The rock of AC/DC still electric after all these years

Just in time for the 41st anniversary of "High Voltage" later this month, AC/DC is back on the road. After kicking off the latest leg of its "Rock or Bust" tour earlier this week at the Tacoma Dome in Washington, the band returns to Las Vegas for another show at the MGM Grand Garden.

The outfit has covered quite a bit of ground since the last time it was here in 2010, including reconvening last year at Coachella for its first show in a half-dozen years, followed by a world tour that was the second-highest earner of the year, selling 2.3 million tickets and grossing $180 million, just behind Taylor Swift, who earned $250 million.

Think about that for a minute: An unassuming rock band that hasn't updated its sound or image in more than four decades not only keeping pace with the hottest pop star on the planet, but besting a bevy of ballyhooed acts, popsters such as One Direction, Ed Sheeran and Maroon 5, heritage acts such as U2, the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney and country artists such as Garth Brooks, Kenny Chesney and Luke Bryan.

"We just wanted to be a good rock 'n' roll band, you know, and that's it, the simplicity of it. That's all we can do. Stick to what you do best. That's what we do best," guitarist Malcolm Young said in the group's "Behind the Music" episode on VH1 in 2000. "We feel we're timeless. Trends come and go. We're still running through the trends. Sometimes we may do really well. Sometimes maybe not so well. But we won't ever change."

Indeed. The only real change AC/DC has seen over the years has been to the lineup, including, most recently, the guitar great himself, whose spot is now being filled by his nephew Stevie Young. The 63-year-old founder, who took some time away from the band briefly back in the late '80s, was diagnosed with dementia and ended up leaving the group for good in September 2014. As he did before, Stevie stepped in to help make sure the rock doesn't stop.

Clearly, this badass quintet has had quite an admirable career. There's a reason these guys are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Before the legends perform in Las Vegas this weekend, here's a look back at a few highlights from their career, along with some interesting tidbits about the band.

A BEDEVILED EXISTENCE DURING THE REAGAN-ERA

Not only has the band withstood countless trends over the years, but it has also survived some tumultuous times in the press, particularly in the '80s. From a tragic January 1981 show in Salt Lake City, in which fans were trampled and the promoters reportedly pushed the band to play on, to being linked to the late Richard Ramirez, the so-called Night Stalker, whose horrific crimes were reportedly inspired by the band's song "Night Prowler," to being targeted by The Parents Music Resource Center, led by Tipper Gore, the outfit was criticized, demonized and sensationalized throughout the Reagan era.

During a segment on "Evil Music" produced by Los Angeles' ABC7 Eyewitness News shortly after Ramirez was captured, reporter Larry Carroll noted that an AC/DC ballcap was found at one of the crime scenes. "The crime is the walk-in killings. The suspect: Richard Ramirez. The question is: Did the band AC/DC drive him on a personal highway to hell?" he says in the vintage clip posted on YouTube. "The band's fans seem somewhat bedeviled by all the fuss," Carroll added, interviewing a fan who said, "Well, I'm not into the devil or nothing. I think they're just a good rock 'n' roll band. They groove."

Sam Sutherland of Billboard Magazine shot down the satanist angle later in the report. "That band is about as tongue-through-cheek as you get. It is very hard for me, for example, to swallow the widely printed assertion that their very name is some form of anagram for 'Anti-Christ,' " said Sutherland, noting the misnomer and how the name actually came from an imprint on the side of a sewing machine.

TALK IS CHEAP — WELL, UNLESS IT'S DIRTY, THEN IT MIGHT COST YOU

During that same era, AC/DC also inspired a number of lawsuits, including one from a couple in Illinois who sued the band's record company for $250,000, alleging that the phone number mentioned in the act's song "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" was very similar to theirs. As a result, the family was forced to field a flurry of phone calls from fans. "I'm just a normal person — at least I'm trying to be," an October 1981 write-up in the Chicago Tribune quotes Marilyn White as saying. "It's been like a nightmare with these phone calls at all hours." According to the paper, the couple's lawyer had asked the court to compel radio stations to stop playing the song or have the band re-record the song.

BACK IN BLACK? WAS AC/DC EVER IN THE RED?

From selling more than 200 million albums to selling out tour after tour, AC/DC is one of the most successful bands of all time, and its music is apparently catnip to creative directors. Throughout the years, the Australian act's songs have appeared in countless clips, everything from promos for various sporting events — TNT used "T.N.T." for its NASCAR series and TBS used "Play Ball" to tout its postseason baseball coverage — to pushing various products, with a cavalcade of companies such as Beats, Chevy, Wal-Mart, Visa, Nike and Microsoft cashing in on the act's cachet, licensing tunes such as "Back in Black."

HAVE A DRINK ON ME — NO, REALLY, TAKE MINE

Despite providing the soundtrack to sordid nights of drunken debauchery for generations of fans over the past four decades, Angus Young isn't actually known to imbibe himself. "The one day we got blasted with Angus was when Malcolm's daughter was born," frontman Brian Johnson told Jon Wiederhorn and Katherine Turman for their 2013 book "Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal." "He got a bottle of Jack Daniel's and he went, 'Aw f-----g great, mate.' And he drank. And he was put on somebody's shoulders and taken to bed. It was the first (and) last drink I ever saw him take, poor sod."

A TIMELESS BRAND OF CLASSIC ROCK

Finally, here's something we didn't know — and this despite being lifelong fans and owning countless pieces of merchandise over the years with the insignia emblazoned on them — AC/DC's logo was based on the album treatment by a man named Gerard Huerta, who was paid a standard commission for his "Let There Be Rock" design, the lettering of which has become one of the most iconic and recognizable brands in all of rock 'n' roll. Huerta, a Southern California-bred artist who has also created designs for acts such as Boston, Ted Nugent and Blue Oyster Cult and worked with HBO and Pepsi, was reportedly inspired to generate the font from letters in the Gutenberg Bible. "I had done this Gutenberg-inspired lettering, and when it became time to do the lettering for AC/DC, I used the Gutenberg with a twist," he told Smashing Interviews Magazine a few years ago. "It's orange, it's got bevels, and there are all straight lines. There are no curves. It's very sharp. That just became the lettering for that album. In time, they picked that up as their look."

LET THERE BE ROCK

Although the outfit doesn't appear to be playing it on this tour, if Setlist.FM is to be believed, "The Jack," which last made an appearance during the first weekend of Coachella, is the song that AC/DC has performed the most over the years, clocking in at more than 1,700 plays, followed by "Whole Lotta Rosie," "T.N.T.," "Let There Be Rock," "Highway to Hell," "Back in Black," "Hells Bells," "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap," "Shoot to Thrill," and "You Shook Me All Night Long." Since all of those tunes were played Tuesday night in Tacoma, it's a safe bet you'll hear them all at the MGM on Friday. Perhaps not coincidentally, all of those tracks, with the exception of the first one, are listed among the top 10 most listened to on Spotify.

— Read more from Dave Herrera at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at dherrera@reviewjournal.com and follow @rjmusicdh on Twitter.