Long Way to the Top if You Wanna Rock-N-Roll

Chad Wakefield
2 min readFeb 26, 2022

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Immortal lyrics of AC/DC from 1976.

Seems to be the perfect fight song for almost any endeavor (https://music.apple.com/us/album/its-a-long-way-to-the-top-if-you-wanna-rock-n-roll/574124734?i=574124819).

Firstly, the tune just gets me amped. I blast that in my car a lot, and over my head phones getting on airplanes.

Second you should be looking for the rough and mean in all you do as Bon Scott sang.

Competition, apathetic customers, and the majority of those around could care less about your longevity. They want usually a short lived piece of you. Once they have what they want, that’s it. Even the Apple Cult is not really as dedicated as they seem.

So why do it?

We all Wanna Rock-N-Roll. Most will not even talk about it out loud. They just pretend their Angus Young in their bedroom. Some will assemble a garage band but secure no gigs. Some will get that gig at the Elks Lodge, but fail to do any flyers (because word of mouth is all they need). Some will not assume they are so awesome the world finds them, and paper every light pole. Some will fizzle after.

It’s a rare event that pretend Angus gets in the game and stays at their top (it looks different for all) for any length of time.

Why? Bon, already told and it’s so daunting that hardly anyone knows where to even start. And when they do, they make the mistake of looking up at the entire climb before they even take a step.

Most days, if you’re really honest with yourself, you want to tap out. Or take the easy hack. That’s natural. Harder to fight a little each day especially when you’ve got more to loss each one.

Listen to the lyrics, or better, read them (https://drive.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=https://www.lyrics.com/lyrics-pdf-body.php?id%3D5391347) it’s like you’re own personal contract. Read it and decide if you want to deal with the bullshit.

Want to ascend? Don’t look up. Look around and identify where the rough and mean will come from.

It’s not even about hustle and grit and all those platitudes (like the aging dinosaur in the Lexus commercial states) it’s really a feeling that there’s no other way, nothing else will do. That is if your going to stop playing aid guitar in front of your mirror.

Go Rock-N-Roll. Define you’re top. And look around versus up.

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