Appetite for Destruction

I want to hate this album. It represents everything that I detest about rock, and Hard Rock in particular – inflated egos, saturation marketing, style over substance, the glamourisation of drug abuse, and using teenage anger and resentment towards society to generate fat corporate profits. I also want to hate McDonalds – unsustainable farming, mass production, and the corruption of the American Dream to sell vast quantities of salt, sugar and fat. But have you tried a Sausage ‘n’ Egg McMuffin? They are just so damn satisfying.

Back In Black

On a Spring day in 1980, four young men sat in a darkened recording studio in the Bahamas and watched as rain cascaded down the windows and sheet lightning arced across the slate-grey sky. They had only been together as a band for a few weeks, and they were still in shock from the sudden death of their former lead singer, Bon Scott, earlier that year. When he died the surviving members had talked of breaking up the band, but with encouragement from Scott’s mother, they had instead recruited a new singer and started work on their next album, which they were to dedicate to his memory. Following their earlier successes, the pressure to make another hit album was huge, and the challenge facing them was overwhelming, both for the three original band members, and for their new singer Brian Johnson, who had been a devotee of Scott’s but had never matched his success as a rock musician.