Time to get those ho, ho, ho’s out.
Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the day
I just can’t wait ’til Christmastime
When I can grope you in the hay
Yes, its the most wonderful time of the year* and if you are out there desperately wondering what the Dickins you could possibly get for a suave multi-millionaire blogger who has everything in your office secret Satan draw, Brian Johnson has a timely gift idea.
Mistress for Christmas
I want the woman in red at the bottom of my bed
Long renowned for their festive ditties such as ‘Whole Lotta Rudolph’, ‘Highway To Holly’, ‘Twas The Night Before You Shook Me All Night Long’ and ‘Big Baubles’, it was surely no surprise that AC/DC gave us ‘Mistress For Christmas’ on 1990’s The Razor’s Edge.
It’s a slowie, by AC/DC standards and Brian lends it a strangely affecting air with a querulously melancholic vocal utterly at odds with the aerobic horizontal high jinks he is singing about. Hey, there’s sleigh bells though.
I can hear you coming down my smoke stack
I wanna ride on your reindeer, honey
And ring the bells, yeah
(Purely out of interest has anyone, ever in the history of all human thought and endeavour used ‘I wanna ride on your reindeer’ as a metaphor for, umm, downstairs hobby time? I suspect not)
I bought The Razor’s Edge on the morning it was released, walking up to my mate Geraint’s house with him to play it, worried it would be as crap as Blow Up Your Video. As he cranked his dad’s stereo up and ‘Thunderstruck’ sizzled through the Carmarthen air I knew everything was going to be alright with the rest of my life.
It has been, mostly.
I’ll skip the opener of The Razor’s Edge as I’ve dealt with it elsewhere and ‘Money Talks’ as I’ll deal with that separately sometime in 2037**. Nobody ever really seems to mention The Razor’s Edge much, but they should do it is both the best LP AC/DC could have made in 1990 and a very good album in its own right.
Recorded in somewhere called Canada^ following Malcolm Young’s reintegration into the band after he temporarily dropped out of band because of his drinking habits and while Johnson was dealing with his divorce, the band felt their backs were up against the wall. Due to Brian’s unavailability Angus and Malcolm wrote the lyrics as well as the music and it really worked.
Bruce Fairbairn added a real clarity and discipline to the proceedings, leaving a precision that had been lacking, albeit at the expense of a little rawness. Best of all though, with a couple of minor exceptions^^ the songs were so much better.
Take ‘Fire Your Guns’ a brilliantly brisk belter, propelled excellently by Chris Slade’s drumming*^, it was a firecracker live too. The band really sounded like they meant business again. Ditto the title track, a lean menacing affair and a great change of pace. I dig the atmosphere this one conjures up and the guitar solo is one of latter day Angus’ best, breaking free of the track to roam around the soundscape in a feral manner before subsuming itself back into the song.
Side closer ‘Rock Your Heart Out’ is another good forceful number, the sound is pretty close to a few of the Highway To Hell tracks, which is a nice thing to write. It is a great illustration of both Malcolm and Cliff’s contributions to the band’s sound.
I remember not rating ‘Are You Ready’ at the time, now it sounds excellent to me, a leering swaggering gangbang of a song. Their sound here is looser and confident than they had sounded in an age. I’m sure there must be a subtle political/philosophical message in ‘Got You By The Balls’ that I just haven’t grokked yet, so for now it’s just good (un)clean fun mounted on a mean chassis.
Surprise contender for favourite current track on The Razor’s Edge is ‘Shot Of Love’. There’s something attractively unfinished about it, a slice of humanity and louche looseness, something akin to ZZ Top in the excellent guitar solo. It really surprised me, which is rather a nice feeling after 35 years of listening.
I will leave it right there. I had an absolute ball listening to The Razor’s Edge over the last week and a bit, which I have to report involved duck walking on a deserted station platform to ‘Fire Your Guns’ and sitting in my car outside my house listening to ‘Money Talks’ twice because I was enjoying it too much to stop.
This music thing, it can be pretty good.
The Razor’s Edge is a very good AC/DC LP, which already puts it in the top percentile of all rock. It has bite, clarity and good tunes, played hard and well. I saw them three nights running on the tour for the album – hey tickets were a lot cheaper back then – happy memories and its nice to have them reaffirmed by a listen back at Christmas time.
Now babe, saddle that reindeer for me…
If I had to pick fault with The Razor’s Edge it would be over the, not-really-that-arsed cover art and the fact that we didn’t even merit an inner sleeve. The ATCO label design is poor too, come on keep it classy Atlantic – play to your legacy.
1299 Down.
*copyright Amazon/The Goliath Corporation/M&S/Walmart/Skynet etc.
**if man is still alive, to cop from Zager and Evans.
^note to self: check this actually exists before publishing post.
^^I’m looking at you ‘Goodbye And Good Riddance To Bad Luck’ and ‘Let’s Make It’, neither of which are terrible^*.
^*either of which would have been the best songs on the band’s next two studio LPs, but that’s a story for the Ghost Of Christmas Yet To Come.
*^Its no coincidence that this LP was powered up by a Welshman.