AC/DC Month Part 5: Fall From The Top

Flick Of The Switch (August 1983)
Feeling that For Those About To Rock had lacked energy, the band fired Mutt Lange and chose to produce this album themselves, figuring if they used the same recording engineer (Tony Platt), they could make an album as good as Highway To Hell or Back In Black.

Whether or not they succeeded is certainly up to the listener, but if the chart showing of this album is any indication, they fell short. Truth be told, this album had a polarizing effect on the band's audience: mainstream fans fell by the wayside while the band's diehard metal audience ate up the new tunes. Even so, the album was generally considered a slight misstep.

Those who've taken the time to investigate Flick Of The Switch after-the-fact have come to regard it as an album deserving of a better reception than it initially received. My own opinion is that a lot of the songs are underdeveloped. You can actually hear in your mind what Lange would have done differently to make the choruses more pronounced or the arrangements more concise. "This House Is On Fire" is a perfect example of a potentially great song that begins with a lethargic intro and doesn't truly catch fire until the chorus, and even then you can't help but imagine how great the song woulda sounded with heavier use of the band's chanted backing vocals to kick it up a notch.

Behind the scenes, of course, tensions within the band would lead to drummer Phil Rudd's exit.


'74 Jailbreak (October 1984)
In an odd move, the band issued the EP '74 Jailbreak, comprised on five tracks that had, up until then, been unavailable on any US editions of the band's albums, originally appearing on Australian versions of High Voltage (except for the title cut, which appeared on the Australian version of Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap).

Despite releasing a single and promotional video for the title track, the EP peaked at a paltry #92 on the US charts, signalling a very definite fall from chart grace for the band.


Fly On The Wall (June 1985)
Upon release of this, their tenth studio album (ninth in the US), a furious touring schedule had succeeded in sapping the group's creativity and seriously, ahem, shaking their foundation.

While peaking at a respectable #32 on the US album charts, sales of the album quickly levelled off, with the general concensus being that the album was a serious dud and that the band had been reduced to a one-dimensional caricature of themselves.

Seriously, listening to songs such as "Playing With Girls" and "Hell Or High Water" reveals just how far the band had fallen, reduced to trying to keep up with the rest of the hard rock pack rathar than leading it. Both songs plod laboriously and never quite take flight, despite some valiant guitar work from Malcolm and Angus on the former cut.

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