Angus Young biography: AC/DC’s last man standing
A NEW Angus Young biography tells of the band’s raucous early life before they hit the big time, detailing the guitarist’s rise to fame. READ THE BOOK EXTRACT.
NSW
Don't miss out on the headlines from NSW. Followed categories will be added to My News.
A NEW Angus Young biography tells of the band’s raucous early life before they hit the big time, detailing the guitarist’s rise to fame.
MICHAEL Browning was always on the lookout for groups to book. One morning he was on the phone with his colleague Michael Chugg, a Sydney-based promoter.
‘Got any new bands, Chuggy?’ he asked.
Chugg mentioned that there was a new act doing the rounds, featuring the younger brothers of George Young.
‘They’re called AC/DC. You should check them out.’
Browning didn’t need a lot of convincing. He’d been a huge fan of The Easybeats, and figured that an act with such impressive bloodlines was at least worth a look. He learned that AC/DC was currently on a national tour with Lou Reed — along with another former Easybeat, the troubled Stevie Wright — and booked them to play at the Hard Rock for mid-August 1974, when they’d be in town with Reed.
It was hard to miss Angus as the band got ready for their debut Hard Rock gig: he was the only person backstage in a school uniform, the letter A emblazoned on his cap, a lit ciggie clouding his face in smoke. Browning wasn’t convinced that Angus was with the band; perhaps he was a crazy fan, or someone’s truant little brother.
‘This is a venue for grown-ups,’ Browning thought to himself. ‘What’s Chuggy on about?’
Angus, Malcolm and the band plugged in and began to play. Now the veteran of a few dozen gigs, Angus had shed his anxiousness on stage and immersed himself in his character, the guitar-wielding schoolboy from hell.
He busted out some Chuck Berry moves and then collapsed to the ground in a pool of his own sweat, legs flailing in the air like a dying bug, all the while spitting out a mind-blowing solo on his trusty SG.
It was a remarkable thing to witness from close range, and Browning was left speechless.
At first he was concerned that Angus was having a seizure, but he soon recognised it for what it was: pure rock and roll excitement. And he could see the band had enormous potential.
‘I just couldn’t take my eyes — or my ears — off Angus and Malcolm,’ he admitted.
So just how did this dying bug routine come to Angus?
It seemed that he once tripped over while playing and, fearing humiliation, just kept going while prone. The accident went over so well it became part of his act.
‘Yeah, I tripped over a lead,’ he confirmed to a DJ at Sydney’s 2JJ, ‘fell on me knees ... I thought people thought I was a f***in’ idiot so I started bobbin’ around on the ground.’
As for his onstage hyperactivity — that was a practical decision. Angus figured that the more he moved, the less chance there was that he’d be hit by a flying can, or bottle, or worse.
That August night at the Hard Rock couldn’t have been more fortuitous for the band. Browning was still dreaming of managing the first Australian group to crack the international market, an ambition that dovetailed neatly with Malcolm’s plans for global domination.
After AC/DC’s set, Browning paid the band members $200 and asked what they had coming up.
Malcolm said they were playing shows in Adelaide and Perth, and then planned to swing by Melbourne again, on their way back to Sydney. Browning quickly booked them for some return Hard Rock dates.
* * *
THE Reed tour would prove to be a blessing, of sorts, for Angus and the group. At their gig in Adelaide on 17 August, former Fraternity singer Bon Scott was in the crowd, looking on as Angus tangled with a gaggle of hecklers at the front of the stage.
‘Hey,’ a yob yelled at the kid with the satchel, taunting him. ‘Come on down here, mate.’
Angus ran an eye over the unruly mob and stepped up to the microphone. ‘Go and get f***ed,’ he growled.
Then he and Malcolm kept playing, louder than before.
In the crowd, Scott looked around for a weapon to protect himself against the inevitable stage invasion and brawl, but it never happened. He was impressed by how Angus and Malcolm, guys so slight that a strong wind could bowl them over, had held their own.
Overall, though, the band’s cross-country odyssey was a disaster. In a classic case of mistaken identity, they’d driven all the way across the Nullarbor to Perth only to learn they’d been booked to play at a gay cabaret.
The promoter saw the name AC/DC, noticed that they’d played with the gender-bending Lou Reed and figured they had to be perfect. Yet rather than queens wearing sequins, he got a band led by two pint-sized brothers with lousy attitudes: one a chain-smoking schoolboy, the other dressed like a jockey.
The gig didn’t go well.
The band limped back into Adelaide. As they set up for another show, a beat-up old car came tearing in their direction, raising dust. At the wheel was a leering madman, his head stuck out the driver’s window, a mile-wide grin on his face. It was Bon Scott, still on the mend from a recent bike crash that had put him in a coma. Booze helped his healing and tonight he was feeling no pain.
As they played, Angus kept gesturing to Bon to come up and have a sing. Eventually he agreed, slugging from a bottle of bourbon as he took over the mic from Dave Evans.
Angus looked at Bon and whispered to Malcolm, ‘I’d be surprised if this guy can walk, let alone sing.’
Yet Bon proved he could do both, screaming his lungs raw as he kept pace with Angus, who was tearing it up on lead, and Malcolm’s turbocharged rhythm guitar work.
Afterwards, Bon talked with the Youngs, and the three learned that they shared Glaswegian roots. It wouldn’t be long before Malcolm was referring to Bon as ‘a brother’, even if their vastly different lifestyles (Bon had done time when he was seventeen on charges including unlawful carnal knowledge) and their age difference (Malcolm was 21, Bon 28) made Bon seem more like a dangerous uncle.
Scott offered his services as the band’s roadie/driver. The group was so skint they couldn’t afford even an oily rag, but the Youngs agreed he’d be a handy guy to have around — especially as their dislike of AC/DC’s current singer, Dave Evans, was intensifying.
‘I can play the drums too,’ Scott told them.
Malcolm and Angus, however, had a more immediate problem: they had no way to get themselves out of Adelaide.
Denis Laughlin, who until just days earlier had been their manager, had quit after the Perth debacle. Malcolm decided to put in a return-charges call to Michael Browning in Melbourne, to see if he could extend the band an advance on their upcoming dates at the Hard Rock.
Browning agreed in a heartbeat, and the band returned to the Hard Rock in mid-October 1974. After a well-received set, Angus and Malcolm had a chat with Browning in his office. The brothers had no idea that Browning had managed Billy Thorpe, until then the country’s biggest rock star. Thorpe was hard to handle; he was the kind of dude who loved a big entrance. At one festival gig he and the Aztecs were given a bikie escort; at another they flew low over the site in a private plane. He lived very large and spent way more money than he ever earned, which was every manager’s worst nightmare.
‘I’d be interested in managing you,’ Browning told the Youngs. The brothers didn’t say no, and a meeting was arranged in Sydney with Ted Albert and George Young.
When that went well, Browning got the gig as AC/DC’s new manager. But he hadn’t quite grasped what he was taking on.
‘I soon learned that I hadn’t signed a band; I’d signed a clan,’ he later wrote.
* This is an extract from High Voltage: The Life of Angus Young by Jeff Apter (Nero) out this week.
‘It’s a day of celebration’: Shock remarks at western Sydney rally
There’s a massive police presence across Sydney as evening gatherings on the grim anniversary of Hamas attacks get under way. At Lakemba Mosque, hundreds have massed as a police chopper flies overhead.
‘So, so devastating’: Mainstay deli shuts after 70 years
The closure of an iconic southwest Sydney deli has prompted its legion of customers to express how the institution – treasured like the Opera House – meant more than prosciutto and panini.