Rock ‘n’ roll damnation

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/04/2015 (4148 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In 2015, it’s nice to know AC/DC remains one of the world’s top concert draws. This cements the notion rock ‘n’ roll is a tired and faded institution, so bereft of new ideas it’s forced to peddle extremely old ones to an audience that isn’t even interested in anything new, anyway.

This is, of course, unfair. There are thousands of recording artists still trying to add something to the creative conversation that began in the 1950s, when rock ‘n’ roll emerged as a fusion of the blues, country, jazz and folk.

AC/DC, however, has long occupied a special, ignominious place as a rock ‘n’ roll anachronism. The Australian band, which will return to Winnipeg on Sept. 17, was relevant in the 1970s at the dawn of what was then known as hard rock, when chunky power chords and lengthy guitar solos had yet to become clichés.

By the 1980s, AC/DC was a corporate-rock institution, selling recycled and increasingly formulaic versions of its own ideas. In the 1990s, it was a touring nostalgia revue, offering something familiar and comforting to audiences who weren’t impressed by the mainstreaming of the punk and indie esthetic and certainly didn’t care for hip hop, which by then had eclipsed rock ‘n’ roll as the dominant pop-music genre.

By the 2000s, AC/DC was granted grandfather status as an institution unto itself, joining the Rolling Stones and the Eagles among the slim ranks of classic-rock bands that have never stopped touring yet can still fill a football stadium, practically anywhere.

To put it kindly, AC/DC stopped innovating decades ago. There is no shame in that, in and of itself.

What’s more problematic is the particularly unkind way AC/DC has aged — and I’m not talking about their music, which ceased being relevant around the time Ronald Reagan won his second term as U.S. president.

In 2015, many of AC/DC’s lyrics are simply too creepy to ignore.

In the modern context, AC/DC’s early material is among the most misogynist in the history of popular music — a vast collection of songs that also includes every wife-beating, woman-killing country-music protagonist as well as every anatomy-obsessed rapper to convey his desires in clinical detail.

Consider 1980’s Black In Black, an AC/DC album regarded by many critics as among the greatest in rock. It includes the filler track Let Me Put My Love Into You, one of the least vilified glorifications of sexual assault in pop-music history.

“Don’t you struggle. Don’t you fight. Don’t you worry, ’cause it’s your turn tonight,” warns singer Brian Johnson. “Let me cut your cake with my knife.”

Today, the metaphorical replacement of a penis with an edged weapon is at best jarring. At worst, it’s a manifestation of rape culture, which — contrary to what the current moral panic might indicate — is not a new facet of North American society.

The disturbing lyrical snippets of earlier AC/DC songs such as Little Lover (from 1975’s High Voltage) and Squealer (from 1976’s Dirty Deeds Done Cheap) can’t even be repeated.

The band simply isn’t sexy. It’s gross.

This is not a case of prudishness; graphic depictions of consensual sex — you know, between two eager participants — can be the mark of a truly great rock song. Songs glorifying sexual assault or having sex with minors fall into another category.

Of course, AC/DC is hardly alone among the legions of rock, pop, hip hop and R&B artists that have penned misogynistic lyrics that would make most people cringe, if they bothered to read the words.

There is, of course, the notion lyrics shouldn’t matter. Some fans simply don’t care about the words that carry the melodies or punctuate the chords of their favourite songs.

Some artists even share this idea.

“Everybody has their idea of what they think lyrics should be in their songs,” Canadian singer-songwriter Serena Ryder said in Winnipeg during last year’s Juno weekend, when a petition emerged to toss Robin Thicke off the bill due to the rapey sentiment of his Blurred Lines.

“When I write music, I just make noises and sounds,” Ryder said in defence of Thicke, who cancelled on his own accord. “And then I find out what the words are afterwards.”

With all due respect, words do matter. There’s a reason the first two stanzas of the Deutschlandlied have been struck from the German national anthem.

It would be uncomfortable, to say the least, to hear a stadium full of German soccer fans sing “Deutschland ueber alles” in 2015.

It would be just as uncomfortable to hear AC/DC sing some of their early, regrettable songs in front of tens of thousands of people at a Winnipeg football stadium this September.

You can love the classic-rock band and still be put off what they used to represent.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca