Gone Shootin'

"Gone Shootin'" is the 3rd track on side 2 of AC/DC's 1978 "Powerage" album; it's 5 minutes and 18 seconds long, and it is notable on this particular record for how "un-heavy" it is in comparison to the entirety of the rest of the record. I wrote that line from memory -- and I say that not to prove my prowess, but to express the depth of this song on my psyche as a material fact amongst the rock and roll debris that remains littered there.

"Gone Shootin'" is notable for not only its "un-heaviness'; but for its subject matter. I'm not going to look up or quote the lyrics. I don't even know what they are, and I don't actually care what they are - since they are there to suggest. What I note is what I heard on my walkman, 30 years ago, at 10 years old:

bon scott's talking about something that he doesn't want to talk about. he's tired, he's sad, it's late, the lights are too bright for the time of night. he likes the music behind him. the music behind him is holding him up to be as sad as he is.

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Quick aside to which I will repeatedly return -- lyrics are not important in songs, just like actors are not important in movies.

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When you are a kid, you don't think anything of being sad. You are sad when something sad happens.

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If you know AC/DC -- and you most probably do, but you might not -- you know them in a particular way. Like all successful rock and roll bands, they have an image that they both inhabit (images are real) and exploit (images are fake). They always looked old, even when they were young; they always looked dirty, even when they were clean; they always looked poor, even after they became rich. Lead guitarist Angus Young has always proffered his love of the King of the Golden Age of Jazz - trumpeter Louis Armstrong; yet he plays the simplest, white knuckle-est rock that a man can play (this point is certainly up for debate, but it is nonetheless valid in service of my argument). What to make of all of this? Are they just a bunch of liars and thieves? And, if they are, how do we make meaningful sense of this ruse when we listen to them?

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"Authenticity", as a measurement of "truth" or expressed as a redeeming quality in art is certainly overrated, but it is also equally untouchable. How do you know someone means what they sing, they play, they write? How could they not mean it? Does a gambler "mean" to "win" when s/he "loses"? Does Anthony Braxton, "jazz artist" only eat "jazz hamburgers"?

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What I always thought about "Gone Shootin'" was that there was a soul on the line. Now, I can't honestly speak about the soul, and certainly, if I could, I would be breaking all kinds of sacred laws by doing so in speaking about the soul whilst talking about rock'n'roll -- but nonetheless, I always thought this song sounded like a train passing slowly in the dark against an even darker distant mountain range set against the horizon. And on that train, a man, with the light over his head to signify him being awake and alert enough to look out the window, looks out the window into the dark, for someone who has left, gone, to shoot something unknown with an unknown shotgun.