The only two real “rock ‘n’ roll bands”, according to Malcolm Young
While they might be related, rock ‘n’ roll and rock music are very different entities. Emerging out of the blues and R&B, the former is a paternal ancestor of the latter and encompasses pioneers such as Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Elvis Presley, who were formative in the later genre of rock coming to fruition.
However, rock as a whole has a much different complexion, with it something of an umbrella term that captures many different offshoots. While some of it might be deeply bluesy, from the grunge of Alice in Chains to the stoner metal of Sleep, there is much of it that isn’t steeped in chromaticism, such as the alternative metal of Deftones or the boundary-pushing post-rock of Slint.
So, while electric guitars and playing loud might relate rock ‘n’ roll to rock music, there is much that separates them. This seems to be something that only the old guard fully understand, as they were there when rock ‘n’ roll first blew across the Atlantic and swept up the world and were also on hand to see it birth the multifarious beasts alive today thanks to the significant developments enacted in the 1960s by the likes of The Beatles, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and many others.
Of course, the music of the 1960s was closely tied to that of the 1950s rock ‘n’ roll that had inspired them as children, with The Beatles covering Chuck Berry and noting his influence, The Rolling Stones being deeply ensconced in the blues and R&B to this day, and Hendrix openly citing the likes of B.B. King and Albert King as his favourite axemen. Pioneers such as these provided the 1960s’ most eminent innovators with the blueprint off which to work and move culture and music into a much more experimental future, where there are many notable forms, not just rock ‘n’ roll, big band and orchestral as it was in the 1950s.
One band that formed off the back of the tremendous artistic leaps of the 1960s was AC/DC. Rock ‘n’ roll purists, the band always sought to take music back to the grooving form that had inspired them as children, with early performances including covers of Berry, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, as well as older, more traditional blues standards.
With in-house guitar hero Angus Young openly taking the duck walk from Berry and citing him, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis amongst his very favourite musicians of all time, it’s not hard to see how well versed in rock ‘n’ roll they are. This, in tandem with the musical essence of classics such as ‘You Shook Me (All Night Long)’ and ‘It’s a Long Way to the Top’, which openly mentions “rock ‘n’ roll” numerous times, firmly posits the group as rock ‘n’ rollers, and not another rock band.
This is something that the band’s late rhythm guitarist, Malcolm Young, also agreed with on Lola da Musica in 2001. He even asserted that his group and The Rolling Stones were the only two active outfits that could possibly be defined as rock ‘n’ roll.
He said: “There’s very few rock ‘n’ roll bands. There’s rock bands, there’s sort of metal, there’s whatever, but there’s no rock ‘n’ roll bands. There’s The Stones and us, and their sound’s completely different to us, so we really aim in an area that’s going back in time, with the sound still what the old analogue sounds, so we tried to even keep that, and, the sounds are bigger than digital.”
It makes sense that Young would pick the two bands. Of course, AC/DC would be considered one of the heavier rock ‘n’ roll bands, with tracks like ‘Back in black’ and ‘Thunderstruck’ feeling very closet o the 1980s pomp of heavy metal. But The Rolling Stones are perhaps the greatest example of a rock ‘n’ roll band ever.
Named the greatest by Bob Dylan, Keith Richards once famously said in 1969, “The biggest cliché in rock ’n’ roll is there’s no roll. They forget the roll, and they only keep the rock. The roll’s the whole damn thing. The roll is king. Unfortunately, most cats don’t get behind the roll.” Young seems to agree.
Asked what the difference between rock ‘n’ roll and rock is, Young aptly described that it’s a matter of feel and a swung groove. Demonstrating the difference between beats, by emphasising the traditional hi-hat and snare combination in both genres, he said: “Well, rock bands don’t really swing. Rock ‘n’ roll has a swing… you know a lot of rock’s not got that swing in the hi-hat”. Listening to a rock highlight such as Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and the verse section of AC/DC’s ‘Whole Lotta Rosie’, you can start to understand what he means; they move differently.
Young concluded: “(They) become stiff, they don’t understand the feel, the movement, you know, the jungle of it all. It’s a feeling.”
Whether it be Berry, Presley or AC/DC, rock ‘n’ roll is about groove, and it always has been. From the bluesy licks and the pentatonic scales to the hi-hat swing, there’s always been a definitive checklist that qualifies an act for the genre, not just the quiffs and suits of days gone by. They might be distantly related, but rock ‘n’ roll and modern rock have many differences; it’s about time, context and approach. Put it this way, there is virtually nothing that connects AC/DC with someone such as Yungblud.
