When Malcolm Young dismissed David Bowie’s rock and roll credentials: “Disco with a little bit of blues”
There aren’t many bands that have rock and roll running through their veins like AC/DC. Even if they have fought through all kinds of hell to be rocking at this stage, there is always that sense of joy that comes from their music that brings to mind those days when someone first plugs their guitar into an amplifier. Although Malcolm Young may have a lot of joy in hearing the old guard of rock and roll, he knew that some people weren’t exactly as authentic as others when it came to rock.
Then again, Young’s definition of rock is a lot different than what many other people think about when it comes to rock and roll. It would be easy for someone to classify anything from The Beatles to Led Zeppelin to Pink Floyd as rock and roll, but for Young, the core definition of the genre goes as far back as Chuck Berry and ends somewhere around the middle of The Rolling Stones’ career.
And that means developing a lot of styles that are based around the blues. Make no mistake, it was still rock and roll, but the minute that Young started blasting away on power chords and Brian Johnson came screaming in on a track, no one mistook them for any other genre. Even if they did seemingly make the same song over again, other artists were interested in making things more complicated.
The progressive rock movement may have been a pretentious art form as far as Young was concerned, but there were people willing to push the boundaries outside of typical rock. David Bowie may have earned his spot in rock history as a glammed-out superstar playing T-Rex-style guitar riffs, but the minute Highway to Hell was released, Bowie left that life behind to start working on krautrock and the beginnings of post-rock on albums like Low.
Once he started making strides towards the mainstream on Let’s Dance, though, AC/DC were unbeatable on the power of their riffs alone. The order of the day may have been people that looked good on MTV, but whenever anyone listened to a song like ‘Back In Black’ or ‘For Those About To Rock’, there was nothing else that mattered other than those crunchy riffs and Young’s brother, Angus, strutting up and down the stage in his schoolboy outfit.
“That Bowie stuff, which is disco with a little blues. We could do that, but it’s got nothing to do with rock ‘n’ roll.”
malcolm young
Bowie may have had his place in the mainstream, but Young never considered his approach to be authentically rock and roll, saying, “We try to keep it exciting all the time. We’ve never put anything different on a record, just guitars and drums. We’ve never expanded. Other bands are playing disco or synthesizers, or that Bowie stuff, which is disco with a little blues. We could do that, but it’s got nothing to do with rock ‘n’ roll.”
Granted, Bowie never saw genres in that way. His music was always on a spectrum of different genres, and while he did dip his toes into rock and roll, nothing was off the table throughout his career, which made him able to do something as off-the-wall as Earthling, as tasteful as Young Americans, or as emotionally raw as Blackstar.
So even though AC/DC are more true to what the concept of rock and roll means to millions of people. Bowie’s place in the history of music goes beyond that form of music. He was a part of the cultural landscape of music, and that meant catering to any style that came his way that he felt he could wrap his voice around.
