AC/DC have released a vintage live video of “Whole Lotta Rosie” in celebration of the 40th anniversary of Highway to Hell. Shot for the Dutch TV show Countdown in 1979, the clip follows the recent release of live versions of “Highway to Hell” and “The Jack.”
The video features late lead singer Bon Scott shirtless and screaming lines that would deem inappropriate today, like “She ain’t exactly pretty/ Ain’t exactly small/ Fourt’two thirt’ninefiftysix/ You could say she’s got it all.” Malcolm Young, who once said the band was trying to go for “a feel like Little Richard, a good old steamin’ rock feel” with the song, shreds next to Scott, also with no shirt in sight.
Released off 1977’s Let There Be Rock, “Whole Lotta Rosie” tells the scuzzy story of the time Scott had a sexual encounter with an Aussie groupie he described as a Tasmanian devil. “We were all staying in the same hotel and this chick Rosie lived across the road,” Scott famously recalled on the live album Bonfire. “She was so big she sort of closed the door and put it on ya’, half your body, and she was too big to say no to…That girl was some mountain. So you can imagine the problems I had. So I just sorta had to succumb…I had to do it. Oh my God, I wish I hadn’t.”
AC/DC’s future has been the source of much speculation in recent months. Photographs of them outside of Vancouver’s Warehouse Studio (where they recorded their last three albums) strongly suggest they are working on a new album and that lead singer Brian Johnson, drummer Phil Rudd and bassist Cliff Williams are back in the group, but group has yet to publicly comment on any of this.