Crabsody in Blue

Alright Zoo Freaks, the Crew just dropped the needle on a genuine oddball from the Australian copy of Let There Be Rock, the one most folks outside the old Alberts circuit never even knew existed. “Crabsody in Blue” is AC/DC stretching out into a slow, swinging blues while Bon Scott does what Bon did best: take something messy from real life and turn it into a joke you can dance to. The title is a wink at George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” and the punch line is sitting right there in the lyric. Bon is singing about crab lice, the kind that crawl around, walk sideways, and leave a man applying cream and booking a doctor’s appointment. Songfacts and the old Classic Rock specials have said it plain for years: this one sits next to “The Jack” as another of Bon’s road-worn reports from the hotel rooms and back alleys of the mid-seventies. He was not making it up. That was the life.

The American label could not stomach it. Atlantic pulled the track off the international edition and slotted in a shortened “Problem Child” from Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, the same album they had already turned down. Japan followed suit. Australia, Britain, and Europe kept the blues shuffle. Mark Evans, who was still on bass then, later called it a wonderfully swinging little Bon ditty, half “Ride On,” half “The Jack,” and at the time it felt downright anarchic. Thirty-odd years on some writers have called the humor strained. In 1977 it was just the band being the band. The Australian vinyl even used a different fade on “Go Down,” and the original Aussie sleeve was a double-image fretboard shot, not the live photo most of the world knows. Trivia hounds still argue over whose hand that is. One story floating around the old magazines says it belonged to Chris Turner of Buffalo, not even a member of AC/DC. That is the kind of detail the Zoo Crew lives for.

They cut the album fast at Albert Studios in Sydney in January 1977, two weeks of work with Harry Vanda and George Young behind the glass and Mark Opitz engineering. George wanted a rawer record after the American rejection of Dirty Deeds. Malcolm later said they were getting more serious, cutting out the commercial choruses and writing three strong live tracks they knew would last: “Whole Lotta Rosie,” “Bad Boy Boogie,” and the title song. “Let There Be Rock” itself nearly melted the room. Angus’s amp caught fire mid-take. George yelled from the control room to keep going. Angus has told that story more than once: Malcolm watching with crazed eyes, steam coming off the gear, nobody willing to stop a hot performance for a technical reason. Bon found the sermon in the title after buying a Bible near the studio. “Let there be sound, let there be light, let there be drums, let there be guitar.” Rock and roll as creation myth. The Sydney Sun still called the finished album a bore and it barely cracked the Australian Top 20. History had other plans.

Malcolm himself could be foggy about which songs sat on which records. In one long Classic Rock sit-down he admitted it had been so long he could not always remember. Remind him of Let There Be Rock and he would warm up: a steamer, he called it, with a few good songs. That is about as sentimental as Malcolm ever got on tape. The Young brothers were never much for speeches. They were built for the stage and the riff.

That stubborn streak started long before Alberts. Malcolm and Angus were Glasgow kids, last of a big family packed into a Cranhill tenement, then shipped to Sydney on the ten-pound ticket when Angus was eight and Malcolm ten. Music was already in the house. Big brother George had made it with the Easybeats. Sister Margaret spotted the letters AC/DC on her sewing machine and tossed the name at the boys. They shrugged and took it. Malcolm had been knocking around the club circuit and decided Australia needed a one-hundred-percent hard rock band. He pulled in drummer Colin Burgess, bassist Larry Van Kriedt, singer Dave Evans, and then asked his little brother to audition. Angus later said he was frightened. Malcolm said Angus was the player, the showman of the two of them since they were kids. First gig was New Year’s Eve 1973 at Chequers, a worn-out Sydney cabaret bar. Covers of Chuck Berry, Free, and the Stones, plus a handful of Malcolm originals. Sweat was the whole point. If they did not come offstage stuffed, it had not been worth it.

Dave Evans did not last. The brothers wanted something dirtier. In Adelaide in 1974 they met Ronald Belford Scott, Scottish-born like them, already a veteran of the Valentines and Fraternity, working as their driver after a motorcycle wreck. Bon hung around saying he was a drummer. One night the singer would not go on and Bon volunteered. Malcolm remembered him downing two bottles of bourbon with some extra chemical courage and announcing he was ready. Angus said Bon could barely speak English at first. It was all four-letter words. That was the flavor they needed. Bon molded the character of the band. Without him, Angus has said, you might have still had two Young brothers making noise, but it would not have been AC/DC.

By the time they walked into Alberts for Let There Be Rock the lineup was Angus, Malcolm, Bon, Mark Evans, and Phil Rudd. They had already been bounced off bills, watched by vice squads, and told they could not swear on stage. Bon would stand at the mic and list every word they had been forbidden, then grin. The bankbook did not grow, he liked to say, but the popularity did. “Crabsody in Blue” is that same spirit slowed down and soaked in blues. It is Bon laughing at the itch, the cream, the appointment, and the sideways walk. American radio never got the joke. The Zoo Freaks do.

If you want to follow the band the way the records intended, start at the official home, https://www.acdc.com/?referrer=thezoorock.com, and keep the same trail open on Facebook, Instagram, and X. The official shop even lists “Crabsody In Blue” on the Australian-style Let There Be Rock CD, so you know they have not forgotten the track. Long-running fan archivists at Highway To ACDC keep the Australian track listing posted in plain sight, Crabsody sitting right where it belongs between “Overdose” and “Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be,” and their companion page lives at Highway To ACDC on Facebook. When you want the station that still plays the deep cuts the labels once hid, you already know where to find us at THE ZOO. Keep it loud, keep it honest, and if the song makes you scratch, well, Bon already wrote the prescription.