YEAR
2003
INDUCTED BY
Steven Tyler (Aerosmith)
CATEGORY
Performers
Consistency, thy name is AC/DC.
Since 1975, the Australian band have churned out album after album full of scorched-earth, metallic hard rock which has rarely deviated from a template of headbanging-inducing guitar riffs, flashy drums and banshee-yell vocals. In the process, AC/DC have carved out a niche somewhere between hard rock and heavy metal that’s been an inspiration to aspiring musicians—and given us crank-up-the-volume radio staples “Back In Black,” “Highway to Hell” and “You Shook Me All Night Long.”
Phil Rudd
Angus Young
Bon Scott
Brian Johnson
Cliff Williams
Malcolm Young
HALL OF FAME
ESSAY
By Brad Tolinski
Some say that rock & roll is dirty, that it’s the devil’s music. The members of AC/DC might add, “only if it’s done right.”
For close to thirty years, these Australian hard-rock hooligans have been spreading their gospel of cigarette smoke, drunken debauchery and power chords with such skill and exuberance that one enraptured critic was moved to proclaim them “the Coleridges of cock rock, the Tennysons of testosterone, the Shakespeares of salacious, schoolboy smut.”
While AC/DC might be surprised to find themselves in such rarefied company, the composers of “Big Balls,” “Hard as a Rock” and “Let Me Put My Love Into You” clearly understand as well as anyone the primal truths that lie at the heart of great poetry.
