Flick of the Switch is the ninth studio album by Australian hard rock band AC/DC. The album was deemed a commercial disappointment after it failed to match the sales figures of the band's two previous releases, 1980's Back in Black and 1981's For Those About to Rock, and its release represented the beginning of the band's commercial decline. Despite this, opinions of Flick of the Switch have been quite positive in the years since its release, and the album has often been mentioned as one of the best releases of 1983. The third AC/DC album to feature lead vocalist Brian Johnson, the album is also the last to feature drummer Phil Rudd before his return on Ballbreaker (1995). The album was re-released in 2003 as part of the AC/DC Remasters series. Recording AC/DC returned to Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas to record their ninth album, the same studio where they had recorded Back in Black with Robert John "Mutt" Lange in 1980. Lange had produced AC/DC's three previous releases but this time the band chose to produce themselves. On the recorded commentary on the album for the Live at Donington DVD, the band members state that the album was an attempt to make the band raw again, and were happy with the result. In the book AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll, AC/DC engineer Tony Platt recalls: The album is notable for its "dry" sound, with very little of the polish that is evident on their previous effort For Those About to Rock We Salute You. In a 1983 interview that appears on ultimateguitar.com, Angus Young said of the LP, "We wanted this one as raw as possible. We wanted a natural, but big, sound for the guitars. We didn't want echoes and reverb going everywhere and noise eliminators and noise extractors." However, the album's birth was a troubled one; after having problems with Malcolm as well as drugs and alcohol, drummer Phil Rudd was fired midway through the album's recording sessions, although he had completed his drum parts. According to Murray Engleheart's band memoir AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll, Rudd had been struggling for some time; tour manager Ian Jeffrey recalls getting a phone call from a strung-out Rudd at four in the morning when the band was playing in Nebraska on the Back in Black tour and finding the drummer in his hotel room in a state of