These days AC/DC are one of the biggest bands in the world and undisputed kings of rock n roll. But 30 years ago they were just a small Aussie band trying to make it big on the international stage.
But it almost didn’t happen according to the man who signed the band to Atlantic Records overseas who has revealed in an interview that in 1976 the band were temporarily dropped from the label.
In a story that would have gone down in the history books alongside the story of Dick Rowe who turned down the opportunity to sign The Beatles, former head of Atlantic Records, Phil Carson, has revealed in an interview with Classic Rock that shortly after he signed AC/DC the label wanted to drop the group just prior to the release of Let There Be Rock.
“They’d delivered Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap [1976], which I thought was pretty good,” revealed Carson. “But the Atlantic A&R department [in the US] said: ‘We’re sorry, but this album doesn’t make it. We’re not gonna put it out and we’re dropping the band.’ And everybody was unanimous in this, by the way – everybody.”
“I said: ‘I think you’re making a very big mistake.’ But the drop notice was out; AC/DC were history. So I went to Neshui [Ertegun, co-owner of Atlantic with brother Ahmet] and showed him the sales figures that we’d got for High Voltage [also 1976].”
“They were not awe-inspiring but considering we’d only paid $25,000 for the album this was not so bad. There were 10,000 sold in Germany and 12,000 in England. Maybe it had sold 40,000 overall. It had certainly earned its $25,000 back.”
“Neshui backed me up and I re-signed the band at that point. I managed to claw it back in. Thank God I did.” Carson’s intuition ended up paying up, Let There Be Rock has since gone on to sell over 2 million copies worldwide.
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But that was dwarfed a short three years later when the group released their biggest album to date, Back In Black, which is the second highest selling album of all time with an estimated 50 million sales worldwide.
As of 2010, AC/DC are estimated to have sold over 200 million albums worldwide. Vindication? We’d say so.
