From the Chuck Berry-inspired Duckwalk to the front row hazard of the Snot Cyclone, here are the key moves the guitarist pulls off during his frenetic live performances
During a career now spanning 40-odd years, AC/DC’s Angus Young has become renowned for many things: his distinctive dress sense, his devil’s horns, and a signature guitar sound that has inspired headbangers everywhere and helped shift several hundred million records worldwide.
While the origin of his fondness for school uniforms, and the band’s name – both courtesy of his sister Margaret – are relatively well-known, what’s not so familiar is the different inspirations for the many tricks Young pulls off during one of his typically tireless, frenetic live performances. Allow me, if you will, to spill the beans.
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Young would have been perfectly comfortable if the recording of music ended some time around the late 1950s. He has regularly paid dues to the artists that have inspired him musically, and most come from the earliest days of rock’n’roll: I’m talking Little Richard, Buddy Holly and the like. But the influence of the recently departed Chuck Berry extends beyond Young’s playing and writing.
Berry actually inspired the frenzied duckwalk that Young pulls off every night. Admittedly, Young’s duckwalk comes at a much faster clip than Berry’s; the onstage Angus always looks and plays like a man in a hurry. There’s also Young’s habit of “conducting” an audience with his guitar, playing a flurry of notes, stopping abruptly, inciting the crowd to chant and then repeating the process until he’s flailing at his Gibson and the crowd is wailing along like banshees. Again. Berry inspired: “When [Berry] was singing, ” Young once revealed, “he always had little raps with the audience ... I figured if Chuck could do it with his voice, I could do it with my guitar.”
This is the routine where Young drops to the floor of the stage and while gyrating madly and kicking his legs like a dying cockroach, fires off an inspired solo. This routine came about purely by accident; one night Young slipped over while playing, and fearing being mocked by the crowd, stayed down and kept soloing, doing his utmost to make it appear intentional. “I tripped over a lead, ” Angus told a DJ from Sydney radio station 2JJ, “and fell on me knees. I thought people thought I was a fuckin’ idiot so I started bobbin’ around on the ground.”
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Young has always had a thing for heights; as soon as the band started playing larger shows he’d usually end up on top of a PA or speaker stack, soloing as if his life depended on it, sometimes dodging bottles as he played. However, in 1986, while shooting the video for Who Made Who, Young had a very uneasy moment as he was lowered by wires from a second-storey balcony on to the stage floor – he felt genuine fear. “My whole life flashed before me, ” he admitted, “and since I’m pretty short, that’s not very long.” Soon after, a doctor gave Angus an unexpected prognosis: he suffered from acrophobia and probably had for years.
A favourite part of the “Bon and Angus show” – the double-headed beast that was such a trademark of early AC/DC – was the big moment, often during the track Livewire, when the brawny singer would hoist the scrawny guitarist on to his shoulders and carry him around the venue, parting punters like Moses did the Red Sea. Curiously, Bon “borrowed” the move from Brian Johnson, when he caught the future AC/DC shouter in his first band, Geordie, doing the exact same thing with that band’s guitarist, Vic Malcolm.
As anyone close to the AC/DC onstage action can attest, especially during the early days of the band, coming too near Young in full flight could be dangerous. Mark Evans, their original bassist, revealed to me while writing High Voltage that the young Angus’ diet – a not quite department of health-approved blend of ciggies, chocolate milk and spaghetti bolognaise – would result in him emitting what Evans called a “snot cyclone” as he played, which usually left its mark over eager punters down front. Duck and cover.
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Angus also sheds as much as 2kg per show purely in sweat Backstage, band members would look on in shock as he removed the scratch plate of his guitar and poured out what seemed like litres of his own sweat. Nowadays he has someone to do that onerous task for him; but at 62, Angus still works hard for his money: a handy nest egg that currently sits at around $200m.Angus Young will celebrate his 65th birthday this coming Tuesday, March 31st. In celebration of the rock and roll icon - best known for his posh schoolboy outfit, signature Gibson SG guitar, and some of the most iconic guitar riffs in history - we’re sharing 7 little known facts about Angus:
While his fellow bandmates were known for living up to the rock n roll stereotype of being hard partiers, Angus Young is actually a teetotaler. Late AC/DC singer Bon Scott was known for his wild partying and Angus’s brother Malcolm Young was a huge fan of Jack Daniels, but Angus Young doesn’t drink at all. The guitarist can only ever be seen chugging back a cold glass of chocolate milk, or the occasional cup of coffee.
Angus purchased his very first Gibson SG (and definitely not his last) in 1970 from a second hand shop. He played it “until it got wood rot because so much sweat and water got into it, ” he said. And he still has it to this day - “I’ve still got it and it’s still my favorite guitar of them all.”
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Being able to take inspiration from other artists outside your own genre is an important mark of being a great musician. Angus Young not only loves rock n roll, but is a huge fan of jazz, in particular Louis Armstrong, who he calls “one of the greatest musicians of all time”.
Many guitarists see solos as the hardest part of their job, but Angus calls it the easiest part of his: “I think the hardest thing is to play together with a lot of people, and do that right. I mean, when four guys hit one note all at once – very few people can do that.”
AC/DC were consumed with grief over the death of their friend Bon Scott while they were recording ‘Back in Black’. While recording in Nassau, ELP keyboardist Keith Emerson took Angus and the band out on his fishing boat to help them settle in and work through the shock of their friend passing so suddenly. Tragically, Keith died in March 2016 after a bout of severe depression, striking the AC/DC band members with grief once again.
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While it’s hard to imagine AC/DC without the Young brothers, back in the day Angus wasn’t allowed to jam with his brother, or even hear him play. Angus recalled back in 1992 the shock of Malcolm asking him to join the band: “In the beginning, we never used to play together, even at home. When I’d walk in to see what he was up to, he’d go, ‘Get out!’ I was amazed when he asked me to come down to a rehearsal and play.”
Angus dropped out of school at the age of 15, going to work as a typesetter at a men’s magazine called ‘Ribald’, not knowing he would soon be a member of one of the biggest rock n roll bands on the planet.On AC/DC‘s most recent tour, in 2016, the band seemed to be falling apart. Frontman Brian Johnson’s hearing was failing, and Axl Rose wound up replacing him for part of the run; rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young — the bedrock of the band — had developed dementia and could no longer play; bassist Cliff Williams was planning his exit; and drummer Phil Rudd had been placed under house arrest for threatening to kill a man.
Improbably, though, lead guitarist Angus Young has pulled the band back together. Johnson, Williams, and Rudd are all back in the fold, along with Angus’ nephew Stevie, AC/DC’s replacement for Malcolm, who died in 2017. Last year, the group released
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, its 17th trip down the Highway to Hell. Angus has described the foundation-shaking record as a tribute to his late brother Malcolm, the same way that 1980’s blockbuster
Was an epitaph for fallen frontman Bon Scott. “We’ve had lots of things go wrong, ” Angus says over Zoom, dressed comfortably in a hoodie and sitting between two high-powered Marshall amplifiers in a Sydney studio one day in early November. “But Malcolm always said, ‘See what we can do. Make the best out of the situation.'”
When we made that album, we had so much material because we’d had a lot of years off and the two of us had written so many songs. So I just thought, “I’ll concentrate on the ones I knew that he really loved so much and get them out.” That was the guide I used.
Guitar Player October 2004
Through the
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