AC/DC: the forty years of “Fly on the wall”
There are albums that more than others have the misfortune of suffering an unfair treatment on the part of criticism, often ending up being remembered as not worthy of attention. If we are talking about a historical band such as AC/DC, it is in particular their tenth studio chapter to be interested, inexplicably, by the above treatment: ‘Fly on the Wall’, of 1985. And to say that even there would be, in the now boundless discography of the Australians, of surplus material to be discarded: difficult not to find, in those who have had a long career (see Bob Dylan), but you really don’t understand why Sodfe an album so full of shamefully rock & roll songs, along which high voltage riffs and a global sound that, although intrinsically AC/DC, manages to be fresh and renewed: by the individual dentants “Shake Your Foundations”, “Sink the Pink” and “Danger”, to the irrigation of the eponymous meter; From “First Blood”, “Playing with girls” and “Stand up”, another of those missed classics, to the final combination made up of “Hell or High Water”, “Back in Business” and “Send for the Man”.
An album with an uncultivated potential
Rowing against ‘Fly on the Wall’ is, on closer inspection, an exercise often observed by those who should understand something, in terms of “hard rock”, like the English rotocalco “Classic Rock”, which I do not pay for it to have inserted it in one of the many lists of the “worst albums ever”, has also abandoned him among the latest brothers of the Omnia Opera of the AC/DC. Historically, however, the American magazine “Rolling Stone” was the first to mistreat him, who in unsuspected times liquidated him as “sexist and politically incorrect”, complaining how it was impossible “to decipher a single word of the drill of the singer Brian Johnson”. Given the impossibility of adduct, however, it is not clear how the above judgment was taken (“Rolling Stone” would then be the same that already in 1969 dared to reject the homonymous debut of the Led Zeppelin, camping improbable theses to demolish the artistic credibility of Plant, Page, Jones and Bonham – who has seen the documentary ‘Becoming Led will see Zeppelin ‘). Fortunately, to break a spear in favor of ‘Fly on the Wall’, characters have thought about us who play it – and also quite well – such as the singer/guitarist Danko Jones, of the trio that bears his own name, or the country rocker Ryan Adams, according to which it would be objectively impossible to trace a superfluous sound moment in ‘Fly on the Wall’. To produce the disc in question, however, were the same guitarists of the band, Angus and Malcolm Young, mostly driven by the idea of capturing the spirit of their debuts. Bringing to the attention of fans the rhythmic competence of the drummer Simon Wright, chosen as the official substitute of Phil Rudd, ‘Fly …’ revealed together an unusually sollazzorant AC/DC character, corroborated by a cartoonist cover by Todd Schorr, exponent of the Lowbrow Art (or “pop surrealism” – of the same current also the Robert Williams author of the ‘appetite’ Destruction ‘, then impressed on the first historic album of the Guns N’ Roses, including title). Particularly finished in the appearance of coloring, Schorr’s design combined a certain visual vocabulary – clearly influenced by cartoons – with a refined technical ability based on the rigorous painting methods of the ancient masters of the drawing. Although then, more generically, the primary intent of the designer would have been to weave intricate and pungent narratives, but equally humorous in their commenting on the human condition.
The historical context related to ‘Fly on the Wall’
With ‘Back in Black’ the AC/DC had entered the eighties with cannon strokes, as evidenced by the artwork of the sequel not so worthy of that same top Seller, ‘For Those about to rock we health you’. And if the responses already regarding the discreet ‘Flick of the Switch’ had been tiered, when the quintet went to Switzerland to spread the material of ‘Fly on the wall’ on tape, he did it with a different awareness: taking note, that is, that it would not have been so simple to remain easily in the balance in a business where now, to dictate the rules of the market, the canons imposed by the television medium as MTV. Also for this reason, a mandate was probably made to create, in agreement with their label, the Atlantic Records, a group of five bizarre promotional videos, all mirror, to better promote ‘Fly on the Wall’: the one for the title track, the one for its three singles, and the one for “stand up”, then published in full in the most popular format of the time, the VHS. The outcome of the operation was positive, since he certainly helped the album in his ascent, albeit slow, towards the platinum.
The band involved in a disturbing case of True Crime
The fans did not miss their heartfelt participation in the ‘Fly on the Wall’ tour (which saw the virtuoso guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen as a support – as far as the dry style of the Young brothers), but something went wrong when the print began to throw mud on the AC/DC, after on the scene of a crime a hat was found with their famous logo (the one with the lightning of the letters). Author of the crossed the serial killer Richard Ramirez, a disturbed subject who used to burst into night hours in the homes of his victims and who had been nicknamed “The Night Stalker” by the Californian police who was on his heels. Someone went to hypothesize the existence of an improbable link between that nickname and a song by the band, taken from the album ‘Hight to Hell’ and entitled “Night Prowler”, but the fury on Young and the three members did not end there. The unfounded accusations of satanism, and the absurd theorem according to which the four initials of their name would have found a safe “match” – passed us the term forensic – in the phrase “anti -christ, Devil’s Child” (a bit like the kiss, on the same lines, would have been the “Knights in Satan Service”, “knights of the service of Satan “). A Ciarpame certainly contributed, in one way or another, to pass ‘Fly on the wall’ to the deaf, and this is why exactly forty years after its original publication, it seems right to return the value that has not been conferred so far. A value that is first of all that of a disc that in its forty minutes, the perfect duration for an album, aggravates and entertains. In 1990, after having still appeared on the appreciable ‘Blow Up Your Video’, the sequel to ‘Fly on the Wall’, Simon Wright will appear in the God (the band of the great Ronnie James), making himself the protagonist of a respectful instrumental test on the not very lucky ‘Lock Up the Wolves’. All while the AC/DC will prepare to embrace the great commercial success with ‘The Razors Edge’ and its main single, “Thunderstruck” (today the third song of the most listened to streaming, after “Highway to Hell” and “Back in Black”).
