AC/DC's new vocalist...Charlie Drake?!

August 20^th – What I really like about the music industry, or at least the people who actually make the music not those tossers who call themselves creative managers or consultants, who rip everyone off just so’s they can waste another half a mill on yet another yacht because, well, you know, you’ve just got to have one in Marseilles and one in Cannes… What I have managed to do, though, is crack the method of reading the pedigree of various, seemingly unconnected performers and building up a family tree. I know, pitiful isn’t it?

AC/DC, as you know by now, are amongst my favourite bands. For energy, 4/4 timing, a backbeat that would prop a fire door open and good old heads-down rock ‘n’ roll they take some beating. What I wasn’t aware of was their direct lineage to the great, Russian composer, Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky. That’s stopped you in your tracks, huh?

The 1812 Overture was Tchaikovsky’s testimony to the bravery of the troops who defeated (in a roundabout way) the army of Napoleon at the Battle of Borodino in 1812 (although how a battle that caused at least 100,000 casualties can be called a victory by either side is beyond me). Written in 1880 to commemorate the anniversary of this famous victory, the overture he wrote (1812) called for cathedral type bells, live cannon fire and a large scale orchestra all playing in time and in unison, particularly with the cannon fire which is strictly laid out as part of the orchestration. So tight is this scheduling that no less than 16 cannon need to be used, the length of time required for re-loading not being taken into account by the selfish Tchaikovsky no doubt… Didn’t Charlie Drake do a skit on this overture where he appeared to be playing every instrument and conducting too? Gosh, there’s a name from the past; wasn’t he the sidekick of Jack Edwardes in a TV series… Mick and Montmerency wasn’t it? On the BBC? The orchestra film, I think, it won an award or summat at Cannes or Montreux and featured a triangle player who couldn’t count... Anyway, that’s all by the way; we were tracing the pedigree line from Tchaikovsky through to Angus Young. Right, well, exactly 101 years later AC/DC took another landmark event. That of taking ill-trained, ill-versed in the role of combat, Roman citizens to the slaughter by well-trained, combat-ready, highly skilled gladiators and updating the gentleman-slaughterers/slaughterees code of the time Ave, Ceaser, Morituri te Salutant turning it on its head to suit the modern times by revamping that title to read, Those About To Rock…didn’t Colosseum release an album called Morituri te Salutant back in 1969? Seem to remember they had a stellar line-up, Mr. Heckstall-Smith was one of them…and Dave Greenslade… OK, sorry, right, AC/DC.

The title track of the AC/DC album was used as an opener on some tours and became a kind of anthem, much like it had been used by the Romans but transcending time and outcome, becoming an anthem to the laying down of musical lives to the take-no-prisoners, heavy-metal genre that AC/DC were, at one time, the high priests of. The closing stanzas of that particular composition, which built on the chant-type slow build of the previous three minutes, also contained the repeated firing of cannons as part of its climax…wasn’t there an accident when the 1812 was being played in Italy a while ago? When the first trombonist thought he’d enter into the spirit of the fun by loading a medium-sized firecracker into the bell of his new trombone and then sealing it with his mute. I believe the idea was for him to launch this item high into the air at the appropriate moment in the cannon-firing, outdoor climax to the piece. Trouble was the firecracker went off before he could hoist the trombone to the required elevation, so the jammed-tight mute exploded out the front much like ma bullet does from a cartridge, passed between the seats of the French horn players and the viola section before hitting the conductor in the stomach. This thrust the conductor off the podium and into the audience where he destroyed the first twelve rows of seated gentry by causing a tsunami of folding chairs, all falling back onto the row behind and so on…a domino effect, if you will. At the other end of the action, the flash-back from the firecracker scorched the trombonists face and sent him twelve feet rearwards into the percussion section thereby destroying £12,000 worth of kettle drums and the reputation of brass-players for the next six generations.

So, there we have it the connection we’ve all been looking for.

Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky has a direct lineage to AC/DC by way of  writing the 1812 Overture and giving birth to Charlie Drake’s finest comedy piece via the novelty use of a trombone through to the timely interruption of Colosseum’s greatest work, the baton of which AC/DC picked up and ran with as the centrepiece of their album, Those About To Rock. See, once you see it all written down it makes perfect sense; glad to have been of service.