PITTSBURGH — If and when the AC/DC biopic comes out, we can guarantee this: It’s gonna be a banger.

First of all, you’ve got the strident music of the Australian hard rock band, which — needless to say — translates well to the screen after having been in more than 70 films from “Iron Man” to “Bridesmaids” and “School of Rock.”

Then you have the human drama to go with it: the death of a singer, a bold replacement, infighting, the Parents Music Resource Center blacklist, drugs, dementia, cancer and, to top it off, a murder charge.

Through all that, AC/DC is still powered up and headlining stadiums with the key members now in their 70s.

Let’s go back in time:

Plugging in

Brothers Angus and Malcolm Young formed AC/DC and played their first gig on Dec. 31, 1973, combining covers (The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry and the like) along with blues standards and first attempts at originals. In April 1974, the diminutive Angus, at the suggestion of his sister, traded in his glam wear for something that would stick: a schoolboy uniform.

That September, their singer, Dave Evans, was swapped for Scottish-born Bon Scott, a member of the band Fraternity and AC/DC chauffeur who brought a voice like battery acid.

After dropping two albums limited to Australian release — “High Voltage” (February 1975) and “T.N.T.” (December 1975) — the band signed to Atlantic and released the international version of “High Voltage,” featuring a mix of tracks from both albums. “High Voltage” got low wattage: None of the songs charted, despite “It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)” and “T.N.T.” now being considered “greatest hits.” (It did so poorly that “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” wasn’t released in the U.S. until 1981.)

Mixed reaction

Rolling Stone, no fan of this style, pulled no punches, declaring that with “High Voltage,” the hard rock genre “has hit its all-time low.”

But it had its fans.

The Newport News Daily Press went this far: “Here’s a talented bunch of tough guys from down under playing rock and roll and playing it well. AC/DC are what we call punk rockers, but they outclass the likes of the Ramones or any of the others who play CBGB’s.”

This was news to AC/DC. “I see us as music; I see punk rock as nothing,” Scott said in a January 1977 press conference. “They’re making a statement, you know, it don’t mean nothing, but they’re making a statement.”

First tours/Burgh debut

Having conquered Australia, AC/DC played its first European date in April 1976 in Edinburgh, Scotland. In early ’77, they began a European tour with Black Sabbath that ended abruptly with Sabbath’s Geezer Butler allegedly threatening Malcolm Young with a switchblade in Sweden that April. This incident is still debated.

The band’s first U.S. date, two days after the American release of “Let There Be Rock,” was in July 1977 in Austin, Texas, opening for the Canadian band Moxy. All reports are that AC/DC stole that show.

They touched down in Pittsburgh on Dec. 21, 1977 at the Stanley Theatre, opening for the more formidable Blue Öyster Cult, and were back there on June 13, 1979 to open for UFO. It was one month before everything was about to change with three chords and a beat drop: the opening to “Highway to Hell.”

‘Highway’ to glory

He didn’t have that big of a resume yet — Boomtown Rats, Graham Parker, The Outlaws — but producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange was the right guy for “Highway to Hell.” And so was new bassist Cliff Williams. It was the first AC/DC album to crack the Top 100 in the U.S., going to No. 17. The title track, inspired by Canning Highway in Australia and addressing not a path to Satan (we’ll get to that) but life on the road as a musician, was its highest charting song to date, going to No. 47 in the U.S. That doesn’t mean a whole lot because the FM radio play was off the charts.

AC/DC was back on Aug. 3, 1979, to open for Ted Nugent at the Civic Arena, along with the Scorpions. The Pittsburgh Press review praised the Aussie band’s energy and guitar work — the bare-chested Scott carried Angus on his shoulders the length of the arena floor — but noted that the vocals were “tinny and distorted.”

It was the third and final time we’d see Scott in Pittsburgh.

Death and rebirth

On Feb. 19, 1980, while working on a new album, Scott was found unconscious in the backseat of his friend’s car where he was sleeping off a drinking binge. Rushed to a London hospital, he was declared dead on arrival of alcohol poisoning at 33.

With the encouragement of Scott’s parents, the band set aside thoughts of quitting and began a search for a new frontman. But where do you find a voice like THAT? Arriving for an audition was Brian Johnson, a British singer from a small Newcastle band called Geordie, whom Scott himself had once praised. To go with his own acidic pipes, Johnson had an easy-going, one-of-the-boys demeanor. He was announced as the new singer of AC/DC on April 1, 1980, less than five weeks after the funeral.

“I realized I was stepping into someone’s big shoes,” Johnson told the Pittsburgh Press in 1983. “I realized when I went on stage, I had to face all these people who loved him. I was worried about doing it right. I think the fans were happy that the band kept on going even though they were upset. I would like to think so.”

They would leave no doubt, releasing “Back in Black” (July 1980) and stocked with “You Shook Me All Night Long,” “Hells Bells,” “Shoot to Thrill,” “Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution” and a title track with lyrics written by Johnson as a tribute to predecessor. The album was a smash success, debuting at No. 4 in the U.S. and now sitting as the second best-selling album of all time (behind Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”) with sales of 50 million. (For a while there, The Eagles’ “Greatest Hits” was running neck-and-neck, but it’s down to fifth.)

Headline time

AC/DC made its Pittsburgh headlining debut on Sept. 30, 1980.

The band added “For Those About to Rock (We Salute You),” its first No. 1 album in November 1981, while the “Back in Black” songs were all still getting airplay. They skipped Pittsburgh on that tour, but returned on Nov. 30, 1983 to headline the Arena for the first time, backing “Flick of the Switch,” an album not filled with AC/DC classics.

During the making of that album, drummer Phil Rudd was fired from the band for substance abuse, replaced by Dio’s Simon Wright. AC/DC came to the arena that November with cannons, a huge bell to toll and a roadie to carry Angus through the crowd of 12,200.

1985 was a bit of a crazy year for AC/DC. The band’s song “Let Me Put My Love into You” was declared one of “the filthy 15” by the Parents Music Resource Center, the organization co-founded by Tipper Gore and three others to crack down on music it deemed offensive. That same year came reports that AC/DC was the favorite band of LA serial killer Richard Ramirez, aka the Night Stalker, and that he was inspired by the 1979 song “Night Prowler.” It was even suggested, quite hysterically, that the band’s name stood for “Anti-Christ/Devil’s Children.” What a ring to that.

Rushing to their defense, in a way, was LA Times critic Robert Hilburn, who wrote, “The relentless, head-banging, heavy metal of today is often dreadful, dumb in design, violent, and scary in its imagery. But it’s preposterous that anybody would believe that AC/DC is an instrument of Satan.”

Johnson had touched on this in the 1983 Press interview when he laughed at the notion of backward messages in songs (“It’s a physical impossibility”) and bands worshipping Satan, saying, “It’s a bit of an act…I’m sure a couple of them believe it and I don’t really care who they are. If that’s their belief, that’s their problem.”

Fall and rise

Elsewhere, AC/DC’s problem was the dip in popularity. “Fly on the Wall” was a blip on the radar and the return trip to the arena in September 1985, with Yngwie Malmsteen, drew a mere 7,600.

But AC/DC rebounded with “Blow Up Your Video,” which earned the band its first of its 10 Grammy nominations. (It won one in 2010 for the song “War Machine.”) The band returned to the Arena in ‘88, with Stevie Young filling in for his uncle Malcolm, who was having his own struggle with alcohol.

While the industry may have been warming up to AC/DC, Rolling Stone still considered it Rock for Dummies. With “The Razors Edge,” the mag wrote of the 1990 album, “AC/DC sets a new record for the longest career without a single new idea.”

Asked about making the same album a dozen times, Angus once said, "Thats a dirty lie! The truth is that we've made the same album over and over 14 times!"

“Razors Edge” may not have been groundbreaking, but that opening riff to “Thunderstruck” was pretty badass, putting AC/DC back in the good graces of the metal scene. They played the Arena in 1990 and returned for their Star Lake debut on that same cycle in 1991.

Through the wave of Guns ’N Roses and grunge, AC/DC stuck to its guns with the same bare-knuckled rock ’n’ roll. Before playing the Arena on the “Ballbreaker” tour in March 1996, Johnson addressed the music of the ‘90s, telling the PG, “I don’t want to go to a show and hear some guy tell me how [bleepin’] suicidal he is and that the world‘s at end. And I’m telling you what, he’s probably a crock.”

AC/DC has never set foot in PPG Paints Arena. But it did play the Mellon Arena two more times before its demolition: August 2000 after “Stiff Upper Lip” and January 2009 after “Black Ice.”

In between those releases, in 2003, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Steven Tyler, who opened his speech saying, “Thank GOD for the power chord!”

Rock or Bust

AC/DC was lucky to get out of the ‘10s.

After the Black Ice Tour, Malcolm was diagnosed with lung cancer and a heart problem. Stevie stepped in for him again on the 2015 Rock or Bust Tour, and Malcolm died in November 2017, at 64, after suffering from dementia.

Rudd was also missing on Rock or Bust (replaced by Chris Slade of Manfred Mann's Earth Band) because he got himself into a mess. He was arrested on drug charges along with attempting to procure a murder and threatening to kill. The murder charge was dropped but he pleaded guilty to the drug charges and a threatening to kill charge (which was also dropped) and was sentenced to eight months of home detention.

Next it was Johnson’s turn to have an issue. For the final 10 dates of Rock or Bust in 2016, the singer had to bail due to a punctured ear drum. Axl Rose stepped in to save the day.

He would not be the new singer for AC/DC, though. Despite talk that Johnson’s days with the band were done, he (and Rudd) were back to record 17th album “Power Up,” which, like, “Black Ice” debuted at No. 1 and has been hailed as “high-voltage celebration of life.”

The Power Up Tour ran through Europe last year and is now in the midst of a 13-stadium U.S. run. Rudd is out, and so is Williams, leaving AC/DC with the new rhythm section of bassist Chris Chaney (Jane’s Addiction) and drummer Matt Laug (Slash's Snakepit, Alice Cooper).

If you’re going and you haven’t “Power-ed Up” yet, these are the only new tracks in the 21-song set: “Shot in the Dark” and “Demon Fire.”

Tipper Gore better look into that last one. Both of them, actually.

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(AC/DC will perform in Pittsburgh at 7 p.m. Thursday with The Pretty Reckless. Tickets are $91; ticketmaster.com.)

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