Youngs : The Brothers Who Built Ac/Dc (9781466865204) (44 page)

In New York, 1977, with two giants of Atlantic Records: marketing and promotion executive Michael Klenfner (
LEFT
) and cofounder Ahmet Ertegun (
CENTER
). Klenfner, widely regarded inside Atlantic as the band's champion, would get fired over his resistance to Mutt Lange as producer of
Highway to Hell
. Ertegun was a crucial player behind the U.S. success of the INXS-Jimmy Barnes cover of The Easybeats track “Good Times.”

One of a treasure trove of seldom seen AC/DC images from the
Powerage
sessions in Sydney, 1978, never before published in book form.
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT
: Malcolm Young, music journalist and later record-company executive Jon O'Rourke, and Angus Young.

“Malcolm no doubt was the leader of the band,” says
Powerage
engineer Mark Opitz. “George had had his day with The Easybeats. Not strongly, not overtly, but you could feel during
Powerage
Malcolm was starting to stake his ground a bit [in the brothers' pecking order].”

The underrated but incomparable Phil Rudd, the drummer who AC/DC cast aside for a decade and then reinstated. “Three notes get right to your soul whereas others can play 50 million and not touch you,” he says. “That's my style. I don't do a lot but I do it right.”

Phil Rudd (
RIGHT
) lights a cigarette for George Young during the sessions for
Powerage
, considered by aficionados to be AC/DC's best album. As a bass player George is “a little bit similar to how Ronnie Lane was with The Small Faces,” according to Mark Evans. “Very loopy and very notey, but he always picks the great lines.”

Mark Opitz (
LEFT
) with Harry Vanda recording
Powerage
. Says Opitz: “In a way it was AC/DC's
Sgt. Pepper's
. When we came to do
Powerage
, George, Harry, and the band did serious rehearsals at Studio 2 in Alberts. George playing bass with the band just out in the studio, Harry and me in the control room.” Opitz later produced the INXS-Jimmy Barnes cover of “Good Times.”

Possessed! Angus Young with Tony Berardini, the DJ who broke AC/DC at KTIM in San Rafael, California, and at WBCN in Boston. Berardini MCed their gig at Paradise Theater, Boston, 1978.

On stage at Royal Oak Theater, Michigan, 1978. “Angus and Malcolm both play off each other so well that it almost sounds like one massive wall of power,” says Rhino Bucket's Georg Dolivo.

“[Bon] was the best,” says Steve Leber of AC/DC's legendary and much-missed singer, here pictured at Cobo Arena, Detroit, 1978. “When he was alive there was nothing like it.” Could AC/DC have got as big without him?

Ex-Atlantic president Jerry Greenberg believes he was instrumental to AC/DC's success: “I supported them not only with coming down from the presidential office to the troops [and telling them] that they needed this band but also by writing the checks. AC/DC were very heavily in the red before they finally broke.” Greenberg was also behind the push to hire Mutt Lange.

The man who signed AC/DC to Atlantic in 1975, Phil Carson, playing bass with Robert Plant. “AC/DC saw me as their ally in much the same way that I was treated by Led Zeppelin,” he says. “AC/DC wanted that personal contact with the guy at the label who really had decision-making capabilities that could change their lives.”