A modified international edition was released on Atlantic on 17 December 1976, although the label was unhappy with its vocals and production. (According to bassist
Mark Evans, band manager Michael Browning told him he assumed Bon Scott would be fired as a result.) The band even teetered on the brink of being dropped. "The Atlantic
A&R department [in the US] said, 'We're sorry, but this album actually doesn't make it, recalled
Phil Carson, who had signed the band. We're not gonna put it out and we're dropping the band'… So I went to [Atlantic executive]
Nesuhi (Ertegun) and showed him the sales figures that we'd got for
High Voltage. They were not awe-inspiring but, considering we'd only paid $25,000 ($139,574 in 2025) for the album, this was not so bad… Nesuhi backed me up and I re-signed the band at that point. I managed to claw it back in. Thank God." As biographer Murray Engleheart observes in his book
AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll, the band had not even toured the States yet, a market the band longed to conquer: Following the American success of
Highway to Hell in late 1979, copies of the album began to appear as imports in the US. Some of these were the original Australian edition on Albert Productions; however, Atlantic also pressed the international version in Australia, and many of these were also exported to the US. Strong demand for both versions (in the wake of the huge success of
Back in Black) led the US division of Atlantic to finally authorize an official US release in March 1981. It went straight to No. 3 on the
Billboard album charts. However, the release was also poorly timed, considering that AC/DC had successfully reinvented itself with a new singer,
Brian Johnson. The band was working on a new album, which would ultimately become
For Those About to Rock We Salute You, released later that same year; the US release of
Dirty Deeds was widely seen as damaging the momentum for that album, which it outsold. The band was forced to add songs from
Dirty Deeds to its setlist on its subsequent tour, also taking the focus away from their new album. In the book
The Youngs: The Brothers Who Built AC/DC, author Jesse Fink quotes Phil Carson as saying that the release of
Dirty Deeds was "one of the most crass decisions ever made by a record-company executive", blaming A&R man Doug Morris and his New York City cohorts: The international release had significant variations from the original album. "Jailbreak" (which had preceded the LP's release in Australia and the UK) and "R.I.P. (Rock in Peace)" were jettisoned in favor of "Rocker" (from the 1975 Australian album
T.N.T.) and "Love at First Feel". "Jailbreak" did not see a release in the United States, Canada, and Japan until October 1984 as part of the international ''
'74 Jailbreak''
EP. A
promo-only single, with "
Show Business" as its B-side, was released to radio stations in the US at the time. "Love at First Feel" is one of only two tracks from international AC/DC albums not to be available on the band's Australian albums (the other is "
Cold Hearted Man", released on European pressings of
Powerage); however, "Love at First Feel" was released in Australia as a
single in January 1977, with "Problem Child" as its B-side, which peaked in the
Kent Music Report Singles Chart Top 100. The international release of
Dirty Deeds also contains "Big Balls", one of the band's most infamous compositions, that finds Scott, a deceptively clever lyricist, using
double entendres by using
ballroom and
costume parties to obviously reference his own
testicles. AC/DC had mined this territory before on "The Jack" and would again later on songs like "Given the Dog a Bone", but "Big Balls" could be their funniest attempt at sexual innuendo, although the song was controversial in its day and drew the ire of some critics who mistook the band's sense of humor for crude perversity.
Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap also led to more AC/DC appearances on Australia's
Countdown music programme, following those in support of
High Voltage and
T.N.T. These appearances included a live performance of the album's title track, as well as a
music video for "Jailbreak". Two songs on the international album were edited from the full-length versions on the original Australian album. The full-length "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" has the title of the song chanted four times, starting at 3:09, but on the edited version the chant is heard only twice. "Ain't No Fun (Waiting Round to Be a Millionaire)" lasted 7:29 on the Australian album but was faded out early to 6:57 on the international version. This means they trim off the
Chuck Berry licks and title chanting to the end; however, both these full-length versions were restored on the 1994
Atco Records remastered CD of the international album. The most recent 2003 CD edition by
Epic Records goes back to the edited versions, as originally on the 1976 and 1981 international vinyl editions. The uncut versions of both songs were released on the 2009 box set
Backtracks. On the original version of "Rocker", included on the Australian
T.N.T. album, the song lasts 2:55 and cuts out abruptly as the guitar riff hits its peak. Conversely, all international editions of the
Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap album have a slightly shorter version where the song fades out at 2:50 before the cut. "Squealer" appears to be longer by thirteen seconds on the international version; this is due to it having a bumper of silence at the end, as it is the final track on the record. "Ride On" has a four-second difference (longer on the international version) which appears to be from a minor speed issue, although the last guitar slide can be heard better on the shorter Australian version. == Reception ==