“Mentally screwed”: The AC/DC tour Malcolm Young walked out on
AC/DC are the classic example of a band that would play until they dropped. While they have faced some of the biggest setbacks that any group has ever had to endure, they’ve always found ways of coming back stronger, whether that’s dealing with Bon Scott’s death or having Axl Rose sub in for Brian Johnson during the 2010s. Even though they now have to continue without legendary rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young, one tour almost put the group’s founding member out of commission for good.
Then again, it’s hard to quantify what Malcolm brought to the group. The reputation of every rhythm guitarist tends to be overshadowed by the flashy guitar players, but while Angus can light up a crowd in his signature schoolboy uniform, the groove behind the band always comes from Malcolm’s right hand.
Look at a song like ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’, for instance. There isn’t much to the backing track besides brash open chords, but if you listen to any bar band and try to play the tune, it sounds incredibly stiff. That’s because Malcolm was the key to holding everything together, and even if not everything he did was flashy, it was about hitting hard and making the group swing in a more natural way than typical rock and roll.
As hard as the band played, though, they partied even harder. Despite alcohol poisoning being responsible for Scott’s demise, Malcolm had a harder time putting down the bottle at the end of every night. While it would be easy to chalk it up as a way to cope with their frontman’s death, Malcolm could see the wheels coming off by the time they started touring in the late 1980s.
He had spent so much time drinking that the wear and tear he put on himself had started to affect his performance. While most “off” performances would have probably still sounded transcendent to the naked ear, Malcolm knew that he was bound to become a casualty if he decided to keep going down that road.
Midway through the tour for Blow Up Your Video, Malcolm suggested that it was better for him to leave AC/DC than join Scott in the afterlife, saying, “I had a talk with Angus and I said, ‘How would you feel if I could just take a break?’ I was letting people down, and people were starting to get worried about me. I wasn’t braindead, but I was just physically and mentally screwed by the alcohol.”
It’s not like Malcolm didn’t have a good reason to leave. If anyone’s trying to kick the booze and start to get on the straight and narrow, having to play songs like ‘Have a Drink on Me’ every night is going to do nothing for their peace of mind. While Angus got his nephew Stevie to cover for him, it was all the more sweeter when Malcolm finally got back, eventually turning in one of the band’s greatest anthems on ‘Thunderstruck‘.
While Malcolm would keep going until he physically couldn’t do it anymore, the fact that he had to take a step off was a better indication of where his loyalties were. Many musicians might be in it for the money or for living the rock and roll lifestyle, but Malcolm would have rather left the tour if it meant that the audience got a better show than him barely hanging on.
