The hardest AC/DC song to play on guitar is still ‘Thunderstruck’
I know how this headline looks. “Hardest AC/DC song? What’s next, the most sophisticated Lolcat meme? The most narratively complex Mr Men book?” You’re not wrong to think that. The Australian hard rock giants have made a career spanning half a century out of being almost dogmatically dedicated to sheer simplicity. It’s almost punk in its way. You take a Chuck Berry riff, change it about a bit, put some boogie rock chords under it, and there you go. It always works, so why overthink it?
Well, the truth is, as always, a little more complicated than that. I’m not going to lie to you and say that AC/DC songs only sound simple and are actually deeply sophisticated songwriting marvels, Beatles-style. They really are as simple as they sound… until you try to play them. Think about it, how many times have you seen someone thrash out the chords to ‘Back In Black’ and discover that in their hands, it sounds like boiled trash?
That’s not due to the band using incredibly expensive gear and studio techniques either. Granted, top-of-the-range Gibson SGs and Marshall amp stacks don’t come cheap. However, the Young Brothers’ guitars sounded pretty much exactly the same at the start of their career, when they used whatever they could get their hands on. Thus, one can assume that its down to skill, not equipment, and after 50 years spent doing what they do, basically no-one can do it better.
The best example I saw was someone describing playing an AC/DC song was that it was like drawing a straight line without a ruler. An almost comically simple task in theory, but one that takes practise and precision to actually pull off. The best example of this comes from one of their best known songs, one that has opened a great many of their concerts and centers around Angus Young’s deeply underrated lead playing.
What is the hardest AC/DC song to play on guitar?
On first glance, ‘Thunderstruck’ is an alarmingly technical song by AC/DC standards. Storming out the gate with a blitzkrieg of hammer-ons and pull-offs that sound a lot more like something Eddie Van Halen would play than Angus Young. Then it just… keeps going. Young heads up and down the fretboard as the band starts raising some hell behind him. It’s one of the most exciting intros in the band’s back catalogue and that’s saying a whole hell of a lot.
While the lick sounds complicated on first glance, though, anyone who’s worked on their hammer-ons and pull-offs to any major degree can get it given an hour or two of practice. Then the hard part begins because for that intro and for basically the whole song, the band are playing to Angus’ cues. He’s leading the band through this song. Thus, if you’re doing the same for your band, then you’d best be sure you can keep the timing steady, especially when the rest of the band drops out.
That’s what makes the song with a bullet the hardest guitar part in the band’s back catalogue. Not because you’re having to memorise 43 different riffs and play them all lightning quick, but because you have only one. One that absolutely has to be perfect, and it lasts the whole song. A song that serves as a musical version of that old Bruce Lee quote, “fear not the man who has practised 10,000 kicks once, but the man who has practised one kick 10,000 times“.
After all, once you’ve practised this lick 10,000 times then you can play it one handed, with your strumming hand throwing the devil horns, while you’re onstage at Donnington dressed as a schoolboy. I think that’s what Bruce had in mind when he said that quote actually.
