His guitar was the only overdub and he would then play rhythm after the solo, all the way to the end so the dynamics didn’t drop. 9 in its list of the 40 Best Albums of the '80s. Nonetheless, she concurred with Fricke's original view of the album as a heavy metal masterpiece while naming it her favourite album ever, "the obsessive soundtrack of my adolescence, the racy middle-brow thriller that spoke to me both as a tomboy who wanted to be one of the guys, and the increasingly female ingenue who needed to work out the world of men. In some quarters at AC/DC’s record label, Atlantic Records, there was resistance to the black cover, but the band wouldn’t yield. Upon their arrival, the area was being hit by several tropical storms, wreaking havoc on the studio's electricity. That was the only way to do it because I had to consider what we were going to mix and slow it down to half–speed. [50] That same year, Back in Black was included by Time in its list of the 100 Greatest Albums of All Time. I do have various preferred microphones but will always vary my choices to suit the room and the particular instruments. (11) Total Ratings 11, $22.73 New. It’s exactly the same recording a track: at a certain point you go click — now we’ve captured the sound, the performance and the right arrangement. That same year, Platt engineered a record by Spooky Tooth guitarist Luther Grosvenor, as well as a New Age album by Henry Wolff and Nancy Hennings that was the first to feature singing bowls and Tibetan bells. The views expressed are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of the publishers. He and Bon were totally different types of singer. Shop Back in Black [LP] VINYL at Best Buy. The album's all-black cover was designed as a "sign of mourning" for Scott. WITH INNER SLEEVE. After all of the backing tracks had been recorded, it was time for Brian Johnson to make his AC/DC debut. Back in Black was the first album to feature vocalist Brian Johnson, formerly of Geordie. [44] Robert Christgau was less enthusiastic, finding the band somewhat too "primitive" and their sexual imagery "unimaginative". [26] It was an immediate commercial success, debuting at number one on the British albums chart and reaching number four on the American chart—which Rolling Stone called "an exceptional showing for a heavy-metal album". [10] After the band begrudgingly worked through the rest of the list of applicants in the following days, Johnson returned for a second rehearsal. You may login with either your assigned username or your e-mail address. I was staying with a friend in Kensington while doing the Broken Home album, and every day, when Mutt picked me up in his car on the way to the studio, he’d have a cassette recording that Malcolm and Angus had sent him from the previous day’s auditions in order to get his feedback. “The guy who made the bell was the guy who hit the bell on the record. During an appearance on Let There Be Talk, AC/DC guitarist Angus Young and singer Brian Johnson looked back on Brian joining the fold back in 1980 ahead of the massively-successful "Back in Black. [43], In a retrospective review, Rolling Stone critic Christian Hoard praised the album as the band's greatest work, possibly "the leanest and meanest record of all time—balls-out arena rock that punks could love. “As I couldn’t get the Rolling Stones’ mobile, I used Ronnie Laine’s mobile, which was in an Airstream caravan. "Greatest Hits" album, originally released in 2001. Back in Black Sony. AC/DC performing a typically understated live show during the Back In Black tour. Artist: AC/DC Track: ‘Back In Black’ Label: Atlantic Released: 1980 Producer: Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange Engineer: Tony Platt Studios: Compass Point, Electric Lady Birds In The Belfry ‘Hells Bells’, the opening track on AC/DC’s first album without Bon Scott, commences with the slow, funereal–sounding tolling of a 2000–pound bronze bell. Within two weeks it … It has sold an estimated 50 million copies worldwide,[1][2][3][4] and is one of the best-selling albums in music history. "Back in Black" first went platinum in October 1980 and had previously been certified 22 times platinum in December 2007. Comes in a new, poly That April, when the sessions for Back In Black were about to commence at Chris Blackwell’s Compass Point Studios in Nassau, there was a slight delay due to AC/DC’s equipment briefly being held by customs while a hurricane messed with the facility’s electrical system which, being on a Caribbean island, was already erratic. A lot of it was about getting the right blend, and there were some bits and pieces that we knew we’d want to introduce; like the slight detuning underneath the snare. Back in Black Sony Japan--Availability: In Stock Add to Cart Add to Wishlist. Only the first four were released as singles. View credits, reviews, tracks and shop for the 1980 Embossed Vinyl release of Back In Black on Discogs. tony platt, the recording engineer, writes. Original paper inner sleeve in great shape. [47] VH1 also placed the title track at No. The bell itself weighed one ton because that was the largest feasible size to take on tour, but the pitch of the bell as you hear it on the record is an octave lower than the actual bell; it was slowed down to half–speed to replicate the sound of a two–ton bell that would have been impossible for the band to take on the road with them or to hang in the venues. [61] American death metal group Six Feet Under recorded a cover of the entire album under the title Graveyard Classics 2.[62]. [7] They planned to begin recording a follow-up shortly after its completion. “The bell that AC/DC had ordered to take out on tour with them still hadn’t come out of the mould when I arrived in Loughborough,” Platt recalls. As they played better, the sound would improve, and this might prompt me to change the mic positions a little bit; moving them in or out to advance the sound in small increments. “Angus used a radio transmitter when doing the solos. This would go on to sell more than 50 million copies worldwide while becoming the second-highest–selling album of all time after Michael Jackson’s Thriller. “We had to do a few things to get the sound the way Mutt was hearing it. [51] It was listed at No. The coroner ruled that pulmonary aspiration of vomit was the cause of Scott's death, but the official cause was listed on the death certificate as "acute alcoholic poisoning" and classified as "death by misadventure". As we’d start to zone in on the sound, those players would respond to what they were hearing by playing better. “Then, over a very short period of time, the band decided to carry on and the search for a new singer began. ANGUS With Back in Black that’s just where it was going. For the title track from the album, see, Recording Industry Association of America, List of best-selling albums in the United States, List of diamond-certified albums in Canada, List of number-one albums in Australia during the 1980s, List of Top 25 albums for 1980 in Australia, List of Canadian number-one albums of 1981, List of UK Albums Chart number ones of the 1980s, "Heavy Metal Under the Sea: Sharks Act Calmer When Listening to AC/DC", "AC/DC, "Back in Black" (Great Moments in Pop Music History)", "AC/DC's Back in Black Certified 25x Platinum", "Angus Young Still Suffers from Stage Fright / 40 Facts About AC/DC's 'Back in Black' / Bon Scott played drums on some of the demos", "AC/DC's Back In Black: the story behind the album", "The Story Behind the Album: AC/DC's Back in Black", "RIAA – Gold & Platinum Searchable Database – Back in Black", "Les Meilleures Ventes de CD / Albums "Tout Temps, "10 Things You Might Not Know About AC/DC's 'Back In Black, "My favourite album: Back in Black by AC/DC", "500 Greatest Songs of All Time – 190: AC/DC, 'Back in Black, "500 Greatest Albums of All Time 77 – AC/DC, 'Back in Black, "1001 Albums You Must Hear – 2008 Edition", "AC/DC: Back in Black – Top 20 Heavy Metal Albums", "Why 1980 was the greatest year for heavy metal", 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die: A Listener's Life List, "Six Feet Under – Graveyard Classics, Vol. It was during the afternoon of 19th February 1980, while Mutt Lange and Tony Platt were working together at London’s Battery Studios on an album by a band named Broken Home, that Lange received a phone call informing him Bon Scott had passed away. "[59] In 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die (2008), Tom Moon said Back in Black's "lean mean arena rock" and the production's "delicate balance of power and finesse" defined the commercial side of heavy music for years after its release. As there wasn’t a lot of ambience, I had to feed stuff out through speakers in the room at Island [Basing Street] to give it ambience and a sense of space. 2 on its list of the 100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs. “A reasonable amount of comping was done with Brian’s vocals, but not a vast amount. “The miking of the guitars changed for each song,” Platt explains. 7. [49] In 2006, Q placed the album at No. Of course, the timbre of the amps would change according to the chords being played. The mix took place at Island’s Basing Street Studios where I also recorded a few overdubs: some backing vocals on ‘Highway To Hell’ and the lead vocal on ‘Night Prowler’. [54] According to Tim Jonze of The Guardian, it has been hailed by some as "a high watermark" for heavy metal music. It was released on 25 July 1980 by Albert Productions and Atlantic Records. Harrington credited producer Lange for drawing AC/DC further away from the blues-oriented rock of their previous albums, and toward a more dynamic attack that concentrated and harmonized each element of the band: "the guitars were compacted into a singular statement of rhythmic efficiency, the rhythm section provided the thunderhorse overdrive, and vocalist Johnson belowed and brayed like the most unhinged practitioner of bluesy top-man dynamics since vintage Robert Plant." The miking of the tom–toms — if we were using them — depended on their role. “It was always difficult to find a studio where Mutt liked the monitors,” he explains. None of Scott's writings were used for the album's lyrics, as the group felt it would seemingly profit from his passing. 1980 AC/DC “Back In Black” Eng/mix Atlantic 1980 Foreigner “ 4 “ Eng Atlantic (from Zomba onwards) 1980 Iron Maiden “Phanton of The Opera Prod/eng EMI 1980 Samson “Head On” Prod/remix GEM 1981 Trust “March ou Creve” Prod/eng CBS 1981 Samson “Shock Tactics” Prod/eng GEM 1981 Starfighters “Alley Cat Blues” Prod/eng Jive [30] The album has also sold one million or more copies in Canada, Germany and France. THE RECORD IS GRADED VERY GOOD-EXCELLENT CONDITION. The album was composed by Johnson, Angus and Malcolm Young, and recorded over seven weeks in the Bahamas from April to May 1980 with producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange, who had worked on their previous album. Great care has been taken to ensure accuracy in the preparation of this article but neither Sound On Sound Limited nor the publishers can be held responsible for its contents. D.R.I. We therefore had to abort that whole idea while the bell foundry people hurried up the process of getting the other bell out of the mold. The starting points are relevant in that respect, but the fine tuning is always going to be totally different every time you visit it. We were in a part of the world where music was a part of everybody’s life, so the studio staff there were great. [8] The loss devastated the band, who considered breaking up. [26], After Back in Black was released, AC/DC's previous records Highway to Hell, If You Want Blood You've Got It, and Let There Be Rock all re-entered the British charts, which made them the first band since The Beatles to have four albums in the British Top 100 simultaneously. There was one place where the snare sounded a lot louder and much fuller than everywhere else — which, I later discovered, was because of space above the ceiling there — and that’s where we set up the drum kit before positioning the guitars around it.”, Looking through the control room window towards the live area, the producer and engineer saw the band members in largely the same format as they used on stage. The general attitude in the studio was optimistic. Whereas Bon’s voice was extremely quirky, Brian’s was sheer power.”. Tony Platt in 1980.“Being there was like having died and gone to Heaven,” he says. Maintaining quality control, both Tony Platt — who would also engineer AC/DC’s 1983 album Flick Of The Switch — and Mutt Lange were involved in the Back In Black mastering by Bob Ludwig at Masterdisk in New York. [6], As the new decade approached, the group set off for the UK and France for the final tour dates of their breakthrough release. "[36], As her favourite album, Kitty Empire of The Observer acknowledged Back in Black is "a preposterous, drongoid record ... built on casual sexism, eye-rolling double entendres, a highly questionable attitude to sexual consent ('Don't you struggle/ Don't you fight/ Don't you worry/ Cos it's your turn tonight') a penchant for firearms, and a crass celebration of the unthinking macho hedonism that killed the band's original singer." The title track was ranked no. Record condition - Good + Sleeve condition - Good. Since its original release, the album has been reissued and remastered multiple times, most recently for digital distribution. Back in Black is the seventh studio album by Australian rock band AC/DC. Back In Black was one of the first big albums Lange produced. He went on to work with Def Leppard, Celine Dion, and Shania Twain (who he married in 1993). Facebook Twitter. Six months later, he then became a fully fledged tape op at Basing Street Studios, owned by Island Records founder Chris Blackwell. He had this thing where he didn't want people to listen to the album down the road and say there's no way someone could sing that, they've dropped that in, even the breaths had to be in the right place. And that was that. Boasting worldwide sales of almost 50 million units,Back in Blackhas inspired countless fans with its raw, in-your-face attitude and classic guitar licks. I’m not crazy about horn–loaded monitors, but something about the way Westlake rooms were balanced really appealed to me. A couple of years later, he made his debut as a producer on Aswad’s self–titled first album, and thereafter he also served as chief engineer at a West Sussex studio named Pebble Beach Sound Recorders for his best friend, guitarist–producer Adam Sieff. However, after placing microphones in the belfry I discovered that what no one had considered were the birds living inside there. [59] In the years after its release, studios in Nashville would use it to check the acoustics of a room, while Motörhead would use it to tune their sound system. This song was recorded in The Bahamas and produced in New York by Mutt Lange. "[15] In addition, their equipment was initially held up by customs, and other gear was slowly freighted over from the UK. Back to Black is the second and final studio album by English singer and songwriter Amy Winehouse, released on 27 October 2006 by Island Records. “We put screens around Brian as he wanted to have some privacy and didn’t like the idea of everybody staring at him,” Platt recalls. [19] A humorous anecdote from the sessions involved a recording being interrupted by a crab shuffling across the studio's wooden floor. It is the band's first album to feature lead singer Brian Johnson, following the death of previous lead singer Bon Scott. Tony Platt today.“It was like organising a photographic set, where the photographer keeps making small adjustments to the lighting and the way that the subject is posing until, at a certain point, he clicks the shutter and says, ‘That’s the photo I want’. Mutt and Tony recorded the follow–up, Back In Black with new lead singer Brian Johnson at Compass Point Studios. Sometimes it would be a 50 Watt head and the appropriate cabinet, sometimes it would be a 100 Watt head, and there were a couple of different 100 Watt heads that had their own textures. Price Match Guarantee. A lot of the guitars on the recording were very separated, there wasn’t a lot of leakage and there were quite a few overdubs. We had quarter–inch and two–inch tape machines, I started the two–inch and dropped it in, and Mutt started the quarter–inch at the appropriate moment.”. "[40] Barry Walters from Rolling Stone said Back in Black "still sounds thoroughly timeless, the essence of unrepentantly simple but savagely crafted hard rock" and "a celebration of thrashing, animal sex", although he observed "mean-spirited sexism" on songs such as "What Do You Do for Money Honey" and "Given the Dog a Bone". [57] Paul Brannigan of Metal Hammer cited it as one of the ten albums that helped reestablish the genre's global popularity in 1980, making it "the greatest year for heavy metal". According to the official AC/DC website and most worldwide releases, track four is "Given the Dog a Bone". Engineer Tony Platt manned the board for that album, and along with legendary producer Mutt Lange, helped capture the tones that … Although they preferred to record their next effort in the UK, there were no studios available, and the Bahamas presented a nice tax advantage. The contents of this article are subject to worldwide copyright protection and reproduction in whole or part, whether mechanical or electronic, is expressly forbidden without the prior written consent of the Publishers. “I hadn’t worked at Electric Lady before, but I’d always been quite a fan of Westlake rooms and the one in Studio A was really good. [26] In the US, the single "You Shook Me All Night Long"/"Have a Drink on Me" became AC/DC's first Top 40 hit in the country, peaking at no. 2", "Austriancharts.at – AC/DC – Back In Black", "Offiziellecharts.de – AC/DC – Back In Black", "Swedishcharts.com – AC/DC – Back In Black", "Norwegiancharts.com – AC/DC – Back In Black", "Spanishcharts.com – AC/DC – Back In Black", "Swisscharts.com – AC/DC – Back In Black", "Danishcharts.dk – AC/DC – Back In Black", "Australiancharts.com – AC/DC – Back In Black", Cámara Argentina de Productores de Fonogramas y Videogramas, "ARIA Charts – Accreditations – 2013 Albums", Australian Recording Industry Association, "Austrian album certifications – AC/DC – Back in Black", "Canadian album certifications – AC/DC – Back in Black", "Danish album certifications – AC/DC – Back in Black", "Certifications Albums Double Platine – année 2001", "Gold-/Platin-Datenbank (AC/DC; 'Back in Black')", "Italian album certifications – AC/DC – Back in Black", "New Zealand album certifications – AC/DC – Back in Black", "The Official Swiss Charts and Music Community: Awards (AC/DC; 'Back in Black')", "British album certifications – AC/DC – Back in Black", "American album certifications – AC/DC – Back in Black", Let There Be Rock: The Movie – Live in Paris, It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll), For Those About to Rock: Monsters in Moscow, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Back_in_Black&oldid=998880093, Albums produced by Robert John "Mutt" Lange, All Wikipedia articles written in Australian English, Short description is different from Wikidata, Certification Table Entry usages for Argentina, Pages using certification Table Entry with shipments figures, Certification Table Entry usages for Australia, Certification Table Entry usages for Austria, Pages using certification Table Entry with sales figures, Certification Table Entry usages for Canada, Certification Table Entry usages for Denmark, Pages using certification Table Entry with streaming figures, Certification Table Entry usages for France, Certification Table Entry usages for Germany, Certification Table Entry usages for Italy, Certification Table Entry usages for New Zealand, Certification Table Entry usages for Spain, Certification Table Entry usages for Switzerland, Certification Table Entry usages for United Kingdom, Certification Table Entry usages for United States, Pages using certification Table Entry with sales footnote, Pages using certification Table Entry with shipments footnote, Pages using certification Table Entry with streaming footnote, MusicBrainz release group same as Wikidata, Articles with MusicBrainz release group links, Wikipedia articles with MusicBrainz release group identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.