AC-DC, the Highway to Hell and the Night Stalker

AC/DC are an Australian rock band, formed in 1973 by brothers Malcolm and Angus Young. The tale is that Malcolm and Angus developed the idea for the band's name after their sister, Margaret Young, saw the initials AC/DC on a sewing machine. So, AC/DC is supposed to be an abbreviation meaning Alternating Current/Direct Current electricity. The brothers felt that this name symbolized the band's raw energy, power-driven performances of their music, the power they hoped this band would possess. “It’s been called everything since, you know, the meaning of the letters,” Malcolm Young lamented. “You tell them a sewing machine story, and they’re still going to think, ‘no, there’s more to this.'”

Let’s rise some doubts about this affirmation, just to be controversial. I’ve seen 110V/220V sewing machines but don’t remember having seen ever one working on direct current!

Detractors of AC/DC and rock 'n' roll affirmed quite differently that AC/DC stands for Anti-Christ / Devil's Child! Yet another interpretation is that its acronym stands for Anti-Christ / Death to Christ.

One of the "undisputable" proofs of the satanic connections of AC/DC is their 1979 song Highway to Hell, the opening track of their 1979 album Highway to Hell, probably one of the greatest rock 'n' roll hits ever recorded.

The song was written by Angus Young, Malcolm Young and Bon Scott, with Angus Young credited for writing the guitar riff which became an instant classic. AC/DC had made several studio albums before and were constantly promoting them via a grueling tour schedule, referred to by Angus Young as being on a highway to hell. The song's title reflects the incredibly arduous nature of touring constantly and life on the road.

Bon Scott, whose talent as a singer and rock frontman were at a peak, was found dead in the back of a friend's car just over six months after the song was released. According to AC/DC haters, Scott epitomized the role of a God-hating rebel who abused drugs and indulged in sinful living and his death is just one of hundreds in the rock 'n' roll “Hall of Shame”! Well, maybe there is some truth in this affirmation!

As a curious detail, during the American invasion of Panama in 1989, U.S. Army troops blasted AC/DC's Highway to Hell as “psychological torture” to drive Manuel Noriega out of the Vatican Embassy where he had taken refuge and into prison.  I just wonder what kind of music U.K. authorities should play to drive Julian Assange out of the Equatorian embassy in London!

You can read in a website dedicated to unveil the satanic connections of AC/DC: “I saw a YouTube video of a recent AC/DC concert. Brian Johnson leads the audience, tens-of-thousands of fans, to sing in unison… ‘I'm on a highway to Hell’. There are giant movie screens on stage behind the band, showing flames on both sides, mocking the Bible. The band and many fans are wearing hats with devil's horns. The guitarist, Angus Young, sticks his guitar between Brian Johnson's legs, near his crotch, making it look like an erect penis. It is shameful and evil. It is hard to actually witness tens-of-thousands of people all gleefully singing that they're going to Hell. It is tearful if you believe the Bible and love the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you care that the souls of billions of lost sinners are headed straight for the Lake of Fire.”

In 1983, Jacob Aranza, a young Texan minister of the church, took it upon himself to alert parents to the dangers of rock ‘n’ roll by exposing not only the overt sinful behavior practiced by its leading exponents but also to lay bare sinister Satanic messages secreted within the grooves of popular vinyl records. In his book Backward Masking Unmasked, Aranza noted that many of these messages “are tied in closely with witchcraft and Satan worship and encourage abnormal sexual behavior and the use of drugs.”

“AC/DC are, without question, on the 'highway to hell'. The titles of their songs leave the listener with no questions about AC/DC's moral stand," sniffed Jacob, citing an interview in which guitarist Angus Young, obviously not seriously, lists "mugging, raping, pillaging" among their interests. The minister failed to unearth any specific backwards messages in 'DC's back catalogue, though points out that "AC/DC means bisexual", notes that former singer Bon Scott died "choking on his own vomit" and suggests that the 'Promised Land' referred to in Highway To Hell is, in fact, most likely to be the domain over which the Horned Master Satan presides. Diabolical!

Obviously, the band denies having any participation with "Satanism".

Besides the aforementioned interpretations of the acronym AC/DC, the band has been implicated in one serial killer's deranged quest for attention. Ricardo “Richard” Muñoz Ramirez, a transient based in Los Angeles, spent a terrifying portion of 1984 and 1985 slipping into windows and through unlocked doors in California, committing a string of unspeakable crimes under cover of darkness. He would be dubbed the Night Stalker, as frustrated authorities tried and failed to capture this ghost-like psychopath for over two awful summers.

Please take note that this killer is mentioned in the news and comments about the case as Ricardo Ramirez, but in Spanish, last name comes after the first name or names and it is followed by mother’s last name. So his last name was Muñoz but to avoid confusion, I’ll keep calling him Ramirez.

One of his vicious crimes in the city of Rosemead on March 17, 1985, took on special meaning for AC/DC and its fans after the killer left behind a baseball cap bearing the band’s logo. Los Angeles County homicide investigator Gil Carillo released a photograph of that cap to the press, setting off a firestorm of speculation and controversy. “Upon investigating that murder,” Carillo subsequently explained, “one of the pieces of evidence left behind was a baseball cap bearing the letters ‘AC/DC’ on it. What the significance was, was trying to get attention through the media: to see if anybody knew somebody that wore an AC/DC hat.”

From there, as Ramirez continued down a devastating path, AC/DC would increasingly become part of the story. The band members were as stunned as they were horrified. “It just sickens you, you know,” Brian Johnson told VH1. “It sickens you to have anything to do with that kind of thing.”

And yet, after the AC/DC baseball cap was found, concerts were canceled as the controversy grew. Soon, AC/DC was the target of the Parents Music Resource Center, which again focused on a supposed link between their music and Satanism. “The press assumed an awful lot,” Carillo said. “And the press put a lot more to the significance of the cap than the homicide investigators.”

Rock journalists leapt to AC/DC’s defense, though to little avail. “It is very hard for me to swallow the widely printed assertion that their very name is some form of anagram for Anti-Christ,” Billboard’s Sam Southerland said at the time, adding that he always thought the band’s antics were completely tongue-in-cheek.

The nickname Night Stalker provided another “link” as AC/DC supposedly had included a similarly titled track on its breakthrough Highway to Hell album from five years before.

“That song is not called ‘Night Stalker,'” Malcolm Young said, in a futile reminder. “It’s called ‘Night Prowler’ and it’s about things you use to do when you are a kid, like sneaking into a girlfriend’s bedroom when her parents were asleep.”

Still, as the mysterious, shockingly violent spree continued, those two tenuous links to AC/DC became catnip to a media rabble hungry for a scapegoat to make sense of these senseless crimes.

By August 1985, investigators were now connecting Ramirez to another string of crimes further north, in San Francisco. That led to their first concrete lead, when the manager of a seedy motel in the Tenderloin district identified Richard Ramirez as a former guest. There had been other small breaks along the way. On May 30, 1985, for instance, Ramirez had raped, but not killed, his victim, giving her a chance to provide enough details to complete a sketch of the attacker.

None of these clues had the impact in the mind of the public, as the AC/DC cap from back in March. That is, until August 25, 1985, when a witness identified a figure believed to be Ramirez speeding away in an orange Toyota after shooting a man and raping his fiancée at Mission Viejo. A neighbor, thinking Ramirez looked suspicious, jotted down the license plate number. Once they found the vehicle, a fingerprint analysis confirmed it had been driven by Ricardo “Richard” Muñoz Ramirez.

Police had a DMV photo now, and a name. Ultimately, however, Ramirez wasn’t undone by smart detective work. Instead, it was a particularly possessive car owner. A week following the Mission Viejo attack, Ramirez was apprehended after a scuffle in the 3700 block of East Hubbard Street in Los Angeles. He was trying to steal a vehicle when the owner discovered Ramirez and a fight ensued. Ramirez ran, but once he was identified as the Night Stalker, a group of residents in this tightly knit, largely Hispanic area joined together to subdue him. A makeshift tribute was later erected in East L.A. celebrating these neighborhood heroes.

As men, children and women of every age were targeted by this serial killer, the link to AC/DC was never made sense. Eventually, Ramirez was prosecuted not only for more than a dozen murders but also a series of convictions for rape, sodomy, oral copulation, burglary and attempted murder.

Things only worsened when Ray Garcia, a childhood friend of Ramirez in El Paso, Texas,  confirmed that his boyhood friend had been a huge fan of AC/DC.

That turned into headlines: “AC/DC Music Made Me Kill at 16, Night Stalker Admits” “Mass Killer Driven by Rock and Devil Worship” and “Punk and Metal: Some Youths Love Its Violent Side” Another report suggested that AC/DC stood for “Anti-Christ/Devil’s Child”

Even Ramirez himself, as improbable as it might seem, felt the story cycle had swung out of control. “The world has been fed many lies about me,” Ramirez said later. “I have read very few truths.” He added that serial killers are “a product of their times — and these are bloody-thirsty times.”

Watch a News Report from 1985 on ‘Evil Rock’

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W4bxbnpbw4

Ultimately, AC/DC played no role in his conviction. But even today “Night Prowler” remains inextricably, and they say unfairly, linked to this case, even if its exact relationship to Ramirez’s ritualistic offenses was never adequately established. “You know, the sort of people we are, if you were really interested in being devil worshipers, you would go off and do that,” Angus Young said back then. “You know, it’s an art in itself.  And it’s about as a far away from what we are as anything.”

Ramirez has since died, but not by government means. He fell victim in 2013 to liver failure at age 53, having spent the intervening years on San Quentin’s death row.

In the meantime, all AC/DC could do really, was keep playing, and so they did. However, not without the occasional rueful look back. “I don’t know why they zeroed in on us,” Angus Young added “I could never see those connections myself.”