After five years of relative silence, hard rock mainstays AC/DC return in suitably loud fashion this week, and they're making as much noise as possible to celebrate their new album. With Tuesday's arrival of "Stiff Upper Lip," AC/DC delivers its first studio album since 1995's "Ballbreaker," and the band has embarked on an ambitious promotional campaign for the release. With a busy schedule of interviews, in-store appearances, and online events, the band is now trying to wedge in plans for a video shoot.
AC/DC hopes to shoot a video for the title track to "Stiff Upper Lip" in the coming weeks and should deliver it to video outlets by late March, though the band has yet to nail down a director for the clip. The single is already making waves at radio, where it is currently the number one song on rock stations, according to the radio trade publication "R&R."
The band will then perform on television for the first time in more than 20 years with a set carried live from the MTV Studios on March 10 as part of "@MTV Week" (which will also feature appearances by 'NSYNC, Juvenile, Eve, Hanson, and the Smashing Pumpkins). After that, AC/DC will take its show to "Saturday Night Live" for a performance on the March 18 edition of the weekly comedy series.
In the more immediate future, the band will turn up on MTV's "Total Request Live" on Tuesday to mark the release of "Stiff Upper Lip." The appearance will also see the band announce the deep-pocketed bidder who will receive a private guitar lesson from AC/DC's Angus Young, drawing to a close a week-long online auction.
Also on Tuesday, the group will make its first-ever in-store appearance, as the band heads to the Virgin Megastore in New York's Times Square to meet and greet fans.
Despite the high visibility, the band has yet to hammer out tour plans. While an AC/DC world tour is undoubtedly on the horizon, the band hasn't made planning for such an outing a high priority.
"I think when we set out to do the album, we didn't want to be distracted from it," Young told MTV News last week of the band's current lack of definitive tour plans. "Normally, you do a record, and you're working some sort of time frame. You can be halfway through your record, and there's already a tour booked, and you've got to sort of rush, rush, rush to get ready for a tour. Sometimes the thing youčre there to do most, which is make a good record, you can be rushing through that just to make a lot touring and extra stuff. But this time we just said, 'Nope, we'll just concentrate on doing the album and when we're happy with that, we'll take it to the next step after that.'"
As soon as AC/DC takes that next step and lines up tour dates, we'll let you know.
