Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap at 50: The AC/DC Album Atlantic US Refused to Release

Out in Australia on 20 September 1976, turned down by Atlantic’s American office, and finally in US shops in March 1981, thirteen months after Bon Scott died. It went to number 3.

The record that took five years to cross the Pacific

Fifty years ago this weekend, AC/DC put out their third Australian album on Albert Productions. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap was produced by Harry Vanda and George Young, the older brother of Malcolm and Angus, and it was made in a hurry. Malcolm Young later told the story plainly: “We didn’t have much time to do that album… All we did was go straight into the studio,” fresh off the High Voltage tour (Parade, via Yahoo).

Even the title was grabbed on the fly. According to Malcolm, Angus took it from Dishonest John, a cartoon villain in Beany and Cecil (Parade). For a band still on the way up, with a title borrowed from a children’s cartoon crook and a session squeezed in straight after a tour, nothing suggested a future seven-times-platinum record. In the United States it nearly became nothing at all.

What Atlantic’s American office actually said

The international version came out on 17 December 1976 (Wikipedia). Atlantic’s US arm listened and passed. Phil Carson, the Atlantic UK executive who had signed the band, remembered the verdict word for word: “The Atlantic A&R department [in the US] said, ‘We’re sorry, but this album actually doesn’t make it’” (Wikipedia).

The complaint, as it comes down to us, was about the vocal and the production. With fifty years of hindsight, the odd part is that the American label’s problem with AC/DC in 1976 was Bon Scott’s voice. Bassist Mark Evans has said manager Michael Browning believed Bon was going to be fired over it (Wikipedia).

It went further than shelving one album. Carson said the US office signalled the band would be dropped. What saved them was a spreadsheet, more or less: Carson took the sales numbers for High Voltage to Nesuhi Ertegun, who backed him, and the band was re-signed (Wikipedia). The album itself stayed on the shelf.

In late 1976, then, a record company had AC/DC under contract, had a finished album in hand, and chose to keep it away from the biggest market in the world because they didn’t like the singer.

Two different albums with the same name

The Australian version and the international version do not carry the same songs, which still trips people up in record shops.

The Australian pressing has “Jailbreak” and “R.I.P. (Rock in Peace).” The international edition, the one that eventually reached the US, swaps those out for “Rocker” and “Love at First Feel” (Wikipedia; official store tracklist).

Which means the album Atlantic US rejected in 1976 was not quite the album Australia had been playing since September. And the album that finally hit American shops in 1981 was the international one. If you grew up in Sydney and in Cleveland, you have two overlapping memories of “the same record.”

March 1981: a new album by a singer who was gone

Bon Scott died on 19 February 1980 (Wikipedia). By the time Atlantic US changed its mind and released Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap in March 1981, Brian Johnson was the band’s singer.

An American buyer that spring was holding a brand-new AC/DC release with five-year-old recordings inside, sung by a man who had been dead for over a year. It peaked at number 3 on the Billboard 200 (Wikipedia; Parade).

Later that same year the band released For Those About to Rock, a proper new album with Brian Johnson at the front. The reissue of the rejected Bon Scott album outsold it (Wikipedia). Carson called the original rejection “one of the most crass decisions ever made by a record-company executive” (Wikipedia), and the sales sheet agrees with him.

The RIAA has since certified it seven times platinum, seven million copies in the US, which makes it the band’s third best-selling album there (Wikipedia). Only two other records in the AC/DC catalogue have sold more in America, and this is the one the US label said “doesn’t make it.”

America met Bon Scott in reverse

The delay explains something about how AC/DC is remembered in the US compared with everywhere else.

Australians heard Bon in order. High Voltage, then T.N.T., then this, then whatever came next, a singer developing in front of them year by year. American listeners got the story shuffled. Many of them met the band with Brian Johnson singing, then got handed a “new” Bon Scott record in 1981, then went backwards from there. The 1976 album landed in the US as a posthumous release, sitting in the same racks as the records made after his death.

That has consequences for how the songs get heard. “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” the song sits at 400 million Spotify streams and the album above 600 million as of February 2026 (Parade). A big chunk of the world knows it as an eighties American hit. It is a 1976 Australian record. Both are true, and the gap between them is one A&R meeting.

One caution for anyone reading up on this anniversary: the Parade piece linked above states that Bon died in 1979. He died on 19 February 1980. The mistake matters here, because the whole point of the 1981 story is the thirteen months between his death and the American release.

Fifty years, gold vinyl, and a crowded birthday

The band’s own store is marking the date with an official 50th anniversary pressing on gold vinyl through Legacy Recordings, listed at £29.99 (shop.acdc.com; Legacy Recordings). It carries the international tracklist, so “Rocker” and “Love at First Feel” are on it, and the Australian “Jailbreak” is elsewhere.

It is a busy year for fiftieths. Parade points out that 2026 also marks half a century of Frampton Comes Alive, Hotel California and the Blondie debut (Parade). Of the four, this is the only one whose US release date is five years off from its actual birthday, and the only one a major label sat on because of the singer’s voice.

The thread to pull next

What Atlantic’s US office put out in 1977 instead was Let There Be Rock: Atco, US release 25 July 1977, two-times platinum today (Wikipedia). The album they shelved is seven-times platinum. The people who made that call are the same people who thought Bon Scott’s vocal was the problem.

If you were buying AC/DC records in the US in 1981, was Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap the first Bon Scott album you owned, or had the imports already reached you? Tell us at @realrocklab on Threads or X. We are trying to work out how many American fans genuinely heard this band backwards.

Sources: Wikipedia: Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap · Parade via Yahoo · shop.acdc.com, 50th anniversary edition · Legacy Recordings