Blow Up Your Video

Recording

Writing sessions for Blow Up Your Video took place in London's Nomis Studio in July 1987, with the band convening at Miraval Studio in Le Val in Provence in the south of France in August and September with Harry Vanda and George Young, the production team behind the band's early albums. This was also the final studio album to feature drummer Simon Wright.

In a 2008 Rolling Stone cover story, George Young admitted to David Fricke that the Blow Up Your Video session was when he realized his brother Malcolm, who had always been a heavy drinker, was in the grips of alcoholism: "I saw the signs. Malcolm had a problem. I said if he didn't get his act together, I was out of there. I don't recall it having any effect."

The band recorded 16 tracks during the sessions, including the unreleased songs "Let It Loose" and "Alright Tonight," as well as other versions of "Heatseeker", and "That's the Way I Wanna Rock 'n' Roll." Two additional songs, "Snake Eye" and "Borrowed Time", were recorded but only released on the 12-inch single versions of "Heatseeker" and "That's the Way I Wanna Rock 'n' Roll", respectively. "Snake Eye" was also included on the 3-inch CD-single for "Heatseeker". The song "Down On The Borderline" was recorded, but not released until 1990, as the B-side of the Australian "Moneytalks" single in 7-inch, 12-inch and CD-single formats. All three of these songs were later included on Backtracks in 2009. Demo tracks for the songs "Let it Loose" and "Alright Tonight" were stolen and bootlegged, so they were omitted from the final album cut.

Although he wrote all the lyrics on the album, it would be the last on which Brian Johnson was credited as a songwriter (all songs on subsequent albums were written by the Young brothers).

The title of the album was taken from a line in the song "That's The Way I Wanna Rock 'n' Roll." In 1988 Angus explained the title to MTV Australia: "We were probably a band that's best seen in a live situation and that's how the title came about...'Cause everything's automatic these days. A kid can flick on the button on a T.V., he's got a remote control and he can zoom through everything and get it coming in from all over the world. You can turn on your radio and get rock coming in from America. For us, the best thing as a band it was always we were great onstage."

Tour

The band began a world tour in Perth on 22 February, playing 16 dates in Australia for the first time in seven years. The band played four tracks from Blow Up Your Video on the tour: "Heatseeker," "That's the Way I Wanna Rock 'n' Roll," "Nick of Time" and "Go Zone." On the eve of the North American leg of the tour (a massive stretch that would run from May to November), Malcolm Young decided not to participate in order to deal with a by now problematic alcohol addiction. Unlike Angus, who had always been a teetotaller, Malcolm enjoyed drinking but in recent years it had escalated to the point where it began to affect performances; the band's former U.S. agent Doug Thaler recalls seeing the band one of the Monsters of Rock shows in 1984: "I'd gone into AC/DC's dressing room and had a scotch with Malcolm and Jonno [Brian Johnson] while Motley Crue played. When AC/DC went out to take the stage, Malcolm had clearly had too much to drink. And they were playing the song that Angus used to do his guitar solo and strip to, and Malcolm would just barely keep a steady rhythm - he couldn't even do that. And he fell into the drum kit, and I thought, 'Oh boy, this is not headed any place good.'" By April 1988, Young recognized he had a problem and, ever mindful of his former band mate Bon Scott's premature passing (the previous AC/DC singer drank himself to death in London in 1980), he began attending AA meetings, confessing to VH1's Behind the Music in 2000, "My drinking overtook my whole thing. I felt like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I had a talk with Angus...I was letting people down...I wasn't brain-dead, but I was just physically and mentally screwed by the alcohol." Filling in for him was Malcolm and Angus' nephew, Stevie Young, although Malcolm was present on the rest of the tour and in the Blow Up Your Video promotional videos. Stevie would also step in for Malcolm in 2014 when it was disclosed that the guitarist was suffering from dementia.

Reception

The album was the band's biggest-selling album of new material since For Those About to Rock We Salute You, being certified Platinum in the US. Blow Up Your Video reached #2 in the UK and #12 in the US. The album was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance Vocal or Instrumental in 1989 (along with Metallica's ...And Justice For All), but both bands infamously lost to Jethro Tull's Crest of a Knave. In the original Rolling Stone review, Jim Farber wrote, "Fortunately, the Young brothers continue to come up with enough inspired riffs to make the tunnel vision justifiable. In fact, the riffs here add up to the band's catchiest work since its classic album Back in Black." Greg Prato of AllMusic calls the album "unfocused" and "glutted with such throwaways as 'Kissin' Dynamite'..."

Track listing

All tracks written by Malcolm Young, Angus Young and Brian Johnson.

Two additional songs, "Snake Eye" and "Borrowed Time", were recorded but only released on the 12-inch single versions of "Heatseeker" and "That's the Way I Wanna Rock 'n' Roll", respectively. "Snake Eye" was also included on the 3-inch CD-single for "Heatseeker". The song "Down On The Borderline" was recorded, but not released until 1990, as the B-side of the Australian "Moneytalks" single in 7-inch, 12-inch and CD-single formats. All three of these songs were later included on Backtracks in 2009. Demo tracks for the songs "Let it Loose" and "Alright Tonight" were stolen and bootlegged, and omitted from the final album cut.

Personnel

Charts

Album