"Who Made Who" is a song and a single by the Australian hard rock band AC/DC, taken from their 1986 album, Who Made Who. The 12-inch single format of the single features an extended mix of the song and can be found in the Deluxe Edition of AC/DC's Backtracks Boxset, on Disc 1, Studio Rarities. It was one of only three new tracks on Who Made Who, because the album is not only a soundtrack to Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive, but a compilation album featuring tracks from previous albums. The other two new tracks were instrumentals.
In the video to this song, directed by David Mallet, fans and radio contest winners were dressed like Angus Young, and carried red cardboard guitars similar to Angus's Gibson SG. The video's plot features scientists replicating Angus by means of science fiction technology; the lookalikes are shown en masse, marching in time to the song and raising their heads to chant the title phrase along with the chorus. A photo of Angus standing amid a group of his counterparts can be found inside the 2003 Digipak release of Who Made Who. A couple of AC/DC shows had some look alike Anguses on the stage with them. One show was at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale New York, six to be exact.
In addition to the song itself, "Who Made Who" has also been played live, mostly throughout the subsequent world tour and the Blow Up Your Video World Tour. It was also played live with replacement drummer Chris Slade throughout The Razors Edge World Tour, and with drummer Phil Rudd (who returned to the band in 1994 after being fired from the group 11 years prior) for only one gig at the opening night of the Ballbreaker World Tour in Greensboro, North Carolina, after which the song was dropped and has not been played live since. A live version was released on the 1992 album AC/DC Live.
Maximum Overdrive is a 1986 American action-disaster-horror-science fiction film written and directed by novelist Stephen King. The film starred Emilio Estevez, Pat Hingle, Laura Harrington and Yeardley Smith. The screenplay was inspired by and loosely based on King's short story, Trucks, which was included in King's first collection of short stories, Night Shift.
Maximum Overdrive is Stephen King's only directorial effort, though dozens of films have been based on King's novels. The film contained black humor elements and a generally camp tone, which contrasts with King's sombre subject matter in books. The film has a mid-1980s hard rock soundtrack composed entirely by the group AC/DC, Stephen King's favorite band. AC/DC's album, Who Made Who, was released as the Maximum Overdrive soundtrack. It includes the best-selling singles "Who Made Who", "You Shook Me All Night Long", and "Hells Bells".
Holy cow, I thought I knew everything about AC/DC. I liked the movie Maximum Overdrive. You can say what you want about it, but it beats the shit out of any chick flick. Sometimes I forget how much things have changed since the '80's. There are a lot of cab-overs in that video. You'd be hard pressed to find one on the road today.
ReplyDeleteThanks for doing a piece on the greatest band ever.
I think I missed the movie, but I DO remember the band... LOL
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