just a fancy way of saying that AC/DC has a penchant for writing albums that barely sway from their core sound, tempo beat and structure. That is as solid an argument that can be made for the songs on this album. The band did not want to be as stripped back as they were for “Flick of the Switch”. In fact the Young brothers were quoted as saying that they were hoping to go back and recapture the rawness and simplicity of their earlier work. The introduction of Brian as lead singer had seen the last vestiges of the band’s earliest blues based material seep away, and the advent of 1980’s hard rock had become the basis for the solidity of the tracks from that point. Here in 1985 though, the band was now also fighting the rising tide of both glam rock and metal, and thrash metal, both of which were beginning to make strides in the popularity of the music market that AC/DC was aiming for. And while the blues sound had been drained from their music, the solid rigidity of the backbone of the tracks had come to the fore, the rhythm section that became the most renown in the land for its tightness and reliability. To that measure, long time drummer Phil Rudd had been dismissed from the band prior to the previous tour due to his personal problems and an allegedly physical confrontation with Malcolm Young. Simon Wright had been brought in to replace him, and this was his first album recording with the band.
So the band had some issues they were fighting, but there is no doubt when you listen to this album that it had been fairly strictly regimented in regards to rhythm, tempo and structure. Rather than the band trying to tell the producer what they wanted with their songs, they now had Malcolm and Angus running the show. There is a reasonable argument that this perhaps swung the pendulum too far in one direction again, that a firm handed producer may have been able to draw more from what the band had written that the brothers were willing to accede with themselves in charge. It is not a long bow to draw that the least exciting albums from AC/DC from the 1980’s are the two that didn’t have an outside producer attached to them.
Lyrically, “Fly on the Wall” is of a childish standard. As a 16 year old when I first heard it I thought it was childish then. At least when Bon wrote and sang his lyrics he gave them a knowing leer. These for the most part are unclever and should have been embarrassing to sing. For most of this album though, that isn’t really a problem, as Brian’s vocals are not only difficult to distinguish as words from the English language, they have also been placed back in the mix, making it even harder to discern precisely what is being said. Whether this was a deliberate mix to get the guitars out the front rather than the lead singer, I don’t know. But in places on this album, that is exactly what it sounds like, a decision to put AC/DC’s most marketable attributes – its rhythm section and its flamboyant lead guitarist – out front to drag the punters in. Even the choruses with the backing vocals from Malcolm and Cliff, sounded drowned in noise.
The album is front loaded, with the singles that were released and any other song that may have been of initial interest chucked onto the first side of the album. The decision to release “Danger” as the first single to promote the album seems like an atrocious choice. Was it the band or the record company that went in this direction? It’s a plodding track at best with lyrics that are over repeated throughout and the lack of any energy in the sad excuse for a guitar solo that make it a less than average song. Apparently it bombed so bad on the tour that followed that it was very quickly booted from the set list. Now that’s the kind of reaction you want from your lead single. The other two songs released as singles – in separate countries as it turns out – were “Sink the Pink” and “Shake Your Foundations”. Both are exactly the kind of songs you would expect from the album as I have described to this point in time. They have that slight increase in commerciality, the ones that can grab your ear and give you something to grab a hold of. Which is what they do, and why they were the better choices to be released as singles. The videos for both songs, with the band playing in a bar and the story of the songs being told around them, got good airplay on MTV and helped to promote the band in a way that may not have been possible without the music video networks being around.
The rest of the album, for the most part, is what became known as the AC/DC cookie-cutter effect, with songs more of less based around the same rhythm, the same verse-chorus-verse-chorus chanting vocals, the same Angus solo spot, and lyrics that didn’t seem like they took very long to come up with.
I knew of AC/DC before my heavy metal epiphany occurred, about five months after this album had been released in 1985. So I very well remember the videos for these songs when they were released. I had a copy of the “Fly on the Wall” VHS video, which had the film of AC/DC playing in the same scenario as their singles music videos - "Fly on the Wall", "Danger", "Sink the Pink", "Stand Up", and "Shake Your Foundations" - which they did for the MTV generation. So I knew this album pretty well even before I had my own copy of it. And for me at the time, I enjoyed them. I knew the popular AC/DC songs that came from the Bon era and the “Back in Black” album, but this was sort of the first AC/DC album I knew most of, and the rhythm beat and chanted chorus vocals and Angus on guitar was a part of what was drawing me towards the harder and heavier style of music that I eventually gravitated to. So yes, it is fair to say that “Fly on the Wall”, or at least the five songs I knew listed previously, was one of those steps to my heavy metal conversion.
By the time I actually got around to getting a copy of this album, I was full blown and had certainly digested all of the Bon Scott era albums, and also the wonderful “The Razors Edge” album. So I had experienced the best that the band had to offer before I finally got my own copy of this album. And you know what? It’s okay! It isn’t terrible. It just isn’t very good, or outstanding in any way. It has its charms, apart from the lyrics mostly. And what it does do is bring back the mid-1980's in its style.
So I’ve pulled this album out again this week, my battered old CD copy that I bought second hand some time ago, such that it looks as though it has been listened to a lot more by me than it actually has. And for the most part it has been on as background noise at work as I while away my time crunching those numbers – in a uniformed solid rhythmic kind of way, obviously influenced by the music I was listening to. And I came to the same conclusion that I always do with this album – there are many many better albums in AC/DC’s catalogue than this one. Butat one point as I was beginning to compose this episode, I had a flash back to those days in mid to late 1985, when I would watch the videos to these songs, and it reminded me of how I felt about these songs THEN rather than how I have felt about them n the years since. And THAT was a great memory, when you get that flood of good feeling rushing down to your stomach and you remember something that you have since forgotten. And that is what I look for from albums that I may not be especially ecstatic about in the modern day, the ability to remember how I DID feel about them when I first discovered the music. And just in the past 24 hours, I have happened to remember those feelings of that time. And that is the power of music, no matter how your opinion on an album may have changed over the years.
So this resides in the back five of the list of AC/DC albums for me, but is still able to retrieve good tidings in me that not all albums do. So while I may have been harsh in some criticism I have spoken on this episode today about the album, don’t think I don’t still have a little love for it as well. That is the power of music and the memories it can revive and carry. “Fly on the Wall” has definitely done that for me again.
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