Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

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SONG: Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

ARTIST: AC/DC

ALBUM: Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

YEAR: 1976 / 1981

When I think of Australia, a number of life-changing experiences immediately spring to mind: feeding a koala at the Toronto Zoo, seeing Olivia Newton-John wear leather pants in Grease, and understanding there is no God the first time I bit into a vegemite sandwich. The discovery was so shocking, it was enough to put me off Australia forever. Weren’t they an island of convicts anyway? Weren’t there dingoes roaming the land and gobbling up their babies? Nine-year-old me said yes.

Then one day, nine-year-old me was at the C.N.E. - otherwise known as the Canadian National Exhibition. It’s an amusement park that opens every summer in Toronto, with rides and food stalls and groovy games of chance.

Like so many things in this money-grubbing world, the C.N.E. has been ruined by greed. My favorite childhood getaway is so crowded and overpriced now, I’d rather undergo a root canal.

But life was different in 1981. Wayne Gretzky ruled the NHL. Kim Carnes ruled the airwaves. And a saucy soap opera named Dynasty was capturing the imagination of a burgeoning suburbia.

It was also a pivotal year at the C.N.E.

I was too old for the baby rides, you see. The merry-go-round and choo-choo train and those stupid fucking teacups. I wanted to go on a big boy ride, a ride I could brag about the following day to all the kids in the neighborhood. I was open to pretty much anything, including the wooden rollercoaster that looked so old and rickety you’d think it had been built when Canada still employed the barter system.

The only ride I wouldn’t go on was the dreaded Pirate Ship. You know the one: where you sit amongst a hundred other geniuses and brace yourself as the ship starts rocking — back and forth, higher and higher, until you’re sure the angular momentum will wrench the ship from its splintering axis and send it hurtling into Lake Ontario.

I can’t remember the name of the ride; the name of the ship that haunted my dreams. All I remember is the song that was playing when that deathtrap started to swing.

The first chord sent a foreboding chill down the length of my spine. That was followed by a breathless pause…before the rest of the riff kicked in. There was an entire school of thought in that pause: the idea that the notes you aren’t playing are just as important as the ones you are. Of course, my pea-sized, nine-year-old brain was incapable of such sophisticated thought at the time. I just knew the song fucking rocked. The guitars sounded dangerous, the drums were like thunder, and the snarling singer with the nasally voice was clearly from another planet.

Which brings me back to Australia: birthplace of Aussie rock ‘n’ roll royalty, the mighty AC/DC.

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap was released in Australia in 1976, though I didn’t hear it until it landed in North America five years later in 1981. By the time the song reached my impressionable ears, Bon Scott was already dead. He’d been discovered unconscious in a friend’s Renault following a heavy night of drinking. He was rushed to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Bon Scott was 33 years old.

The record company didn’t care, of course.

Much like the greed that ruined the C.N.E., Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap was re-released in North America in 1981 in an effort to cash in on the band’s popularity. AC/DC had begun to skyrocket, thanks to the release of Back in Black the year before. The monumental record had spawned intergalactic hits like Hell’s Bells, Back in Black, and You Shook Me All Night Long. The album had also featured the successful debut of Bon Scott’s replacement: scratchy new vocalist, Brian Johnson.

Piggish record execs aside, I still flash back to the C.N.E. every time I hear Dirty Deeds. I remember the rumble of Phil Rudd’s drums, the chill in my spine as Bon Scott sang, the growl of Angus Young’s guitar — his dizzying solo climbing higher and higher, higher even than that dreaded pirate ship, which continues to swing in my poetic memory, eliciting screams from the hundred or so geniuses who paid good money to piss their pants.

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap was my gateway drug to this legendary band, and I got high on their supply for many years to come. I could easily write a book on AC/DC, a magnum opus about their influence on me and on music in general. But who on earth reads books these days? Hardly anyone. Certainly not Aussies.

For those about to hit play and rock, I wholeheartedly salute you.

For those about to hit play and roll, where the hell were you during rehearsal? Get back in line so we can do this properly.

Don’t make me call 3-6-2-4-3-6-hey…