Understanding Highway To Hell

AC/DC is an interesting band. they have a well-deserved reputation for, shall we say, consistency: although they started out in glam rock, they quickly settled into a harder blues rock sound and never looked back, developing a distinct musical identity that hasn't really changed in the last 50 years. and while that self-similarity has become a punchline to their critics, the band themselves have always been unapologetic: when an interviewer asked him what they were doing to sound different and stand out from the pack, lead guitarist Angus Young famously replied "y'know, a lot of people say we made the same album 11 times or so. and really, they're lying, it's actually the 12th time we did it. " and that's kinda the magic of the band. for most artists, this sort of refusal to evolve and grow up would feel like stagnation, like they'd run out of things to say, but not AC/DC. their unwavering commitment to that singular vision becomes rebellious in its own right: they know who they are and they know what they sound like. why should they change? and that made it a little hard to decide which song I should even look at for this video, but ultimately I settled on the song that finally broke them through in the US: Highway To Hell. let's take it apart. (tick, tick, tick, tock) the song starts like this: (bang) and if you think I notated that wrong… yeah. I did. but I did it on purpose. I'm doing a thing, it'll make sense in a minute. for now, let's just go with it. this riff is, I think, a great example of why AC/DC was able to change so little for so long: their style may be simple, but it's a kind of weaponized simplicity. the ideas are obvious, but they fit together so perfectly, and they're performed with such confidence and panache, that the predictability itself becomes powerful. to understand how, I'm gonna misuse a concept that Dr. Walter Everett calls SRDC. this is meant to describe the structure of a song section, like a verse or chorus, but I'm gonna argue that it can also be used for the structure of a riff, and the way I'm gonna argue that is by assuming it's true and then just doing it. I hope they don't take away my music theory license. anyway, the SRDC model breaks the riff up into four sections. the first section, S, stands for "statement". this is where we get the riff's most basic building block, the central idea that sets everything else in motion. in this case, it's just three simple stabs on an A major chord. (bang) this has the feeling of a pickup, with the first two attacks carrying you forward to hit the apparent downbeat at the end, for a strong sense of metric closure. it feels incredibly complete. but of course, this is just bar 1. bar two sees the second section, R, which can be either "restatement" or "response". in this case it's kinda both: the second phrase is another three stabs, with the same pickup rhythm: (bang) but now we've got some chord motion. I'll talk more about the harmony in a minute, but the point is we're starting to see the riff open up just a little. the third section, D, is for "development", where we get something new. that could be a radical change, but Angus keeps it reasonably tame, mostly just employing a technique called fragmentation where he takes the relatively long segment and chops it into smaller pieces. the statement and response were each one bar long, and while the development is too, it's clearly broken up into two two-beat mini-segments, each playing that same moving-chord version of the three-stab pattern. (bang) and finally, we have C, the "conclusion". this uses those same ideas we've been developing in order to finally wrap things up. Angus switches back to a single full-bar phrase, but with a slightly different structure. it starts once again on a D/F#, implying another time through the response phrase, but then he stops, lets that chord hang for a second, and then returns with the original A major. (bang) it's a new idea, but it's still three stabs, and it carries inside it concepts borrowed from both the initial statement and the response, synthesizing them into a conclusive, singular object. and we can also see that in the riff's chord choices. it's what I like to call a bookend riff, where he starts and ends on the I chord, but in between he veers off and winds up centering a different chord entirely. this is easier to see if we strip things down a bit, ignoring the pickups and only looking at the chords he plays on the downbeats. (bang) there are As at the start and finish, establishing it as the song's true tonal center, but in the middle he keeps resolving to G instead. in pure length of time, the two chords get roughly equal emphasis, and the D/F#s help sell the importance of the G chord, but the bookend structure, with the A occupying both the most stable metric positions, makes it clear which one is in charge. from there, Phil Rudd comes in on the drums, and this is where I have to admit to the thing I got wrong earlier. I notated those three-chord stabs as if the last one landed on the downbeat: (bang) and listening to it in isolation, that feels like it should be correct. but Rudd disagrees. when he joins the party, his downbeat is an 8th note after the last stab: (bang) retroactively turning Angus's riff syncopated. this is what Dr. Justin London calls a metric fakeout: a relatively

sparse intro implies one downbeat, but once we get the context of the full band, we realize we were being misled. in this case, what seemed to be a short pickup that resolves to the downbeat is, instead, a longer syncopated pickup that leads into the downbeat but avoids actually hitting it. it's not hard to imagine a version where Rudd does follow the implied pulse: (bang) but once the fakeout is revealed, it quickly becomes clear that it's what the riff was always meant to be. it's a great trick, squeezing some extra interest out of a simple pattern by showing it in two different lights. and to make it even better, Angus foreshadows the transition with the end of his riff: the first three segments all use that same apparent downbeat, so they all get thrown off by Rudd. but when he slows down for the conclusion, the added delay bumps the final stab from the fake downbeat onto the real one. once we hear both parts together: (bang) that displacement in the early phrases builds up a massive wave of metric dissonance that comes crashing down with that final resolution. when I talk about weaponized simplicity, this is exactly what I mean: nothing about this is complicated, but everything about this works. it's tempting to skip over Rudd's drums, 'cause it's just a basic rock beat: (bang) but while there's no specific details I really need to highlight, I do think it's worth talking about why that's not a bad thing. in music theory, we like to talk about markedness, or choices in a particular piece of music that set it apart from other, similar songs, but genre conventions exist for a reason and if we don't talk about them too, it's easy to give the impression that doing more is always better. and that's especially dangerous for drums: I could probably write a couple paragraphs on the value of matching the complexity of the drums to song, but I have a better idea. I still have the stems from Wonderwall. here's what it sounds like if I take that drum part and tempo-match it to the riff from Highway To Hell. (bang) I think I've made my point. or, ok, fine, my point is that the more complicated drum part pulls focus away from the riff, dulling its impact by distracting you with percussive acrobatics. and that's a useful thing to keep in mind as we move into the verse. you can think of these sorts of arrangements like a pyramid, with each layer dominating the one below it and supporting the one above. the guitar is clearly more noteworthy than the drums, so it sits on top of it in the pyramid, but in the grand scheme of things it's also pretty straightforward, so it still has plenty of space to support Bon Scott's animated vocals. (bang) and it's such a good melody. again, three notes, but absolutely perfect. now, transcribing this was a bit of a pain: the song is tuned a quarter-tone down, so none of the notes are on a piano, and he's also sliding a bunch, especially at the starts and ends of phrases. like, if I slow it down, you can hear him starting an octave and a half below the initial F#. (bang) that sloppy pitch control, coupled with the high, raspy range, gives it a clear devil-may-care attitude, reflecting the sort of hedonistic nihilism of the lyrics: he's here for a good time, not for a long time. he's not gonna waste any of it on extra takes to dial in his intonation. that's a slightly uncomfortable point to make here because, not long after the album was released, Scott tragically died of acute alcohol poisoning, and I am not trying to trivialize that loss. if anything, that history makes the song even more powerful to a lot of fans. but if I'm gonna analyze it properly, I do have to recognize that that's what they were going for. and, of course, I should note that this rough and ready performance was a choice: Mutt Lange is a famously meticulous producer, and they spent months recording the album. they absolutely could've got Scott's pitch to sound more precise if that's what they wanted. but like I talked about in my video on butt rock, that's not the point of this kind of music. an AC/DC song isn't supposed to sound like a polished studio product. it's supposed to capture the raw, bombastic energy of an AC/DC show, with Angus's Chuck Berry-inspired duckwalk and Scott's often shirtless antics. there's some studio tricks thrown in here and there, but if Lange does his job right, you should still be able to suspend your disbelief enough to imagine five Australians doing this live, mistakes and all. but anyway, back to the melody. if we ignore the slippery delivery, he's only really singing three notes. most phrases start on F#, which we saw in the D chord, then they move to A, the root. so far, so good. the exciting part, though, is when he goes up to the 3rd. Angus's A chord is major, but that doesn't tell us much about what to expect here: in principle it implies C#, but this is blues rock, and in blues styles it's not uncommon to play major chords with a minor melody. still, the F# he starts on does also imply major, so it seems like the obvious choice would be this: (bang) but no. or, I mean, I suppose it's possible that's what he was going for

and he just ran up against the edge of his range and fell flat. but I don't think so, and either way, what matters is that what he actually sang was this. (bang) C natural, which makes this melody one long arpeggio of an F# diminished triad. and, like, we can talk about how cool that chord is, but I don't think that's the best way to explain this, 'cause there's already a different chord progression going on underneath. and they're kind of in conversation: in the first phrase, at least, Scott holds the C for when Angus is playing A major, avoiding potential clashes with the other chords. but this isn't really one of those songs where it's useful to talk about, like, upper extensions in the melody. the point here is less about the harmony and more about the fact that the F# and C form a big, fat tritone. and, like, I probably don't have to explain the cultural significance of the tritone in '70s hard rock. I feel like that's been covered pretty well at this point. but suffice it to say that if your song is about going to hell, you probably want a tritone somewhere. putting it front and center gives the song that shock value it so desperately needs, tying into the song's performative satanic themes with the so-called devil's interval. the entire melody is built to highlight that relationship, avoiding any other notes that might muddy the waters. it spends most of its time really drilling in the F#-A dyad, so every time he jumps up to C, you're hearing it as an extension of those two notes, and the dissonant tritone comes sharply into focus. but with so little support from the band, Scott's melody is carrying most of the verse's weight, so to keep things interesting, he starts developing the contour. the basic structure stays the same, but each new phrase adds something to ramp up the intensity. the first phrase only uses a couple Cs in significant spots: (bang) but the second phrase becomes a lot more liberal with them. (bang) and that makes sense: like I said, the first phrase really needs to establish the importance of F# so you can hear the impact of the tritone, but by the second phrase it's already established. you know to hear the C in that context, so leaning more heavily on it lets you squeeze more juice from that deliciously dissonant sound. the third phrase develops even further: the F#-C tritone has become old hat. it's time for a new note, and Scott comes screaming in with a high E. (bang) and, like, there's nothing overtly dissonant about an E here. it's the 5th of the key, and it's a fairly consonant interval away from each of the other notes. acoustically, it's fine. what makes it so impactful is the range: this is extremely high, and you can hear the intense rasp in his voice as he tries to wrap his throat around the pitch. he can do it, he's got a pretty high range, but it's that kind of hard rock upper register where half the point is making it sound like he can't. it becomes less of a sung note and more of a yelp, communicating a raw, primal emotion through pure timbre. in the fourth phrase, he doubles down, this time sitting on that E for an extended period: (bang) before finally dropping down to a low E to set up the chorus. (bang) Rudd follows suit with this crescendoing tom fill: (bang) and Angus is joined by both his brother Malcolm on rhythm guitar and, importantly, Cliff Williams on the bass. this sudden injection of a thicker guitar sound and a real low end, coupled with the increased density of attacks after the relatively sparse verse riff, gives the transition to the final line an explosive quality: (bang) that gets you ready for the most important part of any AC/DC song: the chorus. even listening to this while I edit the video, it's hard to resist the temptation to start singing along. the chorus moves away from that pyramid-style arranging, with its clear hierarchy of increasingly interesting parts, and more toward a wall of sound approach. and again, I think a big part of that is the bass: in a rock band, the bass serves as a sort of bridge between the rhythm section and the harmonic layer, marrying the drummer and guitarist by doing both their jobs at the same time. without it, the verse had this obvious orchestral gap that invited you to hear each part in isolation. once the bass comes in, though, that gap is filled, and they become one, unified band. the chorus is basically a call-and-response figure, with two alternating parts taking turns in the spotlight. the first of these is the gang vocals: (bang) and here's where I admit to another thing I was wrong about: AC/DC actually did change their sound over the years. it's subtle, certainly, but every artist evolves. and this is a great example: previous albums occasionally featured background vocals from Williams, like in Rock and Roll Damnation: (bang) but this is the first time they experimented with the gang-vocal sound that would come to define a lot of their work going forward. here, Williams is joined by Malcolm, and possibly Lange as well: I'm not entirely sure on that one, but he did sing on the album and some sources claim he's on this song. I dunno. anyway, point is, while there are some harmonies here, the whole thing is rough and raw enough that it feels to me like a pub sing-along. the lower

voices are there less to fill out the chords and more to give some cover to would-be participants who can't quite match Scott's impressive range. and that's important: with a song like, say, Don't Stop Believin': (bang) people will still definitely sing along, but the unachievable nature of Steve Perry's high notes means you have to adopt some level of ironic detachment, turning your inability to sing the line properly into a bit of a self-deprecating joke as you go for it anyway. it can be fun, but it puts you outside the music, and that can't work for AC/DC. when you scream ("Highway to Hell! ") with them, you need to be right there with them, and Williams and Malcolm are giving you permission to do that in whatever register is most comfortable for you. and while the verse vocals had some 16th note syncopation, the rhythm here is extremely simple. in fact, it's kinda fractal: the first syllable is a half note, and then each one after that is half as long. (bang) this puts most of the attacks on strong beats, with just this little bit of syncopation at the end for an extra kick. it's a really easy rhythm to learn and reproduce, and to make absolutely sure you do, they just sing it four times with no variation. even if you've never heard the song before, I bet you could join in before the chorus ends. the other main part here is the Young brothers' guitars: (bang) playing a little button in response to each vocal phrase. and the interesting thing about this button is that these are the same two chords Angus played in the riff: (bang) but in the opposite order. this flips the effect: if going from D to G is a resolution, then G to D implies a need to resolve. and we get that when they return to A in the next bar: (bang) so while the verse painted G as, like, an alternate home, the chorus treats it as the first step in the path to its ultimate destination. both sections take advantage of the flexible nature of the bVII chord to tell different stories with it, and the symmetry between those stories ties them together beautifully. the chorus ends with this big rhythm stop: (bang) as the band drops out to reset for the next verse. the chorus was a huge burst of energy, and cutting right back to another sparsely orchestrated verse would feel… well, I'll let you be the judge. (bang) *laughs* I mean, I love that, but it's goofy as hell. you need a bit of a palette cleanser to smooth out the transition, and the rhythm stop is a great way to do it: removing everything means whatever you bring back will still sound relatively powerful. but they don't quite remove everything. you may have noticed that Rudd maintains a quarter-note tap on the hi-hat. (bang) and that's also important for energy management: a complete stop would mean a lack of time, but this isn't supposed to be a release. especially with the chorus pattern ending abruptly on D, not A, this should feel unresolved, like you're waiting for the hammer to drop, and the subtle tick-tick-tick of the hi-hat keeps you just enough on edge that the return of the riff: (bang) feels incredibly satisfying. in rock arranging, it's standard practice to add something to the second verse. that could be a new instrument, a background line, or a new effect, but the point is it's supposed to sound a little bigger than the first verse. this keeps the song's overall dynamic contour moving in the right direction, but with this sort of pyramid orchestration, it's hard to do: any new thing risks destabilizing the entire structure. Angus and Rudd need to play exactly what they did last time, and there's no room for Malcolm or Williams to get involved, so all that weight has to be carried once again by Scott. and his solution is pretty subtle, but he does do something. remember how, in the first verse, he stepped up the range and intensity of each phrase? he does the same thing here, but starting at a slightly higher point. the first phrase is similar to last time, but with an extra C on the second line. (bang) not huge, but if we're listening carefully, it does tell us he's gonna have to build even more. the second phrase starts with a barrage of Cs before tossing in a quick E: (bang) which we didn't see last time until the third phrase. speaking of which, the third phrase here borrows from the previous fourth phrase, doing multiple syllables on that high E. (bang) there's also what sounds to me like a C# at the end: (bang) but that might just be a flubbed note. not sure. and the fourth phrase adds a new feature. so far, whenever he does the E, it's at the start of a line. once he falls off it, he stays down. here, though, while he does still do that: (bang) the second line walks right back up. (bang) I'm hesitant to read too much into any of these choices individually, but taken together, and especially combined with the first verse, they tell a clear dynamic story of increasing passion through

ever-higher and more difficult note choices, all without ever changing the accompaniment. the second chorus is basically the same, but this time the rhythm stop transforms into a real interlude, with Scott trading lines against the band. (bang) the chords are once again playing around with that D-G figure, holding us in the unstable portion of the progression and building tension that gets released into the solo. (bang) and it's such a cool transition, with the end of Scott's walk-up blending perfectly into Angus's pickup. it's like a little musical hand-off, making sure there's not a moment between them for the energy to drop. as for the solo itself, I mentioned before that Angus's duckwalk was inspired by Chuck Berry, but that's clearly not the only thing Berry inspired in him. listening to the solo: (bang) it's classic rock and roll, noodling around on a blues scale, juxtaposing short, looping segments with longer runs. compare it to the solo from Roll Over Beethoven: (bang) and you'll probably hear what I mean. and to be clear, I'm not, like, accusing Angus of plagiarism or anything: these are genre conventions, and both artists are in conversation with earlier blues traditions. everything borrows from the stuff that came before it. but in the spirit of weaponized simplicity, it feels worth recognizing that what's happening here is Angus knew a winning formula when he heard one, and didn't feel the need to try and hide that inspiration. it sounds good, and that's what matters. that leads back to a final chorus, where Scott breaks off from the gang vocals to do his own ad-libs. this starts with some basic melodic embellishments: (bang) but after a surprise rhythm stop, he lets out this primal scream, then goes completely off-book while his background singers carry the pattern for him. (bang) this lifts the chorus even higher, making it not just a local climax, but the high point of the entire song, the payoff for everything we've been building. the chorus line is so well-established by now that he doesn't need to actually follow it: the crowd knows what to do, and he's letting them loose. and finally, the song ends with what I learned in college as a Vegas ending. in a very real sense, the composition of Highway To Hell is only 3 minutes long, but the recording of Highway To Hell is 3 and a half minutes, because they just keep refusing to actually stop playing. the last chorus ends on another rhythm stop, with everyone holding their final notes. (bang) over that, Scott comes back in to sing this free-time a capella line. (bang) as he wraps up, Angus comes back in with this fast, high noodling. (bang) the rest of the band follows his lead, mashing out an A chord on their various instruments. (bang) when they finally stop, Scott comes in again, with another a capella line, this time sung down low. (bang) but the band won't let him get the last word, so they close things out with one final button, led by Rudd's tom fill. (bang) each of these is, individually, an effective ending to the song, and each one, in its moment, feels like the inevitable conclusion. but by stringing them together like this, constantly subverting the finality of each ending in turn, you let the audience sit in that moment for an absurdly long time, taking a victory lap through all the cathartic energy you've built throughout they song. unsurprisingly, the Vegas ending is most common in live performances, and done poorly it can come across self-indulgent and bland, but done well, there's no better way to translate a great song into a truly iconic show. and as always, thanks for watching. thanks to our featured patrons, Susan Jones, Jill Sundgaard, Howard Levine, Warren Huart, Damien Fuller-Sutherland, Neil Moore, Geoff, and Michael Mol! check out Patreon or Nebula for a fuller outro, and as always, keep on rockin'!