“A guide all the way”: The advice from an ailing Malcolm Young that kept AC/DC going
With his customary schoolboy uniform and seemingly endless adrenaline as he zaps back and forth across stages, Angus Young, the guitar-slinging backbone of AC/DC, is a bona fide rock ‘n’ roll icon.
Bursting out of Sydney, Australia, in the late 1970s, AC/DC were beacons of chaotic hard rock music in a world then-dominated by disco and pop music. With punk, glam rock and new wave as rock music’s only hopes, the Glasgow-born Young brothers – with Angus on lead guitar and his older brother, Malcolm, on rhythm guitar – envisioned a return to classic rock’s roots.
Naming their band after a symbol on their sister Margaret’s sewing machine – the AC adapter read AC/DC, an abbreviation for alternating current/direct current electricity – the brothers christened their future with a literal lightning bolt: a band of raucous energy and vigorous performances that would be amplified against all popular music of the day.
The Young brothers’ penchant for iconography would continue as AC/DC grew into one of hard rock’s most formidable presences, breathing life into a new era of heavy metal bands – from their legendary sixth album, 1979’s Highway to Hell, to the second-best-selling album in history, 1980’s Back in Black.
Still, as AC/DC persist, they have been no strangers to tragedy, and while persevering through the loss of their vocalist, Bon Scott, in 1980, numerous lineup changes and fluctuating commercial popularity, another significant shift would come in 2014, when Malcolm was forced to retire from AC/DC after falling severely ill, battling lung cancer and later, dementia, passing away three years later, in 2017, at the age of 64.
His cancer had first been diagnosed and treated during AC/DC’s Black Ice World Tour in 2010, but even in the midst of the mayhem of touring and his worsening health, no hindrance was too big for Malcolm to attempt to overcome.
“Malcolm always said, ‘You keep going,’” Angus recalls of his brother, in conversation with The Sunday Post. “When he was sick, he had a lot of help on the Black Ice tour. He was on medicines. He was even putting down ideas. Whenever I was with him, he’d be saying, ‘We keep going as long as I can do it.’ Even when he was in hospital for operations, he was the same. He’d be going, ‘I want to be with you.’”
With Malcolm’s advice buoying AC/DC through turmoil, Angus resolved to continue the band’s legacy. “The worst part was the decline. Even to the end, he had a big smile on his face. That gave me a kind of joy. But I never thought it was the end for AC/DC. I’d been there from the very beginning with Malcolm. I always knew there would be something to do, putting together new tracks, live stuff or film footage.”
“I think Malcolm would have been proud of this record,” Angus reflected on their 2020 album, Power Up. “Some of these tracks are from around the time of Black Ice, the last record he played on. I said to him, ‘Maybe we should try and get as much done as we can.’ But he said, ‘No, we’ll get it later.’”
“In hindsight, I’m kind of sad in that respect, but I felt great I could work on these songs,” Angus continued. “I know he would have loved the way I put the record together for him. I was using Malcolm as a guide all the way through the recording. Anything he had done on his own – lyric-wise – I made sure I used them. I kept it the way he would have wanted it. Every time I pick up my guitar the first thing that enters my head is… I think Mal will like this riff I’m playing. That’s how I judge a lot of stuff.”
With Malcolm always in his mind, Angus has continued to solidify AC/DC as one of rock’s greatest bands, largely unparalleled in their vitality and iconic resonance.
