“That’s about it”: the only two bands Malcolm Young was a fan of
Can you imagine what it would be like to spend your entire life only listening to two bands in an endless cycle? Pretty boring, huh? Limiting yourself to any number of permitted artists or records, à la Desert Island Discs, feels like an impossible task for any music aficionado to be able to conquer and narrow down, but at least the BBC Radio 4 programme generously allows eight albums to be stuck with for eternity. Limiting yourself to just two bands is something only a lunatic would subject themselves to.
Even if I were to be stranded on a tropical island with, let’s say, only the entire discographies of The Rolling Stones and The Who for my entertainment, I think I’d rapidly reach the point where I start digging myself a sandy grave out of boredom. There are only so many consecutive days where I could handle Mick Jagger’s mockney wails, and I don’t think I could hack the riffs of Pete Townshend for much longer than that. As much as there is to enjoy about both bands, I require a little diversity in my listening habits, and voluntarily playing ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ ad infinitum suddenly becomes somewhat at odds with the song title.
However, some people on this earth are easily entertained, and if you only fancy being able to count the number of bands you actively keep tabs on on one hand, then all the more power to you. Focusing on a smaller selection might give you the upper hand in some respects, offering you the opportunity to become an expert on the output of your favourite act due to the sheer amount of detail with which you engage with their music.
It would probably be fair to say that AC/DC, despite all their successes, are a band that hasn’t really diverted much from a well-trodden formula of songwriting. They love to keep things simple, and the main attraction for many of their listeners is that they know they can rely on the Australian group to provide no-nonsense riffs and a good laugh to boot. If it works for them, then there’s no reason they should change their methods.
Given that, you could expect their pool of influences to not stretch far beyond the realms of the hard rock that they’re known for producing themselves, and their lack of flirtation with other genres is either suggestive of the fact that they don’t want to philander with what they’re good at, or that they have little to no interest in the styles of music that exist outside of their world. For guitarist Malcolm Young, his sources of musical enjoyment seemed to only come from two places.
In a 1992 interview with Classic Rock Magazine, Young was questioned about what bands he listened to while growing up, to which he replied “The Rolling Stones and The Who.” When questioned if he had any new loves and what he was mostly listening to at the time, his response was incredibly similar: “The Stones and The Who… and that’s about it.”
While Young would undoubtedly stay sane for longer on my previously imagined desert island, you have to question just why he seemingly never bothered to get into the music of other contemporaries or expand his musical horizons beyond these two acts. However, he did go on to reveal that he had gone with his brother, Angus, to see Led Zeppelin once. “We left after a couple of songs,” he confessed. An excellent guitarist he may have been, but music criticism clearly wasn’t his true calling in life.
