Malcolm Young named the only two rock and roll bands: “They don’t have the feel”
Rock and roll has never really been about a style of music. Those three words may have a broad spectrum of bands hanging over them, but there’s a difference between being an ordinary group and being on the same level as the true greats of the genre. As far as Malcolm Young was concerned, the only rock outfits that were left still standing were AC/DC and The Rolling Stones.
If you had to distil rock and roll down to a science, chances are that AC/DC would be its purest example. They may have come out years after the British Invasion and the psychedelic period, but the band’s interpolation of the blues into something a lot nastier is still the building blocks of what rock and roll should be.
Even without Malcolm in the picture after his tragic passing, their sound has still changed very little. Considering how many people get turned onto the band through the ballsy swagger of ‘Highway to Hell’ or the guitar lick in ‘Thunderstruck’, there’s no real reason for the group to go down the easy listening direction.
Though The Stones did have their sensitive side, Malcolm still had respect for what they did, saying, “There’s very few rock and roll bands. There’s rock bands, heavy metal and whatever, but there’s no rock and roll bands. There’s the Stones and us… Rock bands don’t swing. Rock and roll had a swing to it. [Rock bands] become stiff, and they don’t have the feel.”
That emphasis on rhythm has always been at the forefront of AC/DC’s music. When the Young brothers started putting their first riffs together, the cardinal rule was whether the song had a certain funk behind it. If it didn’t have any kind of swing, they would have probably ditched because of how lifeless it would sound.
The Stones have always been the same way. Outside of their ballad-heavy material, every song the band have made over their decades together has emphasised groove over everything. If you take anything off of albums like Sticky Fingers or Exile on Main St, the lead players were always Charlie Watts and Keith Richards, always keeping everything in the pocket and low to the ground.
For all of the great AC/DC songs written around the swing, modern rock acts usually do everything they can to smooth out those greasy parts of the mix. While many people like to line up music onto a grid and get the perfect take, capturing the sound of a band in the studio and letting the track breathe a little bit has always been the core behind any good AC/DC record, especially with Malcolm’s right hand laying everything down.
Even though every other hard rock band that comes after AC/DC has most likely taken something from them, they tend to forget the most important lesson of their music. You can try your best to dial in a guitar tone that sounds close to Malcolm and Angus and maybe gargle with enough razors to sound like Brian Johnson, but if you don’t have that groove ingrained in your system, you won’t get anywhere close.
