“We didn’t think he could play”: Malcolm Young on the person who should have never joined AC/DC
Bands are a lot like a marriage in many respects. There’s a lot of trust that goes into putting someone’s faith in four or five people when they get up onstage, and if someone isn’t holding up their end of the bargain, it’s usually time to either cut ties or start thinking of ways to work around their limitations. For as tight a ship as Angus and Malcolm Young had in their early days in AC/DC, no one was going to have their name in lights until they were sure they could come correct whenever they played together.
Because as much as people talk about AC/DC’s music being fairly simple, there are a lot more complexities than most people realise. The whole point behind their songs is that signature swing between the drums and the rest of the rhythm section, and if Malcolm can’t lock in with everyone with his rhythm guitar, there’s a good chance that everything else is going to fall apart pretty quickly.
Granted, it also comes from having the right frontman, and it was clear that Dave Evans wasn’t the right guy for the job when they started out. For what it’s worth, he was a magnetic stage presence and had the kind of charisma that other frontmen would die for, but since most of his appeal focused on his glamorous textures, it was clear he wasn’t the right fit. A version of AC/DC was bound to be too horrifying for words, and when Bon Scott got behind the mic, things got a whole lot nastier.
Even if he didn’t have the greatest voice of all time, Scott was the kind of frontman who meant every single word he sang. No other vocalist has ever been able to capture the feeling of excitement that comes with being in a rock band like Scott, but right as they were about to reach their creative apex with him behind the mic, it was clear that they needed to lose some dead weight after Let There Be Rock.
Although no one in their right mind was going to be paying attention to the bass guitar in an AC/DC song, Mark Evans was starting to become more of a nuisance. There wasn’t anything inherently wrong with him by any stretch, but compared to the rest of the band, him joining was far from the kind of low-end that they were hoping for.
Then again, Malcolm eventually spoke up saying that they didn’t really have a choice in letting Evans join the group, saying, “We had about four bass players [before Evans]. Mark actually got picked by our manager. We never wanted him, we didn’t think he could play properly. What we thought was that when we’d kicked on a bit more, we could override the manager and get in a good bass player.” And when Cliff Williams eventually got behind the four-string, it all fell into place a lot better.
That’s not to say that there was anything wrong with Evans’ playing. The title track to Let There Be Rock thrives on that rhythmic pulse that keeps building up the tension before the guitars come back in, but listening to that compared to ‘Back in Black’, Williams is right in the pocket and actually managed to make the best more musical, often playing slight inversions of the chord instead of the usual root notes.
So, really, Williams was the one who helped AC/DC become a little less simple than people thought. There are still rock fans who claim that they have a Neanderthalic approach to music, but if anyone sat down and tried to play everything correctly with a band, they’d quickly realise how much serious groove is required to pull even one of their tunes off.
