“The misfortune”: the artist Malcolm Young called the most boring bloke in music
One of the biggest crimes that any rockstar can commit is to bore the audience. Everyone is coming to a show to have a good time, but the minute that someone starts making it a celebration of themselves or stands onstage looking at their feet, there’s no reason for the crowd to give them any kind of energy back. Although Malcolm Young knew the ins and outs of being one of the finest entertainers in hard rock history, he knew enough to realise when someone wasn’t giving it their all.
Granted, out of every single rocker that came after him, Malcolm’s brother, Angus, managed to overcommit more than a few times. AC/DC was a fairly straightforward rock and roll outfit, but the minute that Angus stepped up in his trademark schoolboy outfit, he had the kind of energy of a rabid dog, constantly working his way around the stage with his signature duckwalk inherited from Chuck Berry.
But by the time the 1980s kicked in, people were looking for something different in a rock and roll band. The eras of both prog and punk had come and gone, and while many artists were able to ride those waves effectively, MTV was not always kind to the greatest acts of the 1970s, with most people ignoring the biggest names of the time because they didn’t translate that well to the small screen.
Even though the Australian rockers had enough clout to sustain themselves, the arenas of the world were about to get a whole lot more serious once U2 came in. They may have been playing the punk rock clubs around the time Back in Black came out, but tunes like ‘I Will Follow’ were meant to be played in stadiums, especially when Bono reached the top of his range to get the right feeling out of his voice.
“It was an anger-fuelled performance. We ripped the place apart.”
malcolm young
There are lines when it comes to performance, though, and Bono’s gift of gab caused him to cross it more than a few times. As much as people have fond memories of watching Rattle and Hum back in the day, it can be a tough watch for fairweather fans, with Bono’s speeches in the middle of his sets ranging from genuinely inspiring to pretty good to a touch annoying to finally insufferable when he starts chastising the crowd for not listening to him.
While Young would have been fine ignoring them for the rest of his life, he had more disdain for The Edge when the guitarist inducted The Clash into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, saying, “He was the most boring bloke I’ve ever had the misfortune to witness. We were at the side [of the stage], waiting, and getting madder and madder, even though we had sympathy [for the rest of The Clash]. So when they said to go, we fuckin’ took off. It was an anger-fuelled performance. We ripped the place apart.”
Although The Edge may have been merely trying to do right by his favourite band, it’s safe to say that those years of being too close to Bono onstage may have rubbed off. What he said that night was something people needed to hear, but no one comes to a rock and roll event to give a lecture, and when someone spends too long at the podium, it starts to feel like everyone’s back in school after a while.
And while Steven Tyler did have a milder introduction for AC/DC, Malcolm did make a good case for them burning the house down. Because as much as people love the idea of their idols thanking everyone they can during their speech, it’s better to let the music do the talking and get your point across one riff at a time.
