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.
1. The Duckwalk
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.”
2. The Dying Bug
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.”
3. Angus Up the Ladder
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.
4. The Shoulder Ride
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.
5. The Snot Cyclone
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.
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.
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