Australian pub rock is the hard-rock and R&B-adjacent band music that grew up around the country's pubs, Returned Services League clubs, and surf clubs from the early 1970s onward. The standard line-up is two electric guitars, bass, drums, and a shouted lead vocal — Cold Chisel added a permanent Hammond and saxophone as a house style. Tempos sit in the 110–140 BPM mid-range, vocals are blues-derived shouts rather than crooned, songs are compact three-to-four-minute punches, and the recorded sound is deliberately dry, compressed, and unglossed — the exact opposite of the wetter London and New York rock production of the same years.

AC/DC formed in Sydney in 1973 around the Scottish-immigrant Young brothers Malcolm and Angus, and their bloody, physical stage act filled pubs across the country. Cold Chisel started the same year in Adelaide with Jimmy Barnes' scorched-voice vocals up front. Rose Tattoo followed in Sydney in 1976, and by the late 1970s INXS (Sydney, 1977) and Midnight Oil (Sydney, 1976) had built the anthemic 80s stadium-rock layer on top. The whole ecosystem sat on top of a specific political mood: the dismissal of the Whitlam Labor government in 1975, Vietnam veterans returning home, the formal end of White Australia policy, and the pub as the workers' meeting hall.

Listen for the drag in the drums first. On AC/DC's 'It's a Long Way to the Top' Phil Rudd sits behind the beat by a fraction, and that lag is the dry, unhurried Australian groove. On Cold Chisel's 'Khe Sanh' Ian Moss' piano and Jimmy Barnes' vocal fight for the same frequency band, and the pressure of that mix is textbook pub rock. INXS 'Never Tear Us Apart' hands the whole architectural centre to Kirk Pengilly's saxophone solo — an instrumental luxury that separates the sound from contemporary British and American rock.

AC/DC's 'It's a Long Way to the Top' (1975) for the DNA. Then Cold Chisel's 'Khe Sanh' (1978), the country's unofficial national anthem, followed by INXS' 'Never Tear Us Apart' (1987) for the fully realised 1980s form. Midnight Oil's 'Beds Are Burning' (1987) shows the political-anthem side. Friday night, cold beer, speakers loud, is the right posture.

AC/DC's Bon Scott died on 19 February 1980 in London aged 33, and Brian Johnson's arrival led to Back in Black, released four months later, which has now sold over fifty million copies — the best-selling rock album ever. Cold Chisel's 'Khe Sanh,' about a Vietnam veteran's dislocation, was banned by radio in 1978 for its drug and sex references, and the ban made it Australia's unofficial national anthem instead. Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil later served as a Labor member of the Australian House of Representatives from 2004 to 2013, and as federal Environment Minister — one of very few rock frontmen anywhere to make that transition.