“For Those About to Rock”: AC/DC between Ancient Rome and Lady Diana
On March 22, 1982 he AC/DC they released the single “For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)”. The title song of the band’s eighth album AC/DC reached number fifteen in the UK sales chart. and number four in the US. Since then it has been the song that closes their concerts and is one of the moments most awaited by the public with the cannons at the sides of the stage firing their farewell salvos.
This song was inspired by a poet.
Angus Young
in an interview with
Zane Lowe
in 2021 he explained: “Sometimes I go back and think about something I read somewhere. There was a writer, Robert Graves, I think that was his name. I think he had published a book or story called ‘For those about to die’, and he spent a day at the Colosseum. This is what gladiators did, and I thought, ‘Hey, this could be good.'”
Graves was an English poet and historical novelist, author of some works on the history of Rome. In his book ‘The Twelve Caesars’ the greeting that the gladiators (or those condemned to death) gave to the emperor Claudius is reported ‘Hail, Emperor, those who are about to die salute you’, in Latin “Ave imperator, morituri te salutant !”.
“For Those About to Rock”
came to life like most of the songs
AC/DC
: with brothers Angus and Malcolm Young on guitar. Tell again
Angus Young
: “The two of us worked on it and came up with the idea for the verse. The funny thing is, when we got to the chorus we were like, ‘Okay, what do we sing about here?’ I think at first Malcolm thought, ‘Wait. What is he doing?’ I said, ‘Well, for those about…’ Then I realized, I understood everything, ‘For those about the rock’. That started it all.”
The idea of using cannons was inspired by another event. On 29 July 1981, when Prince Charles married Princess Diana, he
AC/DC
they were in a rehearsal room in Paris. The wedding was greeted by some cannon shots, the group heard them coming from a turned on television. Angus recalls: “I don’t know who had it. There was a TV, you could hear cannon fire and there was a guy working there, like a test room keeper, and you could hear these cannons going off. It made me impressed. I wanted something strong. Something masculine and rock ‘n’ roll. And what’s more masculine than a cannon? I mean, it loads, it shoots and it destroys.”
“For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)”
remains one of the most popular songs of the
AC/DC.
It still serves as the closing song of the band’s concerts, with the military canons on stage adding to the deafening finale.