“No one could improve”: Angus Young on the last good political singer
Every band is typically playing with fire the moment they decide to get political in songs. Although it’s everyone’s right to say what’s on their mind and exact change in the world, there are bound to be a few people in the audience who either find it tedious when someone gets on their soapbox or turn someone off the minute they say something they disagree with. AC/DC was never considered a political group, and given where the political bent had gone, Angus Young thought no one had managed to improve on what Bob Dylan had to say.
Looking through all of the Australian rocker’s greatest hits, though, it would seem the band rarely tried to emulate Dylan. In the sage words of Mick Jagger, the phrase “it’s only rock ‘n’ roll” has never applied better to the Young brothers’ tunes, and listening to all of them in succession, it’s easy to see their pension for writing about being in a rock and roll band, sex, and everything else in between.
That’s not to say that they couldn’t take stands for what they believed in, though. Seeing them play in Moscow for the Monsters of Rock Festival is still considered one of the greatest festivals of all time, and when Highway to Hell came out, they exercised their right to free speech when their label thought it wasn’t very PC of them to have a guitarist on the cover with horns sprouting from his hat.
But that’s not where rock and roll was going in terms of political artists. Some of the biggest names to come out since then had been punk bands like The Clash, but by the time U2 started, there wasn’t nearly the same amount of punch to their songs. They still had a lot to say, but none of them managed to shake people up in the same way that Bob Dylan did in his prime.
While Dylan had always been slightly cagey about what many of his songs were about, he never tried to sugarcoat anything, either. ‘Blowin’ In the Wind’ is still one of the blunt series of questions to ever come in a pop song, and while the anti-war sentiment behind ‘Masters of War’ has been taken out of context in some respects, it’s hard not to see Dylan’s vitriol at those who make the most of their fellow men lower on the food chain.
Even though the thought of an acoustic guitar in Angus’ hands feels wrong to think about, he had to admit Dylan was the only one he saw hit the nail on the head when it came to politics, saying, “Let’s just say that when Bob Dylan stopped doing it, that was enough for me. I don’t think anyone could improve on him.” That didn’t mean that some people didn’t try to get even more vicious.
Although Dylan was able to paint with a broad brush, Rage Against the Machine got down to the nitty-gritty of politics in America and made the entire world groove to it, so it’s not like there wasn’t room to grow. That’s before getting to what eventually came out of the hip-hop scene later, with Public Enemy serving as one of the most militant outfits to come out of the 1980s, featuring Chuck D’s sharp critiques on how black men are treated in America.
Of all those that came later, though, none struck on anything as universal as Dylan had done. He may have had his fair share of moments that might not have worked, but hardly anyone could have struck a balance between their political agenda and moral compass than a record as The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan had done.
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