“A rhythm guy”: the legendary guitarist Angus Young wanted to jam with
AC/DC have never been a band that needed too many bells and whistles. They knew what they were about from the second they played their first power chords, and no matter how many times trends have changed since they started, they were more than happy to push themselves forward by reminding everyone why they were one of the greatest rock and roll acts of all time. Although they didn’t have to change themselves all that often to keep up with the times, Angus Young has always been open to changing things up a little bit in terms of personnel.
Granted, it’s not like the band necessarily knocked it out of the park the first time they started playing music together. It was clear that their original singer Dave Evans was not going to cut it with his glamorous look, and once they had a squealer like Bon Scott behind them, they were finally able to get that rock and roll swagger that each of them had been looking for but could never quite put their finger on.
A lot of people may have thought that Scott was irreplaceable when he passed away from alcohol poisoning in 1980, but even if both he and Brian Johnson perfected what made the band sound fantastic, that was never the core part of their sound. Because if you’re thinking about the real identity of AC/DC, it came from the way that Angus locked in with his brother Malcolm on rhythm guitar.
Everyone was already going to remember the small guitar slinger in the schoolboy uniform, but Malcolm serves a far more pivotal role behind the rhythm. After all, the biggest piece of AC/DC’s guitar sound is that sense of swing, and that comes from what was going on with Malcolm’s right hand, especially considering the amount of force that he would use to punish every single chord he played.
But the art of rhythm guitar playing didn’t begin and end at AC/DC. They may have perfected it, but everyone from John Lennon to Jimi Hendrix understood the importance of having great rhythm before they got started doing anything intricate. Even among those legends, though, Keith Richards was the one responsible for making the guitar jump out of the speakers better than anyone else.
Compared to any other player that he has jammed with, Angus told Rolling Stone that Richards would be among his first choices when it came to people he wanted to share a stage with, saying, “I’d sit down with Keith Richards, do something. He’s a rhythm guy like Mal.” And considering Richards’s pedigree, he seems to be completely fine with hanging in the background.
Listening back to those classic Rolling Stones records, Richards definitely had a voice on lead guitar, but he was far more interested in pumping out the riffs. Given the fact that the rhythm section has all the power in the band, he would have much rather had someone like Mick Taylor put the final cherry on top of the arrangement rather than trying to add something else to his list of responsibilities.
But more than anything, the key behind both Richards and Angus is that both of them knew their lane better than anyone. Mick Jagger may have wanted the Stones to be a bit more eclectic than they were, but Richards graduated from the same rock and roll college that Angus did, and they never forgot that school’s mission statement: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
