The one genre Angus Young said he would love all his life: “The foundation to build on”
You might think that AC/DC were all about “high voltage rock and roll” and producing the most simple yet effective riffs in the business, but there was considerably more nuance to what guitarists Angus and Malcolm Young were offering to the band.
The group themselves may have always self-identified as a rock and roll band, but in actuality, some of their music was a lot closer aligned with heavy metal, and also had its origins in blues rock from the 1960s. Influenced by the likes of The Rolling Stones and fellow Australian outfits like The Easybeats, there was plenty for the band to look up to as a source of inspiration, but for these acts, their influences went even further back.
Mick Jagger has often cited the likes of Muddy Waters as being a major influence on the Stones’ sound, and considering the Young brothers’ interest in what the British band were doing, it makes complete sense that they too would be enthralled by the simplistic yet stunning approach taken by the masters of the blues that had come before them. Before long, they were writing their own material in a similar vein, taking cues from these forefathers of the blues who were among the first to turn it into a rockier style.
Of course, AC/DC would go on to make their sound even heavier, and it was off the back of this shift in dynamics that they became one of the biggest-selling bands of all time, but that doesn’t mean that they were suddenly dismissing all of the great music that had inspired them to become a group in the first place.
In fact, during a 1992 interview with the Australian edition of Playboy, Angus Young proclaimed that despite these alterations to their sound, the blues was always something that he could return to. After discussing how The Rolling Stones used to use blues songs as a way of warming up in the studio with interviewer Vic Garbarini, Young went on to state that his own approach was generally similar, and that blues music acted as a base for all of their best ideas.
“Anyone can play a blues tune,” Young proclaimed, “but you have to be able to play it well to make it come alive. And the secret to that is the intensity and feeling you put into it. For me, the blues have always been the foundation to build on. I’ve always liked the blues, but not only Muddy Waters or Robert Johnson. Any good blues tunes will get my attention, whether it’s by Eric Clapton or Albert King or whoever.”
Naming two classic bluesmen of an older generation alongside two who were closer to his own time shows that Young has a fascination with the style of music, regardless of what era it comes from. While there’s a considerable amount of additional heaviness to the music of AC/DC, you can certainly see that it shares a similar rawness and edge to the music that these early pioneers like Waters and Johnson were known for producing.
