Review by Brian McLean
When Tuesday, July 12 rolls around, it will have been twenty-five years since AC/DC released Back in Black. The record has been the band’s most successful album to date and one of the top five selling rock albums overall with it recently reaching the 21 million mark for copies sold in the US.
The album also marked the debut for vocalist Brian Johnson who replaced the legendary Bon Scott.
Scott passed away on February 9, 1980 in London while in the back of a car where he was sleeping off a hard night of drinking.
Many fans of AC/DC have been overly curious about video footage featuring Scott. Some fans have seen the Let There be Rock movie, an AC/DC live concert filmed in Paris with Bon Scott stage center. But many of the younger generation fans haven’t, though they hold a fondness for his vocals during his tenure as the AC/DC front man.
With the release of Family Jewels through Epic Music Video, a two disc DVD set spanning AC/DC’s career from 1975 through 1990, those younger fans will finally be able to visually experience Scott’s work.
Disc One contains footage of Scott starting in 1975 with AC/DC’s live appearance on Australian TV performing “Baby Please Don’t Go” complete with the vocalist sporting a blue plaid skirt, blonde wig, pig tails, and a lit cigarette.
The 20 track disc proceeds through those early AC/DC years featuring videos, TV performances and sound stage footage of classic AC/DC songs such as “High Voltage,” “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock‘n’Roll),” “TNT,” “Jailbreak,” “Sin City,” “Dirty Deeds,” “Whole Lotta Rosie,” “Walk All Over You,” “Touch Too Much,” and “Highway to Hell.”
There’s a nice selection from the Scott era with one of the performances occurring on Spanish TV ten days prior to Scott’s death.
The second disc picks up in the summer of 1980 when AC/DC began with vocalist Brian Johnson. Four videos from the breakthrough Back in Black album are shown starting off with “Hells Bells,” “What do you do for Money Honey,” “Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution” as well as the title track all filmed on a sound stage with lights.
The disc continues in chronological order with promo clips and performances from For those About to Rock, Flick of the Switch, Fly on the Wall, Who Made Who, Blow Up your Video, and The Razor’s Edge released in 1990 for a total of 20 songs, 40 songs overall for both discs, and 2½ hours total viewing time.
The videos for “Let’s Get it Up” and “For those about to Rock” are live concert clips where as the videos representing Flick of the Switch are back in a more controlled environment where taping occurred in a warehouse.
The highlight and most interesting portion of Disc Two will be the five clips representing the Fly on the Wall album from 1985.
Instead of five individual videos, there’s one continuous conceptual mini flick featuring the animated fly that can be seen on the album cover, typical mid 80’s MTV humor, and the slime ball venue owner/band booker laying down his pick up lines on female prospects for the evening. The entire Fly on the Wall portion of the disc runs just under 25 minutes.
The remaining clips for Disc Two are standard promotional clips or videos that saw airtime on MTV for the albums of Who Made Who, Blow Up your Video, and The Razor’s Edge.
The booklet lists the tracks where exactly each performance came from whether a home video or other source. It also contains a personal account from Rolling Stone magazine writer David Fricke who first experienced the Australian rockers in October 1980 on the Back in Black tour in Milwaukee.
Fricke’s words are a great read providing the
reader with an informative piece on the Australian rock band.
The only down side to the DVD release is the disc package itself. The
foldout digi pack style of packaging is welcomed, but the shiny silver
cover will show finger prints and smudges if not handled with white gloves,
literally. It will be frustrating for the collector or those who just
like to keep their pieces in mint condition.
The Family Jewels DVD is a great comprehensive visual history of AC/DC and the band members that have come and gone. It will satisfy those who prefer Scott’s vocals to Johnson, but only for a while.
The next DVD release that should follow Family Jewels or later is a given. That would be Let there be Rock on DVD. The sound track to the movie has already been released as part of the Bon Fire box set that came out in 1997. The next logical step would be the movie on DVD. Those in charge of that high voltage decision should just flick the decision switch and let there be a DVD.