Angus Young discusses the “most imitated in the world”
Not many bands get down to the meat-and-potatoes of rock and roll quite like AC/DC. From the first time Angus Young plugged in his amplifier, they were known for making some of the most hard-edged rock and roll anyone had ever encountered, featuring chord progressions that harkened back to Chuck Berry. Although Young was born out of the stone age of rock and roll, he still thinks every guitar player is taking cues from one guitar hero.
When Young was still coming up the ranks in his native Australia, he was finetuning his chops, working on various blues scales. Much like the British Invasion had started doing a few years before, Young wanted to make something that put some attitude into the sounds of Chuck Berry and Little Richard, following the lead of bands like The Rolling Stones with most of his lead work.
While the band worked as a decent blues rock band for a while, it wasn’t until Bon Scott stood behind the microphone that everything fell into place. Being the epitome of a rock and roll frontman, Scott was the last piece of the puzzle that turned the band from a decent rock band into a global sensation, giving Young the ultimate platform to become the all-star maniac behind the fretboard.
Before Young lit up the stage with his various antics, another band from England was already pushing the limits of what could be done on a performance platform. As AC/DC were cutting their teeth, Pete Townshend already had a clear vision of what rock and roll could be with The Who, creating a spectacle whenever they hit the stage through sheer noise and breaking his guitar at the end of every single set.
While Townshend may have had a singular vision for what he did, all of his conceptual ideas paled in comparison to what his onstage persona did for passive rock fans. Looking to mimic his wildman antics, many guitar players would end up co-opting Townshend’s signature flair, from the windmill strumming arm to the reckless abandon that he got into with Keith Moon and Roger Daltrey.
When talking about his various guitar influences, though, Young thought that Townshend stood alone as one of the most emulated guitarists, saying, “There are a lot of good guitarists in the world, but you just lose interest. It’s like if you saw Pete Townshend when he first started off, it was all bang, bang the hell out of the guitar. But the style he plays is probably the most imitated in the world”.
Despite Young carving out his stage banter whenever he takes the stage, there are more than a few tricks he has up his sleeve that echo Townshend’s moves. While he might never do the traditional windmill strum, Young’s way of grandstanding with only one hand on the guitar during a song like ‘Thunderstruck’ is indebted to what Townshend was doing just a few years prior.
More than anything, Townshend was the one who helped teach an entire generation of kids that sitting still and playing in front of a crowd wasn’t going to be enough. It was about passion, and no self-respecting rock star would make a name for themselves without giving their audience a show to remember.
