The front of AC/DC’s 1977 tour book featuring both Bon Scott and Angus Young’s crotches. The program, signed by the band, and for some reason multiple times by Bon Scott, sold in an auction for $5,000.
 
AC/DC’s second album T.N.T. is pretty much the perfect rock record from start to finish—bagpipes and all. One song on the album, “The Jack,” was reworked lyrically after getting the thumbs down because it was considered too lurid. You don’t say? A song about contracting a sexually transmitted disease is tastelessness personified and expecting anything else from a song covering such a topic seems kinda misguided if you ask me. In an interview with Angus Young in 1998, the guitarist spoke about their lyrics and how with the help of Bon Scott, they would tweak them to avoid being labeled “sexist”:

“Bon was an extremely gifted lyricist. Did he often fine-tune and rework lyrics? It’s difficult to be simultaneously clever and smutty, which was his trademark. I don’t think that “smutty” is exactly the right choice of words. I believe that the politically correct term is “sexist.” Intellectuals like to put a tag on it and say, “these guys are out-and-out sexist.“I’ve always found there’s a two-sided thing when it comes to lyrics: someone can call a song “Sexy Motherfucker,” and be accepted, and yet we’ve been writing all songs all these years, and while there may be the rare “fuck” in the lyrics there somewhere, it’s all been quite clean cut. Still, people just make the assumption that we’re five guys who’ve just got our dicks in mind.”

While I was under the distinct impression pretty much every song has “dicks in mind,” of all the Prince songs to call out for its content, why 1992’s “Sexy MF”? I can’t be the only one who can think of at least five other Prince songs far smuttier than this one but regardless, the iconic Angus makes a good point. The original version of “The Jack” did not appear on T.N.T. (released in Australia in 1975) or 1976’s High Voltage, but it did not stop the band from performing it in all its raunchy glory live. Bon would begin “The Jack” by dramatically asking the crowd if they had ever had “gonorrhea.” In the case of the recording in this post (which is over ten minutes long), Bon eggs the audience on by asking a spotlight be turned on them so he could see who else in the crowd had “the jack” which is Aussie slang used to describe a venereal disease. Through the years there have been several versions about who in the band actually got the jack and how. The general perception is that the song, conceived mostly by Scott, was the vocalist’s autobiographical account of acquiring the jack from one of his female fuck partners. However, in one account attributed to Bon, he confesses it was he who gave the jack to one of the chicks hanging around the band’s house. Scott said he wasn’t worried about the girl spreading it around because she was unattractive. Now there’s some rock star logic for you.

But Bon turned out to be wrong.

After having sex with Scott, she stopped by drummer Phil Rudd’s room for a quickie before leaving. A short time later Rudd got a letter from the girl which included a 35 dollar doctor’s bill to cover her penicillin treatment. Scott has also presented other scenarios about the inspiration for the song, including one in which he confessed every member of AC/DC was at one point passing around the penicillin after also passing around the same female sexual partners. 
 

Another page from the 1977 tour program.
 
In the 2006 book AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll, it is noted Bon wrote “The Jack” after guitarist Malcolm Young received a letter from a woman claiming Young had given her gonorrhea, but he allegedly received a clean crotch bill of health from the band’s doctor who at this point (according to Angus) was giving the band “group rates” due to their frequent office visits. Lastly, there is also another version of AC/DC’s gonorrhea woes in which Bon recounts a show where all their collective (and seemingly interchangeable) girlfriends were up in the front row, so Scott decided to point them out one by one every time he sang the lyrics “She’s got the jack.” What a charmer. 

This version of AC/DC’s dirty confessional was fittingly recorded in the band’s birthplace of Sydney, Australia. The band would continue to keep the “GONORRHEA!” version of the song a part of their setlist until Bon passed away in February of 1980. Audio of Bon oversharing while performing the original version of “The Jack” in 1977 follows.  
 

The original NSFW version of “The Jack” recorded in Sydney in 1977.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Glamtastic footage of AC/DC *before* Bon Scott
Raw footage of AC/DC killing it at an Australian high school 40 years ago (& Bon Scott’s bagpipes!)
The story of the real ‘Whole Lotta Rosie’: Bon Scott’s real-life obsession with bodacious women
AC/DC vocalist Brian Johnson’s balls out metal vocals for a Hoover vacuum commercial in 1980
Heavy Metal Parking Lot: Photos of AC/DC hanging with a bunch of teenage super-fans in 1979