[1] On 26 January 2010, a new music video for "Shoot to Thrill" was released with exclusive footage from the film Iron Man 2.
When explaining his lyrical inspiration for the song, lead singer and then-songwriter Brian Johnson recalled reading a British article about a neighbourhood pusher who made daily rounds (almost like a milkman) throughout the London suburbs, selling narcotics to bored, lonely and depressed housewives.
[citation needed] Lead guitarist Angus Young has commented that the song's "break-down", which occurs soon after the main solo (a muted and repeating three chord sequence of A Major triad, G Major triad, and a D power chord leading up to a bombastic outro-solo), was inspired by the trio gun-battle climax from Sergio Leone's classic, Italian western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
In this seminal scene, gun-fighters Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach stare one another down in the centre of a Civil-War cemetery for minutes-on-end to an eventual shoot-out.
Young said this sequence in the song was designed to mirror the actual soundtrack selection "Il Triello" by composer Ennio Morricone.