Angus Young knows a thing or two about rock ’n’ roll. In more than 50 years as AC/DC’s lead guitarist, he’s written and recorded a whole lot of songs about this very subject.
On the band’s first international album High Voltage, the first track is It’s A Long Way To the Top (If You Wanna Rock ’N’ Roll). The second track is Rock ’N’ Roll Singer.
AC/DC's 1978 fan-favourite album Powerage kicks off with Rock ’N’ Roll Damnation.
Their biggest album, the 50 million selling Back In Black, ends with Rock And Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution.
And on their 2008 album Black Ice, the anthem Rock ’N’ Roll Train is followed by Rock ’N’ Roll Dream and the self-explanatory She Likes Rock ’N’ Roll.
So what does Angus consider to be the absolute epitome of rock ’n’ roll?
He gave his answer in a 1992 interview with Kerrang!
“The sound of Chuck Berry’s guitar,” Angus said. “It’s everything rolled into one. It’s blues, it’s rock ’n’ roll, and it’s got that hard edge to it. To me, that’s pure rock ’n’ roll. It’s not clean – it’s nasty!”
AC/DC paid tribute on their 1975 album T.N.T. with a cover of Berry’s classic 1957 single School Days.
In the Kerrang! interview, Angus talked about the greatest challenge he faced when he was learning to play guitar.
“As a kid, I was never one for the tennis racket,” he said. “I was more interested in getting my fingers round the guitar neck, because when I was little – I’m little now, but I was ‘little’ little – getting a hand around the neck was a big thing. That was the hardest part.”
He also expressed his love for blues music and explained what made him gravitate towards it.
“It’s the emotion in those old blues records,” he smiled. “I’ve never really been into the depression stuff. I’ve always liked the happy sort of blues music, like Muddy Waters. Even though he might have been singing about his woman running off with a nineteen year-old bus driver from Florida, there would be an element of humour in it, and that’s what I’ve always loved.
“I’ve never been a great lover of the real sad element of the blues. There are some great sad songs, but I prefer the happier side.
“And the grammar in blues music is fantastic. Some of the things that Muddy would sing: ‘I just love them pretty womens, I’ll kill for them young pretty things.’
“They’d sing ‘whummen’ instead of women, and ‘choo’ instead of you. But you get what they mean.”
AC/DC have recorded a few blues numbers over the years, including Ride On, Crabsody In Blue and Boogie Man. But the band’s most famous blues song is of course The Jack.
Angus told a funny story to Kerrang! about how The Jack was written. This story involved the band’s legendary singer Bon Scott and drummer Phil Rudd.
“That one was written about a night when some woman did some bed-hopping,” Angus recalled. “First she went with Phil and during the night she crawled into Bon’s bed.
“The next night, this girl had been to see a doctor and she handed a bill to Phil. The doctor had diagnosed a social disease. Phil said, ‘The cheek of it! I got no fucking disease.’
“During that night’s show we did a slow blues song and Bon got the lighting guy to turn a spotlight on this girl’s table. Bon said, ‘I’d just like to inform you that you gave the doctor’s bill to the wrong guy.’
“Bon had a lot of trouble with diseases on the road. There was a song in the musical West Side Story called Maria. Bon used to take the piss out of it. Instead of singing, ‘I’ve just met a girl named Maria’, he’d say, ‘I just got a dose of gonorrhea.’ So that blues song turned into The Jack.”
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