Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap is the third studio album by Australian hard rock band AC/DC,originally released only in Europe,Australia and New Zealand in 1976. The album was not released in the United States until 1981,more than one year after lead singer Bon Scott's death. This was also AC/DC's first album in its entirety to be recorded with the same lineup,rather than including at least one track recorded with a different bassist or drummer.
AC/DC began recording Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap in December 1975 at Albert Studios with Harry Vanda and George Young (elder brother of guitarists Malcolm and Angus) producing. In April 1976,the band went on their first tour of the UK,where "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)" was released as a single. According to the book AC/DC:Maximum Rock &Roll,Vanda and Young travelled to the UK to record several songs with the band at Vineland Studios for a scheduled EP,which was eventually scrapped. "Carry Me Home" later appeared in 1977 as a B-side to "Dog Eat Dog",while "Dirty Eyes" remained unreleased and was later reworked into "Whole Lotta Rosie" for 1977's Let There Be Rock. Only "Love at First Feel" was used for Dirty Deeds,but not for the Australian release. A song titled "I'm a Rebel" was recorded at Maschener Studios as well,with music and lyrics written by another elder Young brother,Alex Young.[1][2] This song was never released by AC/DC,and remains in Albert Productions' vaults. German band Accept later released it as a single,and named their second album after it. High Voltage was released in the United States in 1976. However,hampered by visa problems and a lack of interest from Atlantic Records in the US,the band returned to Australia to finish their third album.
Also according to AC/DC:Maximum Rock &Roll,years later,Stephen King convinced the band to do the soundtrack for his film Maximum Overdrive (the soundtrack released as Who Made Who) by putting "Ain't No Fun" on the record player and singing along to the entire song line-for-line in order to prove how much of a fan he was of their music.[citation needed]
Composition
The title track would become one of the band's most famous songs. Its narrator invites people experiencing problems to either call him on 36-24-36,an actual phone number in Australia in the 1960s (then properly formatted as FM 2436 –36 translated to FM on the rotary dial or keypad),or visit him at his home,at which point he will perform assorted unsavoury acts to resolve said problems. Situations in which he offers assistance include those involving lewd high school headmasters,and significant others who either are adulterous or persistently find fault with their partners. The term "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" is an homage to the cartoon Beany and Cecil,which Angus watched when he was a child. One of the cartoon's characters was named Dishonest John,and carried a business card that read,"Dirty deeds done dirt cheap. Special rates for Sundays and holidays." On the Live on Donington DVD,Malcolm and Angus explained that the concept of the album was to base it as a Bogartian mystery scenario. This was also backed by author Dave Rubin,who stated in his book Inside Rock Guitar:Four Decades of the Greatest Electric Rock Guitarists that Bogart's movies served as the basis for the album.[3]
In 1981,after the album was released in the U.S.,Norman and Marilyn White of Libertyville,Illinois filed a $250,000 lawsuit in Lake County,Illinois Circuit Court against Atlantic Records and its distributors because,they alleged,their telephone number was included in the song,resulting in hundreds of prank phone calls. Their attorney told the Chicago Tribune that the song's 36-24-36 digits were followed by what to his clients sounded like an "8",thus creating the couple's phone number.[4]
Another fan favorite from the album is "Ride On". Atypically for an AC/DC song,it has a sad,slowblues feel and features Bon Scott's reflective lyrics and restrained,soulful delivery. The lyrics concern a man ruminating on the mistakes he has made in a relationship while drinking. It has frequently been cited as one of AC/DC's best songs.[5][6][7] The track is also significant for Angus Young's guitar solo. AC/DC biographer Murray Engleheart observes in his 2006 band memoir:"Overall,Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap was rougher than T.N.T. and highlighted the difficulties of recording between increasingly demanding touring commitments. Songs like 'Ain't No Fun,' 'RIP,' 'Jailbreak,' and particularly the lonely resignation of 'Ride On,' were almost character studies of Bon and had a sense of impatience...breaking free and just plain loneliness." "Ride On" was covered by the French band Trust on their self-titled 1979 debut album,after they supported AC/DC live in Paris in the autumn of 1978. Scott jammed the song with Trust at Scorpio Sound Studios in London on 13 February 1980,six days before his death in that city. A recording of this later surfaced on the Bon Scott Forever Volume 1 bootleg. In an interview with Anthony O'Grady of RAM in August 1976,Scott stated that "Ride On" was "about a guy who gets pissed around by chicks...can't find what he wants." In the same 1976 RAM interview,Scott revealed that "Squealer" was about a sexual encounter with a virgin. In concert,Scott would often introduce "Problem Child" as being about Angus. "Ain't No Fun (Waiting 'Round to be a Millionaire)" is one of the few AC/DC songs that has cursing,with Scott shouting on the fade,"Hey Howard,how ya doin' friend,my next door neighbour? Oh yeah,get your fuckin' jumbo jet off my airport!" The rhythm of "There's Gonna Be Some Rockin'" is very similar to that of "The Seventh Son" by Willie Dixon.
Record World said of "Problem Child" that the group "rocks hard,but with a sure melodic touch and satisfyingly raunchy guitar work."[8]
International releases
A modified international edition was released on Atlantic on 17 December 1976,although the label was unhappy with its vocals and production. (According to bassist Mark Evans,band manager Michael Browning told him he assumed Bon Scott would be fired as a result.)[9] The band even teetered on the brink of being dropped. "The Atlantic A&R department [in the US] said,'We're sorry,but this album actually doesn't make it,'" recalled Phil Carson,who had signed the band. "'We're not gonna put it out and we're dropping the band'…So I went to [Atlantic executive] Nesuhi (Ertegun) and showed him the sales figures that we'd got for High Voltage. They were not awe-inspiring but,considering we'd only paid $25,000 for the album,this was not so bad…Nesuhi backed me up and I re-signed the band at that point. I managed to claw it back in. Thank God."[10]
As biographer Murray Engleheart observes in his book AC/DC:Maximum Rock &Roll,the band had not even toured the States yet,a market the band longed to conquer:
The tough rock acts only got what little airwave attention they did because they'd built up a fanbase through years on the road. AC/DC hadn't had the opportunity to marshal troops through touring the U.S., and at the time there was no way something as raw and gritty as Dirty Deeds was going to make it onto American radio playlists by itself. It was a brutally simple catch-22...Americans were said to have trouble understanding Bon, and if the people working with the band couldn't make out the lyrics, how was his voice going to work on the all-important U.S. radio networks?
Following the American success of Highway to Hell in late 1979, copies of the album began to appear as imports in the US. Some of these were the original Australian edition on Albert Productions; however, Atlantic also pressed the international version in Australia, and many of these were also exported to the US. Strong demand for both versions (in the wake of the huge success of Back in Black) led the US division of Atlantic to finally authorize an official US release in March 1981. It went straight to No. 3 on the Billboard album charts.[citation needed]
However, the release was also poorly timed, considering that AC/DC had successfully reinvented itself with a new singer, Brian Johnson. The band was working on a new album, which would ultimately become For Those About to Rock We Salute You, released later that same year; the US release of Dirty Deeds was widely seen as damaging the momentum for that album, which it outsold. The band was forced to add songs from Dirty Deeds to its setlist on its subsequent tour, also taking the focus away from their new album.[citation needed]
In the book The Youngs: The Brothers Who Built AC/DC, author Jesse Fink quotes Phil Carson as saying that the release of Dirty Deeds was "one of the most crass decisions ever made by a record-company executive",[11] blaming A&R man Doug Morris and his New York City cohorts:
At the time, Doug's argument was purely financial. Back in Black had already sold over five million copies. Because of those numbers, Doug told me Dirty Deeds would sell at least 2 million. I told him he was right about that, but that it would also create a new sales plateau for AC/DC...God knows how many albums For Those About to Rock would have sold had Doug waited for that to come out.[11]
The international release had significant variations from the original album. "Jailbreak" (which had preceded the LP's release in Australia and the UK) and "R.I.P. (Rock in Peace)" were jettisoned in favor of "Rocker" (from the 1975 Australian album T.N.T.) and "Love at First Feel". "Jailbreak" did not see a release in the United States, Canada, and Japan until October 1984 as part of the international '74 JailbreakEP. A promo-only single, with "Show Business" as its B-side, was released to radio stations in the US at the time. "Love at First Feel" is one of only two tracks from international AC/DC albums not to be available on the band's Australian albums (the other is "Cold Hearted Man", released on European pressings of Powerage); however, "Love at First Feel" was released in Australia as a single in January 1977, with "Problem Child" as its B-side, which peaked in the Kent Music Report Singles Chart Top100.[12] The international release of Dirty Deeds also contains "Big Balls", one of the band's most infamous compositions, that finds Scott, a deceptively clever lyricist, using double entendres by using ballroom and costume parties to obviously reference his own testicles. AC/DC had mined this territory before on "The Jack" and would again later on songs like "Given the Dog a Bone", but "Big Balls" could be their funniest attempt at sexual innuendo, although the song was controversial in its day and drew the ire of some critics who mistook the band's sense of humor for crude perversity. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap also led to more AC/DC appearances on Australia's Countdown music programme, following those in support of High Voltage and T.N.T. These appearances included a live performance of the album's title track, as well as a music video for "Jailbreak".[13]
Two songs on the international album were edited from the full-length versions on the original Australian album. The full-length "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" has the title of the song chanted four times, starting at 3:09, but on the edited version the chant is heard only twice. "Ain't No Fun (Waiting Round to Be a Millionaire)" lasted 7:29 on the Australian album but was faded out early to 6:57 on the international version. This means they trim off the Chuck Berry licks and title chanting to the end; however, both these full-length versions were restored on the 1994 Atco Records remastered CD of the international album. The most recent 2003 CD edition by Epic Records goes back to the edited versions, as originally on the 1976 and 1981 international vinyl editions. The uncut versions of both songs were released on the 2009 box set Backtracks. On the original version of "Rocker", included on the Australian T.N.T. album, the song lasts 2:55 and cuts out abruptly as the guitar riff hits its peak. Conversely, all international editions of the Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap album have a slightly shorter version where the song fades out at 2:50 before the cut. "Squealer" appears to be longer by thirteen seconds on the international version; this is due to it having a bumper of silence at the end, as it is the final track on the record. "Ride On" has a four-second difference (longer on the international version) which appears to be from a minor speed issue, although the last guitar slide can be heard better on the shorter Australian version.[14]
Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap has been certified 6× platinum both in Australia and in the US, selling at least six million copies, becoming the third-highest-selling album by AC/DC in the US after Highway to Hell (7× platinum) and Back in Black (25× platinum). AllMusic gives the album five out of five stars and proclaims "it captured the seething malevolence of Bon Scott...encouraged by the maniacal riffs of Angus and Malcolm Young" and that there was a "real sense of danger to this record."[23]
Greg Kot of Rolling Stone gives the album a generally positive three out of five stars, commenting; "The guitars of brothers Angus and Malcolm Young bark at each other, Phil Rudd swings the beat even as he's pulverizing his kick drum, and Scott brings the raunch 'n' wail. The subject matter is standard-issue rock rebellion; Scott pauses only once to briefly contemplate the consequences of his night stalking in 'Ride On.'"
"Ain't No Fun (Waiting 'Round to Be a Millionaire)"
6:58
8.
"Ride On"
5:54
9.
"Squealer"
5:15
Total length:
39:59
Notes
"Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" was shortened from its original length on the Australian version of the album for the international release.
"Love at First Feel" was a new track not previously available in Australia. It was later released there as a single.
"Big Balls" faded out on the original international LP release.
"Rocker" originally appeared on the Australian T.N.T. in a slightly longer version without the fade-out.
"Problem Child" was included on the international release in its original Australian form, whereas the international version of Let There Be Rock contained a shortened version of the song without the extended ending.
"Ain't No Fun (Waiting Round to Be a Millionaire)" was also shortened from its original length on the Australian version of the album for the international release.
The 1994 remastered international Atco CD release of the album included the full-length Australian versions of "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", "Big Balls", "Rocker", and "Ain't No Fun (Waiting Round to Be a Millionaire)". They were later reverted to the shortened versions for the 2003 Epic remastered versions of the album with "Big Balls" remaining in its longer version. The 2009 boxed set Backtracks Deluxe Edition featured the full-length original Australian versions of "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" and "Ain't No Fun (Waiting Round to Be a Millionaire)", but not "Rocker", which is nevertheless billed as the original Australian version.
Let There Be Rock is the fourth studio album by Australian rock band AC/DC. It was originally released on 21 March 1977 in Australasia, through Albert Productions label. A modified international edition was released on 25 July 1977, through Atlantic Records. It was the last AC/DC album to feature Mark Evans on bass.
"Whole Lotta Rosie" is a song by Australian hard rock band AC/DC. It is the eighth and final track on the band's fourth Australian album, Let There Be Rock, released in Australia in March 1977, and was written by Angus Young, Malcolm Young, and Bon Scott. It is also the eighth and final track on the international version of the album, released in June the same year.
T.N.T. is the second studio album by Australian hard rock band AC/DC, released only in Australia on 1 December 1975. This was the band's first release with bassist Mark Evans and drummer Phil Rudd, although the last two tracks feature George Young and Tony Currenti, both of whom previously appeared on High Voltage.
If You Want Blood You've Got It is the first live album by Australian hard rock band AC/DC, and their only live album released during Bon Scott's lifetime. It was originally released in the UK and Europe on 13 October 1978, in the US on 21 November 1978, and in Australia on 27 November 1978. The album was re-released in 1994 on Atco Records and in 2003 as part of the AC/DC Remasters series.
'74 Jailbreak is the only EP by Australian rock band AC/DC, released in 1984. It is composed of five tracks that had previously been released only in Australia. Despite the EP's title, the song "Jailbreak" was actually recorded in 1976 and was originally released that year on the Australian version of the Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap album. The EP's four other tracks were originally released on the Australian version of the band's debut album, High Voltage, recorded in 1974 and released early the following year.
Mark Whitmore Evans is an Australian musician, the current bass guitarist for rock band Rose Tattoo, and also a member of hard rock band AC/DC from March 1975 to June 1977. His playing featured on their albums T.N.T, High Voltage, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap and Let There Be Rock. Evans has played for numerous other groups, sometimes on lead guitar, including Finch, Cheetah, Swanee, Heaven and The Party Boys. Evans' autobiography, Dirty Deeds: My Life Inside/Outside of AC/DC was released in December 2011.
Family Jewels is a compilation DVD by the hard rock band AC/DC, featuring the group's music videos, live clips and promotional videos from 1975 to 2008. It was released by Albert Productions and Epic Music Video on 28 March 2005. The first disc contains videos from the Bon Scott era (1975–1980), such as the band's first TV appearance and a performance on television ten days before Scott died. The second disc contains material from the Brian Johnson era up to 1991.
Volts is an album by AC/DC released as a part named "Disc Four" on the Bonfire box set. Released in November 1997, the album is a compilation of some alternative versions of songs recorded for the albums Let There Be Rock and Highway to Hell, and some songs previously released.
No Bull is a live video released by AC/DC in November 1996, filmed on Super 16mm at Madrid's Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas on 10 July 1996 during the Ballbreaker world tour. It was directed by David Mallet, produced by Rocky Oldham, mixed by Mike Fraser, and edited by David Gardener and Simon Hilton; production company was Serpent Films.
"Jailbreak" is a song by Australian hard rock band AC/DC. It is the ninth and final track of their third Australian album Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, released in September 1976. The song was not released in North America until 1984. It was written by Angus Young, Malcolm Young, and Bon Scott.
"Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" is a hard rock song by the Australian band AC/DC. Written by group members Angus Young, Malcolm Young, and Bon Scott, it was recorded for the title track of their album Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, released in September 1976.
"Love at First Feel" is a song by Australian hard rock band AC/DC. It is the second track of the international version of their album Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, released in November 1976, and was written by Angus Young, Malcolm Young, and Bon Scott. The international version was not released in the United States until 1981.
Live at Donington is the DVD recording of the Australian rock band AC/DC‘s show at Donington Park on 17 August 1991, directed by David Mallet; it was the band's third Monsters of Rock festival. The two-hour show was performed before 72,500 spectators and included real cannons, the Hells Bell, an inflatable Rosie and two inflatable Anguses: one to the right of the stage, and one in the back of the stage during Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be. It was filmed in 35 mm Panavision and had 26 cameras that included one situated inside a helicopter. The DVD includes special features such as stereo and 5.1 surround sound, Iso-cam versions of certain songs for different band members, and audio commentary from Angus and Malcolm Young.
Fuse Box was an AC/DC tribute album released in Australia in 1995 by BMG. The album compiled a selection of the country's more prominent alternative rock artists from the period. Most of these songs only appear on this album, with the exception of Ed Kuepper's "Highway to Hell", which he also recorded for his album A King in the Kindness Room. A live version of "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" was included on Nitocris' 1995 "Epic Voyage" EP. The Meanies' version of "It's a Long Way to the Top" was released as a single, with a promotional video featuring the band playing on the back of a truck driving through the Melbourne CBD, an homage to the original clip.
High Voltage is the first internationally released album by Australian hard rock band AC/DC. It contains tracks completed from their first two previous Australia-only issued albums, High Voltage and T.N.T..
High Voltage is the debut studio album by Australian hard rock band AC/DC, released only in Australia and New Zealand, on 17 February 1975. Their first international release in 1976 would also be named High Voltage, though with a radically different track list.
"I'm a Rebel" is a hard rock song written by Scottish musician Alex Young, that has been recorded and released by Accept and U.D.O.
Backtracks is a box set by Australian hard rock band AC/DC. It was announced on 29 September 2009 and was released on 10 November 2009. This is a collection of the band's studio and live rarities together in one boxset. There are two editions; a Deluxe Edition and a Standard Edition. All tracks have been remastered to match the sound of the 2003 album remasters and many songs appear on CD for the first time. It is the band's second box set of rarities, following the Bonfire release in 1997.
Stiff Upper Lip is the 14th studio album by Australian hard rock band AC/DC. It was released on 28 February 2000. The album was produced by George Young, older brother of Malcolm and Angus Young. It was the last AC/DC album that George produced before his death in 2017.
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