It's a Long Way to the Top, If You Wanna Rock n Roll

Excerpt from a Buffalo, NY, paper:

As AC/DC returns to Buffalo, some thoughts on the band’s endurance
By Jeff Miers, News Pop Music Critic

Last week, Harper Collins released a book by veteran music journalist (and former Rolling Stone contributor!) Anthony Bozza, beneath the imprimatur “Why AC/DC Matters.” The book is a hoot, but it’s also more than just that — it seeks to undo decades of nasty criticism by claiming for the band’s musical legacy the highest of honors. According to Bozza, AC/DC’s primal art is fully actualized, its apparent simplicity belying the consummate skill beneath.
“You could argue that they’re a metal band and that metal fans are dedicated,” writes Bozza on his Web site ( www.AnthonyBozza.net ). “But AC/DC’s music transcends that. It’s much more primal and fundamental, which is the real case for their widespread appeal. There is a reason that Chuck Berry and all the forefathers of rock and roll started a revolution. It was because there was no denying the electricity of the music and the magnetism of the back beat. It spoke to, and continues to speak to, generations of fans. AC/DC’s contribution to music history runs parallel to that.”
Bozza raises an interesting point. For what feels like forever, the popular wisdom concerning AC/DC suggested the group was a heavy metal act. Most of the folks who’ve suggested as much must not really know what heavy metal is, but oh-so-clearly, AC/DC ain’t it.
In a nutshell, heavy metal is largely a European construct. It is grandiose music, delivered with incredible energy and volume, but its motifs are largely classical. It has virtually nothing to do with the blues. AC/DC, though the band hails from Australia and Scotland, is a proponent of American art forms — most clearly, the Chicago blues of the 1950s and ’60s, and the deepest strains of American rock ’n’ roll. The band has much more in common with the Rolling Stones than it does with Black Sabbath, for example, and its allegiance is to Muddy Waters, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, not Satan. (Har, har.)
If you took Chuck Berry’s “Carol,” say, and cranked it through a wall of Marshall stacks, you’d get something an awful lot like “Whole Lotta Rosie,” “Riff Raff” or “Problem Child.” The reason so many young people are succumbing to the swank and swagger of AC/DC’s bad boy boogie today is the same reason people fell for Jerry Lee, Elvis and Little Richard; the same reason proper English society was absolutely horrified by the Rolling Stones’ raw sexuality; the same motivation behind a million parents banging on a million teenaged bedroom doors and screaming “Turn that awful noise down!”
It’s the power of that back-beat. It’s got the life force in it.