By 1978, AC/DC had packed their relatively short, half-decade career with five albums and hundreds of concerts. For their strenuous efforts, they deservedly attained a considerable amount of success around the world. But they still hadn’t cracked the platinum-sales mark in the U.S.
That career benchmark was just around the corner, with the following year’s Highway to Hell. But before taking that next step, the band decided the time was ripe to celebrate its first few years with a live album, the classic If You Want Blood You’ve Got It.
Since the dawn of the ’70s, and especially after the mammoth success of 1976’s Frampton Comes Alive!, live albums had become a convenient, and expected, stopgap between studio records. But they could also generate some serious revenue and break careers wide open. (See Cheap Trick’s At Budokan.)
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They also brought the unparalleled excitement of a concert experience to thousands of fans who couldn’t make it to a show – whether the reason was geographical, financial or simply because they were too young.
Still, successfully transposing the high-energy and high-decibel thrills of a living, breathing performance to wax was no easy task. But AC/DC managed to elevate the live album to new heights with If You Want Blood You’ve Got It on Oct. 13, 1978.
Watch AC/DC’s ‘If You Want Blood’ Video
AC/DC Show Happened in a Special Place
AC/DC released the Powerage album to great reviews earlier in the year, and then hit the road across Europe and North America, culminating in a home-away-from-home appearance at the Apollo Theatre in Glasgow – the birthplace of the band’s Angus and Malcolm Young prior to their family’s migration to Australia.
That connection may or may not have impacted the end results. In any the case, AC/DC delivered an all-time blistering set, powered by such band staples as “Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be,” “Problem Child,” “High Voltage” and “Whole Lotta Rosie.” What’s more, extended versions of “Bad Boy Boogie” and “Let There Be Rock” revealed the electrifying lengths to which Angus could take his six-string improvisations on any given night, while “The Jack” gave fans an entirely different set of explicit (and often hilarious) lyrics.
These incredible songs and the band’s breathtaking power combined to produce a stone-cold classic in If You Want Blood You’ve Got It. The LP ranks consistently high in best-live-album polls, and for good reason: Other concert records may boast more songs, more Top 40 hits or even more crowd-pleasing gimmicks. Very few can challenge the sheer excitement and reckless abandon captured on AC/DC’s terrific concert document.
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Gallery Credit: Matthew Wilkening
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