Song of the Day 6/12: AC/DC, “Highway to Hell”

Yesterday’s I-95 fire and overpass collapse in Northeast Philadelphia quickly acquired a soundtrack. Somebody posted to social media a drive-by of the fire a few minutes before the collapse, black smoke billowing before they come upon the flames. I don’t think this was actually on their car radio, but some things are just too right not to be true.

“Highway to Hell” was the title track to the band’s 1979 LP. The highway that inspired the tune is in Perth, Australia. Malcolm Young summed up the song’s creation thus: “There were hundreds of riffs going down every day. But this one, we thought, ‘That’s good.’ It just stuck out like a dog’s balls.”

Here’s what it looked like when AC/DC performed it with their original frontman, Bon Scott, in 1979.