Read Youngs : The Brothers Who Built Ac/Dc (9781466865204) Online
Authors: Jesse Fink
The huddle around it was a hundred thick with locals and tourists, not absorbing it, not pondering its message, but photographing it with their iPhones to put up on Instagram or standing in front of it for happy snaps to load up on Facebook. I waited patiently to stand in front of it, but when I got my chance I was disappointed. The only thing that elevated what I superficially took to be a fairly rudimentary and not that interesting pastel work were the anguished figure's famously haunted eyes. Never mind that in other rooms meters away there was much better art hanging on the walls and no one was standing in front of those to get their picture taken. This painting had just sold for $120 million. It was
important
. It was expected of me to be in total awe and then shuffle along. This was serious
art
.
I wanted to have it bore into my bones. To be swept away. To be moved. But I felt nothing. I left the building to disappear into the bustling streets of Midtown, untangled the headphones for my iPod and put on
Back in Black
, just $9.99 on iTunes. Even though by then I'd heard the album a thousand times, it took one simple riff by AC/DC to do what one of the most celebrated paintings of history could not.
Jerry Greenberg, president of Atlantic Records from 1974 to 1980, the executive who can take credit for overseeing the band's rise to the top in America, felt exactly the same when we talked weeks later: “
Buh, buh da da, buh da da
âit's absolutely incredible.” I had to pinch myself that the man who signed ABBA, Chic, Foreigner, Genesis and Roxy Music was singing
AC/DC
to me down the phone from Los Angeles.
The piousness of art, its inherent elitism and suffocating snobbishness is everything the YoungsâAngus, Malcolm and Georgeârail against but what these remarkable Scottish-Australian brothers have done is more than get lucky with a formula. What they've achieved with their music over the past 40 years through dedication, unwavering self-belief and a smattering of musical genius is no more and no less than art in its own right. But you don't find this art displayed in museums. This isn't art that was created to be bought and sold by moneyed families or hedge-fund managers. It's art that doesn't even want to be called art. It doesn't need to be called art. It just
is
.
It's this world-class talent combined with their astonishing humility that makes the self-effacing and fiercely private Youngsâthree Hobbits of hard rock from a big family of eight: seven boys, one girlâso enduringly compelling.
The brothers have composed not only some of the most stirring rock musicâif not musicâof all time but amassed a body of work more diverse and creative than they are ever given credit for. Their impact on the history of rock and especially hard rock has been nothing short of immense. Remarkably, a fourth musical brother, Alex, who was a young man in 1963 when George, Malcolm and Angus left Cranhill, Glasgow, with their parents, William and Margaret, for Australia, stayed behind to eventually get signed as a songwriter by The Beatles' Apple Publishing and saw his band, Grapefruit, come under the wings of John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
In fact, I would argue no set of brothers, not even the Gibbs of The Bee Gees or the Wilsons of The Beach Boys, has had such a profound impact on music and on popular culture around the world as the Youngs. Their songs have been covered by superstar acts ranging from Shania Twain and Norah Jones to Santana and Dropkick Murphys. Their music has been so penetrative that Australian palaeontologists named two species of ancient arthropod after them:
Maldybulakia angusi
and
Maldybulakia malcolmi
. “They are both diminutives,” explained Dr. Greg Edgecombe of the Australian Museum, “and are related and have gone and left the shores of Australia to conquer the world.”
Their tedious criticsâand to this day there are many; they've never quite gone away, but eased off in recent years, having realized the more they complain, the more
AC/DC
makes fools of themâcontend that all their songs sound the same. Some of them do. The Youngs don't want to fiddle with what is clearly working for them. But those critics fail to understand a very important point. It's their very lack of boundary pushing that is a form of boundary pushing in itself.
Mark Gable of The Choirboys, an Australian band given their start by George Young and best known for their hit “Run to Paradise,” gives the best description I've ever heard of what the Youngs manage to do in their music: “Before I wrote âParadise' I decided to use only three chords. This restriction or boundary, if you will, creates better art. If you're allowed to do anything at all, invariably you will show your weaknesses. But if you work within the bounds of what you know best, its expansion seems to go on forever.”
That
AC/DC
doesn't touch on different styles of music, one could argue, is a form of laziness. Then again, you could say it's a form of brave creativity of its own. Not many musicians could work within such narrow music parameters yet come up with songs that sound new and fresh every time you hear them. But the Youngs do. Consistently.
AC/DC
never,
ever
sounds stale.
Says former Atco Records president Derek Shulman, probably best known for signing Bon Jovi and for reviving
AC/DC
's flagging career in the mid 1980s: “I agree, 100 percent. They have no need to further push boundaries. They have set up their very own boundaries, to which no other band can come remotely close. They were and are leaders and have never been followers and this is something that 99.9 percent of other rock bands should realize and understand if they really want to become a legend, as
AC/DC
surely are as a band.”
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
The Youngs' songsâthey have written and recorded hundreds between them over close to half a centuryâhave their own stories. Why have they endured and resonated with hundreds of millions of people and inculcated such fierce loyalty and outright fanaticism?
AC/DC
concerts are not just concerts. They are rallies held under a band logo that is as powerful as any flag. What has made “It's a Long Way to the Top” a virtual national anthem in Australia? Why is “Thunderstruck” routinely played at NFL games in the United States and soccer matches in Europe? Why, above all other bands in the world, did a festival in Finland elect in 2006 to have
AC/DC
's entire catalog performed live by 16 acts (including a military band) for 15 hours straight? What prompts citiesâMadrid, Melbourneâto name lanes and streets after them? Why are there legions of Angus Young impostors on Facebook? Why is “Back in Black” frequently sampled (without permission) by hip-hop artists and mash-up DJs; used in network television, commercials and Hollywood films; licensed to gaming and sporting corporations; and played in helicopters and tanks on the battlefield? At the Battle of Fallujah in Iraq in 2004, American Marines blasted “Hells Bells” from giant speakers to drown out the call to arms coming from the city's mosques.
What is it about
AC/DC
's music that is so regenerative and restorative? That transmits that power to make us change the way we feel, alter our outlook, give us the strength we need to get through our darkest moments?
There's even a tour operator in Port Lincoln, South Australia, who's found that playing
AC/DC
to sharks attracts them like no other music. Matt Waller told Melbourne's
Herald Sun
: “We know
AC/DC
's music works best by trial and error ⦠I've seen the sharks rub their faces on the cage where the sound is coming from, as if to feel it.”
The answers to these questions, whatever they are, strike at the heart of what makes the Youngs' music exceptional.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
And it all began with the brother who rarely shows his face in public.
George Young, who turned 68 in 2014, stopped playing on his own records with Flash and the Pan, another project with longtime writing and producing partner Harry Vanda, in 1992. He has kept his hand in with production, most recently helming
AC/DC
's
Stiff Upper Lip
in 2000 to add to the music he co-produced for the band with Vanda between 1974 and 1978 and again in the late 1980s. Most famous as rhythm guitarist for The Easybeats, he was also co-producer with Vanda for Rose Tattoo and The Angels (aka Angel City), and co-wrote with Vanda songs such as The Easybeats' “Friday on My Mind” and “Good Times,” Stevie Wright's “Evie,” John Paul Young's “Love Is in the Air” and Flash and the Pan's “Hey St. Peter,” “Down Among the Dead Men,” “Walking in the Rain” (covered by Grace Jones) and “Ayla,” the latter memorably and erotically used for a dance scene in the Monica Bellucci movie
How Much Do You Love Me?
. The sight of Bellucci gyrating to it is not a memory easily erased.
“I keep many records at home and I try various pieces of music as I work on my films, which sometimes throws up surprises,” says the film's director, Bertrand Blier. “I like âAyla' very much.”
George is the “sixth member” of
AC/DC
, the leader, the coach, the stand-in bass player, drummer, backup singer, mimic, percussionist, composer, business manager and svengali.
AC/DC
is as much his band as it is Angus's and Malcolm's.
Anthony O'Grady, Bon Scott's friend and founding editor of the 1970s Australian music newspaper
RAM
, spent several days on the road with
AC/DC
throughout 1975â76. When we meet in Sydney's Darlinghurst he's wearing a newly minted replica of
AC/DC
's first T-shirt, circa 1974, on which the band's name had been daubed in white house paint.
“George used everything he'd learnedâmostly to his detrimentâfrom The Easybeats,” he says. “It's one of those stories about, âYou can be in a band that has an international hit and end up in crippling debt. This time is going to be different.' And it was. He would like to have done it himself, I'm sure. But, by God, he certainly programmed Malcolm and Angus to do it without surrendering control to record companies, management or agencies.
“Don't
deviate
. That's what he drilled into Malcolm. Angus was the electricity and George and Malcolm were the power station. They directed the flow. And they were never distracted by musicianship. A number of times Malcolm has said to me, âAngus can play some really clever jazz stuff, but we don't want him to play really clever jazz stuff.'”
As for George's two younger brothers in
AC/DC
âAngus, lead guitarist, who turned 59 in 2014 and Malcolm, rhythm guitarist, who turned 61ânot much needs to be said. They are so recognized, so adored all over the world that they are almost above introduction, having come up with some of the best songs and most memorable guitar riffs in rock. It's impossible to separate them. They are, as they are with their guitars, utterly symbiotic while dedicated to very specific roles. It wasn't always so. They started out trying to outgun each other, according to
AC/DC
's original singer, Dave Evans.
“They always had a healthy rivalry between them on stage,” he says. “In the beginning both Malcolm and Angus played lead and the duels on stage were great to witness as they would go head to head and try to outdo each other. Angus was finally given the sole responsibility of the lead guitar and he relished it. The early songs especially have so much energy and that never diminishes.”
Indisputably, Angus is the star. The “atomic microbe,” as Albert Productions, or Alberts,
AC/DC
's Australian record company, once described him in a print ad in the American music press. A diminutive talent so freakish and whose “crunchy, humbucker-driven sound” is so distinctive
Australian Guitar
magazine anointed him the best guitar player Australia has ever produced.
As a showman he is almost without peer, one of the most enduring live attractions in rock 'n' roll. David Lewis, music writer for the late British music newspaper
Sounds
, evocatively described Angus's “frenzied schoolboy lunacy as he traverses the stage, making Chuck Berry's duckwalk look like a paraplegic's hobble and oozing sweat, snot and slime like some grotesque human sponge being savagely squeezed by the intensity of his own guitar playing.”
Or as Bernard McGovern said in the London newspaper
The Daily Express
in 1976: “Angus is not a schoolkid but a crazy Scots rocker. His onstage antics ⦠include throwing tantrums, smashing things, tearing up school jotters, smoking, ripping bits off his school uniform and tossing them into the audience, falling down and skinning his knees, sticking pins through voodoo effigies of teachers, and playing a very effective rock 'n' roll guitar while lying on his back shrieking and kicking.”
Lisa Tanner, a former Atlantic Records staff photographer who contributed some exceptional
AC/DC
images from the 1970s and '80s to this book, remembers Angus putting so much into his performances that he would literally vomit.
“After or during the first song of the set he would come offstage and hang his head in a trash can and puke while still playing guitar,” she says. “The first time I saw him do it I was with [Atlantic Records promotion executive] Perry Cooper and I was like, âIs he okay?' Perry replied, âYeah, he does that every show.'”
Even today, though quietened down by age and creaking joints, in televised interviews there remains something almost child-like about Angus. His dedication to practicing and playing his guitar has been the obsessive habit of a lifetime, according to O'Grady: “He was the precocious kid. He could express himself on guitar far better than he could express himself through schoolwork or language, and he was encouraged to do so. [It was always a case of:] âDon't bother Angus; just let him play.'”