The street sign for ACDC Lane in Melbourne

The street was formerly called Corporation Lane, but was renamed on 1 October 2004 as a tribute to Australian rock band AC/DC. The Melbourne City Council's vote to rename the street was unanimous.^[1] The trademark lightning bolt or slash ("/") used to separate the AC and the DC in the band's name contravened the naming policy of the Office of the Registrar of Geographic Names, so the punctuation was omitted on the street sign.

Melbourne's Lord Mayor John So launched ACDC Lane with the words, "As the song says, there is a highway to hell, but this is a laneway to heaven. Let us rock." Bagpipers then played "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)." One month after the renaming, a lightning bolt was erected above and below the street sign.^[2] The lighting bolt was removed at a later date, for unknown reasons.

The street sign for ACDC lane has been stolen and replaced numerous times.

The lane contains a rock 'n' roll nightclub called the Cherry Bar.

Reason for the name

Corporation Lane was chosen for renaming in part because the band filmed the music video for "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)" on Melbourne's Swanston Street. ACDC Lane is near Swanston Street.

Other factors given include: AC/DC's status as cultural ambassadors for Australia, the band's ties to Melbourne, and the lane's position in the city's bar district.^[3]

The 'art' of ACDC Lane

Much of ACDC Lane is now heavily decorated with various styles of graffiti and public fly-posting, in many places beyond mere scrawls to a level that some would consider 'urban art'. While Melbourne is a city that suffers from high levels of graffiti vandalism, many of the CBD laneways are decorated in a way that is more overtly artistic, and while not a prime example of this phenomena, ACDC Lane exhibits some interesting examples.

Of the public art styles used in ACDC Lane there are decorations of commercial fly posting, individual paint and pen tagging, paper cut-outs of varying sizes, ceramic tile forms, spray paint stenciling, detailed cartoon characters, and even historical painted advertising at the very end of the laneway.

Of the many hundreds of individual instances of graffiti/art, there is only 1 readily visible example based on a pure ACDC (the band) theme.

<gallery> Image:ACDC_Lane_Face_in_window.JPG|Graffiti on ACDC Lane Image:Horror_Faces_on_ACDC_Lane.JPG|Horror faces on ACDC Lane Image:ACDC_Stencil_on_ACDC_Lane.JPG|Stencil graffiti on ACDC Lane Image:Cartoon_Graffiti_on_ACDC_Lane.JPG|Cartoon graffiti on ACDC Lane Image:Mr_Happy_Graffiti_ACDC_Lane.JPG|1 of 2 different "Mr Happy" images on ACDC Lane Image:Tile_Graffiti_on_ACDC_Lane.JPG| Small tiles used to build a sprite face, ACDC Lane Image:Paper_Images_ACDC_Lane.JPG|Cut & Paste paper images feature frequently down ACDC Lane Image:ACDC_Lane_Entry.JPG|Entrance to ACDC Lane, showing one of 2 street signs </gallery>

See also

• Leganés, Spain, also has a street called AC/DC. The street sign is subject to theft by fans.

References

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