"It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)" is a song by Australian hard rock band AC/DC. It is the first track of the group's album T.N.T., released in December 1975, and was written by Angus Young, Malcolm Young and Bon Scott. Musically, the song is notable for combining bagpipes with hard rock guitars, drums, and bass guitar; in the mid-part of the song there is a duet between the bagpipes and the electric guitar. It is composed in B-flat major.
A slightly shorter version of the song is also the first track on the international version of High Voltage, released in May 1976. This is on the original release and the 2003 remastered CD release of the album only. Other CD releases have the full version.
This song is also on the Volts CD of the Bonfire box set, released in 1997.
This was a signature song for Scott, who also played the side drum in Coastal Scottish Pipe Band WA in the 1960s. Current AC/DC lead vocalist Brian Johnson does not perform it, out of respect for his predecessor.
Read more about It's A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll): Lyrics, Personnel, Production, Music Video, Popularity, Connection To ACDC Lane, Recorded Cover Versions
Famous quotes containing the words long, top, wanna and/or rock:
“As long as male behavior is taken to be the norm, there can be no serious questioning of male traits and behavior. A norm is by definition a standard for judging; it is not itself subject to judgment.”
—Myriam Miedzian, U.S. author. Boys Will Be Boys, ch. 1 (1991)
“The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower.”
—Robert M. Pirsig (b. 1928)
“And you’re too fired up to go to sleep, you sit at the kitchen table. It’s really late, it’s really quiet, you’re tired. Don’t wanna go to bed, though. Going to bed means this was the day. This Feb. 12, this Aug. 3, this Nov. 20 is over and you’re tired and you made some money but it didn’t happen, nothing happened. You got through it and a whole day of your life is over. And all it is—is time to go to bed.”
—Claudia Shear, U.S. author. New York Times, p. A21 (September 29, 1993)
“So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can’t even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and, vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.”
—Russell Baker (b. 1925)