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Last updated on June 24th, 2017 at 10:43 am
Longtime reader Roger B., a foreigner, asks: “Where was this video shot?”
Monday, February 23, 1976 – Swanston Street Melbourne.
Posted by attilathepun on 2008 04 01 at 06:09 PM • permalink
Wiki:
The music video for “It’s A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll)” was filmed on February 23, 1976 for the Australian music television program Countdown. It featured the band’s then-current lineup, along with members of the Rats of Tobruk Pipe Band, on the back of a flat-bed truck traveling on Swanston Street in Melbourne, Australia. The Young brothers, Evans, Rudd and the Rats of Tobruk Pipe Band all appeared to play their instruments, while Scott sang and appeared to play bagpipes, as well. Known members of the Rats of Tobruk Pipe Band at the time of the video’s filming include: Alan Butterworth, Les Kenfield and Kevin Conlon. The video is dubbed with the studio track from the T.N.T. album.[2]
The video was directed by Paul Drane. David Olney was the cameraman.[3]
It’s on Aunty’s Long Way To The Top DVD Set, ‘course!
I was still in high school then. As is usual practise for naughty kids, we had a couple of alternate versions of this particular song.
One was, “it’s a long way, to the shop, if you want a sausage roll”.
The second, which was a favourite with the boys of course, “it’s a long way, to the Cross, if you wanna fuck a moll”.
aaah, memories. 🙂
Nowadays such videos would need to be shot in Adelaide.
And not during Earth Hour lest it sound like a pipes and drums concert only.
Posted by Nikki 2000 on 2008 04 01 at 06:39 PM • permalink
Melbourne is probably the only place in Oz where you do a right turn from the kerb lane. (See 1:19 into the clip).
Well, yes. That would be because of the tram, shown at 00:51s.
Posted by Nikki 2000 on 2008 04 01 at 06:41 PM • permalink
#6 – As Swanston street is now Swanston Street Walk for much of that section (i.e. no vehicles other than taxis buses and trams) it would be almost as easy I imagine.
Posted by attilathepun on 2008 04 01 at 06:57 PM • permalink
What a great accompaniment to my morning coffee and muffin. They’ve renamed a laneway—just off Flinders Lane to the right (I recall) as you head down the street—AC/DC Lane in honour of that clip.
Posted by Ben Haslem on 2008 04 01 at 07:08 PM • permalink
And if you play it backwards, it’s still Highway to Hell
Miss Gardner said: “‘On the Beach’ is a story about the end of the world, and Melbourne sure is the right place to film it.”
Though as usual, MSM made it up. The difference is that with the Internet, we know they do things like that now.
Sydneysiders will tell you that the only good thing to come out of Melbourne is the Hume Highway (the road to Sydney). And that the Melbourne night life is really active, but has 6 legs and scuttles.
Of course I live in Canberra, almost as interesting a place as Toledo, Ohio.
All through the day how the hours rush by, you sit in the park and you watch the grass die. Something like that, only more so.
14. One of the 2 songs/filmclips that burned into my memory as a young sprog watching coutdown. I used to hate the way “Gavin” would cut off the endings of songs with his crap all the time…
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2008 04 01 at 09:49 PM • permalink
- Fave (‘80) post Bon Scott, unfortunately, from the Back in Black album.
Anecdotally, on Aunty’s (Radio) Into The Music recently [about recording and reproducing bass frequencies] a sound engineer said he always used the Back in Black album to set-up for concerts, due to its neutral balance (unlike a lotta ‘canned’ Seppo music).
MAN, did Bon hate doing that stupid lip-synching. He had a look on his face like he’d been caught flogging the bishop by his mother. Also did you notice the way he held the, um, the way he had the, er, thingie from the bagpipes….this is a family blog, so I’ll just say he was trying to send a certain message.
I shall explain. 😉
I’m a Sydney girl so, all the locals would understand immediately of course.
The Cross, was and is, short for Kings Cross.
A haven for prostitutes and criminals. It was pretty much the only place to go if you were that way inclined.
As teenagers, my friends and I used to go there on Saturday nights and tease the raddled old tarts on the “really” cheap corners. Some of those poor old women were into their seventies! We never teased the youngish ones. Most of them could run! So could their pimps. We’d also scare any new boy in the group by leaving him with one of the old tarts. Scared the crap out of fifteen year old boys to see a toothless old crone with a jagged scarlet slash where her mouth is grab hold of the boy and tell him he can do anything he wants for five dollars. LOL!
We seemed to spend a lot of time running up and down the Oxford street.
Actually, I’m a Westie, what I’ve just described passed for entertainment when I was growing up.
- Posted by Mystery Meat on 2008 04 01 at 11:08 PM • permalink
- #25 egg__ #25
Which dude in the Marble Bar scene from yon?
Yeah that too mate. Egg__ you have an incredible memory!
I remember the scene like yesterday.An interesting life in advertising and in the movie/record industry.
I’d tell you which Bon Scott CD it was too, except that it would identify me.Just to really tee you off, I have a photo of me and John Michael Howson both staring goggle-eyed down the front of Jamie Leigh-Curtis’s dress. And me with Alfred Hitchcock even!
- #29 Pogria- I’m Aussie and not unfamilar with Kings Cross but your comment is a pretty good snapshot for o/s readers.
I remember going to a bucks night in a strip theatre-restaurant where we were all slavering away over the first girl to appear.
To some pretty naive 21 y.o’s, she was looking great, turned out she was to be the hostess for the night.
Then she finished her act, went up to the mike…and spoke with a voice as deep as the guy who did Darth Vader.
To describe the mood in the room as one of sudden and complete bewilderment is an understatement.
Swanston street is now Swanston Street Walk
Hah! It must be the only pedestrian mall in the world that pedestrians are scared to walk on. You’re always half expecting to be booked for jay-walking when you step on it. A really stupid idea from, I think, the Cain Labor government. Part of their hatred of the car I believe, since this was one of the biggest traffic routes through the city.
Great song though and wonderful to see the shots of the city in more laid back days.
- #31 Bonmot
Yeah, a decade of Master Control experience here, but not as close to the talent as that, hehe.
A colleague was very happy to be on-site for the publicity (uW) TV link with Halle Berry for Follow the Sun, which was shot in Oz, (I was on the receiving end); the site tech usually has the pleasure of fitting the babes’ undergarment mic cords …
As a small child, the first piece of music I remember liking was The Blue Danube, but the first rock/pop song I remember liking was T.N.T.
The director of the Long Way clip, Paul Drane, was also responsible for the landmark 1979 crypto documentary, The Prophecies of Nostradamus (rejiged in 1989 as Nostradamus: The Final Chapter) hosted by John Waters, the Australian actor not the Hairspray guy, and starring some guy called ‘Richard Butler’ as Nostradamus.
This TV special was quickly ‘remade’ by some Hollywood types as The Man Who Saw Tomorrow (1981), featuring a cash starved Orson Welles as host, and the opening credit, ‘Suggested by the Production “The Prophecies of Nostradamus,”’ despite the fact it featured more or less the same script and many of the original scenes.
Don’t you feel nostalgic for more innocent times when truthers were content with Moon Landing conspiracies and alien autopsies?
Beware the man with the blue turban.
#6 starts just before bourke. the really ugly building on the south-east corner used to house telecom before it became telstra & got all above itself. another feature was the tivoli arcade, the first gathering of hippie-shit stalls in the cbd, where the smell of patchouli & incense would kill a brown dog at 50 paces
the site tech usually has the pleasure of fitting the babes’ undergarment mic cords
How the bloody hell do you get a job like that!
I must say I had a one-off phenominal trip to LA back in 1989 – where I met quite a few notables – like George Peppard, Kirk Douglas, Walter Mattheu, Jackie Collins, Jamie Leigh, Janet Leigh, Michael Keaton, Tony Curtis (the Curtis’s were thick on the ground because at the time, I was Tony’s art representative in Oz). Oh and Anthony Quinn.
Wanna buy a Curtis?Back in my Greater Union days when I met Hitchcock, I also met Peter Finch, Jimmy Edwards and Henry Fonda, Jane Powell, Edward Everett-Horton (now there’s a star to conjure with), the original Dr. Who (forget his name,) who were all out here for promo tours. Unfortunately, the only one of that bunch I got a photo with was Hitchcock. That was around the time I got the bit part in Weird Mob.
I’d trade it all tho to mic up in the bosom area somebody like say, Charlize Theron or Beyonce!
#24
Another classic from same album
Stumbles out of door to work!
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 04 02 at 08:30 AM • permalink
Sorry, Wronwright, but it’s no use denying it… you’re just not the person to go travelling through time with… things just.. go wron.
Oh, that’s so unfair. You’ve only heard of the few, um, mishaps that have occurred. The many many successes don’t get publicized.
Besides, look at what I have to work with. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which ones are paco, Stoop Davy Dave (now known as Huck Foley or formerly Huck Foley or whatever), splice, MarkL, and me. It really doesn’t matter. They’re all trigger happy nincompoops with no comprehension of the concepts “subtlety” and “low profile”. Not to mention “no messing with the time line and take your hands off that priestess”.
Posted by wronwright on 2008 04 02 at 09:10 AM • permalink
That’s brilliant. In the late Seventie’s, the boyfriend of the time and I used go to a lot of Angel’s band nights. That was a terrific time for pubs and music. The Comb and Cutter at Blacktown was probably the best venue at the time. Saw Angel’s there many times. At that time, Angel’s were the highest paid pub band in Oz.
The best song for us headbangers at the time was “Am I ever Gonna See your Face Again?
After Doc sang that line, all of us there would yell back “No Way, Get Fucked, Fuck Off!!”.Damn, what a great time. We also used to smash Disco records at the Comb and Cutter that the DJ would throw out to us on the dance floor.
Is your mayor as dumb as Toledo’s? Then I DO feel your pain in Canberra….
Posted by Tex Lovera on 2008 04 02 at 03:12 PM • permalink
Last time I saw the Doctor was about 1992 at the Alice Springs basketball “stadium” which was a very big, fully enclosed tin shed. Loud ? you have no idea how loud, but a couple of ciggie butts in each ear fixed it.
Fortunately at the Todd tavern in those days on Monday nights they had a sort of amateur night, where backpackers etc could get up on stage and have a bit of a thrash and grunt. The room held about 200 at a crush. Mostly awful, but sometimes surprisingly excellent. A group of us, in a shocking state of disrepair noticed a few bars of “we gotta git out” and then recognised who had snuck on stage. Beers sculled, rush to the front and jump and scream yer guts out. They played three songs. Two Angels gigs in one week. In the Alice. Glutonny. And loving it.
Wow! that was a real spot of luck!! Good on ya.
The mid Seventies, to the early Eighties was a great time for Aussie Bands. And an even better time for us, the people who went to pubs to hear great music.
You know, don’t you, that U2’s Edge took his stage persona from the guitarist in the Angels?
He would just stay in the one spot on the stage throughout the whole set, the only movement was his hands playing the guitar, dressed always in a black t-shirt and black jeans.
I saw the Chisels, Dragon, Rose Tattoo, The Sports, Christ! I can’t remember them all!
My one regret, bandwise, was never having the opportunity to see ACDC live. *sigh*
Dirty Deeds.Dirty Deeds
Melbourne is probably the only place in Oz where you do a right turn from the kerb lane. (See 1:19 into the clip).