Highway to Hell

Atlantic wanted a producer who could give the band a radio sound, and George Young and Harry Vanda, who had produced every AC/DC album since High Voltage, were replaced. Malcolm told Radio 2JJ in Sydney that the band had been virtually forced to use an outside producer. At a meeting at Atlantic's New York headquarters in January 1979, manager Michael Browning refused to drop Scott as singer. The label's Michael Kleffner then went to Sydney to tell George Young to step aside, and George grudgingly agreed.

The first producer was Eddie Kramer, who had worked with Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Kiss. The sessions went badly, and Malcolm said Kramer was "a bit of a prat". Scott told Rock Australia Magazine in 1979 that after three weeks they had written nothing with Kramer, so on a Saturday they put down six songs themselves and sent the tape to Lange. Lange was then known for the Boomtown Rats' number one "Rat Trap".

Recording

Tracking began on Saturday 24 March 1979 at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm and finished three weeks later, on 14 April. The band worked about fifteen hours a day, which was a culture shock after earlier albums made in about three weeks each. Lange, a trained singer, showed Scott how to breathe on songs such as Touch Too Much and added backing vocals himself, standing on the other side of the studio because his voice was so distinctive. Melodic backing vocals were new to the band's sound.

Tour manager Ian Jeffery remembered Scott bristling when Lange told him to coordinate his breathing. Scott told him to do it himself, and Lange did, without standing up. Lange also sat next to Angus and pointed to notes on the fretboard, and those notes were the solo from the title track. Mark Dearnley recorded the album, and Tony Platt mixed it at Basing Street Studios in London.

Atlantic disliked the title, and Angus told Guitar World that it described what touring was like for the band. Lyrics deal mostly with lust, sex and partying.

Reception

It was the band's first album to break the top 100 of the Billboard 200, peaking at 17, and it reached number eight in the United Kingdom. In the United States it was certified 8x Platinum in July 2024. Greg Kot of Rolling Stone wrote that the choruses were "fattened by rugby-team harmonies". David Fricke, in a 2008 Rolling Stone cover story, said Lange had sculpted the band's rough-granite rock into chart-smart boogie. Rolling Stone placed it at number 199 on its 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums.