The Jack And Jailbreak ACDC

The Jack Album: High Voltage (1976)
Jailbreak Album: '74 Jailbreak (1984)
by AC/DC

"The Jack" is Australian slang for Gonorrhea, which is also known as "The Clap." AC/DC lead singer Bon Scott explained the origin of the song in a 1976 interview with Sounds. Said Scott: "We were living with this houseful of ladies who were all very friendly and everyone in the band had got the jack. So we wrote this song and the first time we did it on stage they were all in the front row with no idea what was goin' to happen. When it came to repeatin' 'She's got the jack' I pointed at them one after another." Added guitarist Angus Young: "After that, wherever we did the song the girls in the audience would run to the back of the hall."

Bon Scott was known for his outrageous behavior both on and off stage. He told this story in the same Sounds interview: "One time I had the jack and this girl wanted f--kin' and she was so ugly I figured, s--t! Nobody else would have her so she wouldn't spread it. But when we'd finished she went next door to Phil (Rudd, their drummer) and gave it to him. And a few weeks later she sent him a doctor's bill for 35 dollars for the cure. Well, next time she came to a show I got her up on stage in the middle of 'The Jack' and explained how she'd got it wrong and it was me owed her the money." On mike that was.

The Jack was released in Australia in 1975 on AC/DC's second album, T.N.T. Their first two Australian releases were combined to form High Voltage in 1976, which was their first album released worldwide.

In concert, Bon Scott would sometimes share with the crowd a more direct set of lyrics than the one on the recording of The Jack. He also did a bit where he would introduce the song by singing (to the tune of "Maria" from West Side Story):

AC/DC played The Jack before a crowd of 500,000 at show in Toronto in 2003. The concert, which also featured The Rolling Stones, Rush, and others, was a benefit for the city, which suffered a drop in tourism due to the spread of a rare disease called SARS (Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome). AC/DC had no problem singing about one disease at a benefit for another, and the fans didn't mind either.

Thank you, thank you, thank you people, thank you, thank you
I'm glad you like the show, yes, thank you very much folks.
Goodnight and God bless!

Jailbreak is about Mark Brandon Reid, also known as "Chopper." He was sent to jail for murdering a gang leader and he got sentenced to 16 years. Three years into his sentence Chopper became disillusioned with jail life and hated working for the "screws." His friend and crime partner Jimmy Loughnan planned an escape, but because of Jimmy's fear of tight spaces, they were caught and given solitary for two weeks. Bon Scott read about this in a newspaper and started writing lyrics for a song. Everyone in AC/DC loved the idea of a criminal-themed song, and they finished it in about a week.

AC/DC made a reasonably high-end performance video for Jailbreak, complete with the boys playing on a bunch of rocks as various explosions go on around them.

On February 19th, 1980, the body of Bon Scott, lead singer of the Australian hard rock band AC/DC, was found in his car having asphyxiated on his own vomit after a night of drinking. Nothing seemed particularly off the night previous. A mate of his, Alistair Kinnear, was driving him home when he noticed Scott had fallen asleep, not surprising since they had been drinking. So, he called Silver Smith and they lowered the seat so that Scott could sleep on his back. In the morning, Kinnear found Scott still asleep, brought him to the hospital in a panic, and learned he was already dead shortly after.

By this point, Scott had been with AC/DC for six years and the band was rising ever higher. Their sixth album, Highway to Hell, had just broken the US Top 100, a first for the band. A successful promotional tour had just ended and Malcolm and Angus Young were just beginning to play around with songs for the next album. Scott was supposed to start singing the next day.

Scottish Brothers Malcolm and Angus Young might be larger-than-life, but in person, it's a bit of a different story. Older brother Malcolm is the taller of the two, at only 5-foot-3. Angus stands all of 5-foot-2.

One suspects Bonn Scott was murdered prior to the production of Maximum Overdrive and that the direction Scott wanted to go was perhaps somewhat different than the record company wanted. What Tavistock wants, Tavistock gets. Scottish Brothers indeed...