AC/DC released “Rock or Bust” as a digital single on November 17, 2014. Their second single from the album of the same name carried the familiar songwriting credit of Angus and Malcolm Young, but a changed guitar lineup. Stevie Young played rhythm guitar on Rock or Bust, the band’s first studio album recorded without Malcolm.
Malcolm had retired after developing dementia, leaving Angus to finish an album without his brother beside him. Stevie, their nephew, had already filled in for Malcolm on tour in 1988, but this was his first studio album with AC/DC. The sessions reunited the band with producer Brendan O’Brien and engineer and mixer Mike Fraser at the Warehouse Studio in Vancouver in spring 2014. Both had worked on the band’s previous studio album, 2008’s Black Ice.
The title song reached back into Angus’s stock of unfinished ideas. He told Rolling Stone he had worked on its riff “for years in different forms.” Across the album, he revisited material he and Malcolm had accumulated, drawing on ideas that had survived earlier writing sessions without making a finished record. All 11 songs retained the brothers’ shared credit. Malcolm’s absence from the performances didn’t erase his contribution to the material.
Brian Johnson also noticed a change in how Angus worked with the band. In the same interview, the singer described Angus asking his bandmates what they thought of his ideas, seeking the reassurance he previously would have found in conversations with Malcolm. Losing that daily exchange affected more than who stood behind the rhythm guitar.
For Stevie, the job involved preserving a very specific relationship between the guitar parts. Fraser told The Georgia Straight that Stevie’s hard attack and thick strings recalled Malcolm’s playing. The production kept Angus’s style on one side and the rhythm-guitar approach associated with Malcolm on the other. “Mal’s irreplaceable,” Fraser said, while crediting Stevie with handling the parts well.
The sessions moved quickly, although Johnson rejected reports that the entire album had been recorded in 10 days. He told Ultimate Classic Rock that getting the sound right alone took four or five days, with the studio stay lasting roughly four to four and a half weeks. Angus then continued working with O’Brien afterward, making further decisions about what belonged on the record.
Columbia sent “Rock or Bust” to rock radio and made it available with album preorders alongside “Play Ball.” Its official video followed on November 24, 2014. Directed by David Mallet and filmed in London that October, it surrounded the musicians with fans in a club setting. The same day, the full album began streaming through iTunes Radio’s First Play, giving listeners access to all 11 tracks before its December 2 U.S. release.
“Rock or Bust” opened the finished album and went on to reach No. 8 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart. A riff Angus had carried through years of revisions became a top 10 radio single for AC/DC’s changed lineup.
