The song Angus Young never gets tired of playing live
While some artists develop a superior attitude toward their biggest hits, even becoming resentful over the constant demand from fans to hear them night after night, AC/DC’s Angus Young takes the exact opposite approach. Young embraces the enthusiasm of the crowd, recognising the power these songs hold and the joy they bring to the audience. He understands that these hits are integral to the band’s identity and connection with their fans, and he never tires of delivering them with the same energy and passion as when they were first released.
There are plenty of tales in this realm. There’s the famous fact that Radiohead absolutely despise ‘Creep’. They once said, “We seemed to be living out the same four and a half minutes of our lives over and over again. It was incredibly stultifying”. Sometimes, they even go so far as to hurl abuse at fans who shout out for the track during their concerts.
The same went for Nirvana as Kurt Cobain once said, “I can barely get through ‘Teen Spirit.’ I literally want to throw my guitar down and walk away.” Robert Plant grew to hate ‘Stairway To Heaven’, Pete Townshend called The Who’s ‘Pinball Wizard’ “awful”, even Liam Gallagher declared “Every time I have to sing it I want to gag” about ‘Wonderwall’.
It must be tough, though, to try to keep up the same energy night after night to play a track that is often decades old by now. Especially if it feels like the crowd is only there to hear one song and one song only, it must get draining for a group of musicians who are impassioned by their newer music or merely want to evolve beyond their big hit.
However, Angus Young doesn’t seem to be impacted by that affliction. Instead, his favourite song to play live remains the band’s biggest and best-known hit. “I love playing ‘Back In Black’,” he said, claiming he’s never grown tired of their 1980 anthem.
To him, there’s joy in having a signature hit that people come to hear. “Instantly if you hear The Stones, you hear ‘Satisfaction,’ and I said, ‘Well, we got one better, we got one.’ And you know exactly who it is,” he said.
For a while, even the Stones seemed to be struck down by that song fatigue about their own classic hit. “I would continue to write and sing, but I’d rather be dead than sing Satisfaction when I’m 45,” Jagger famously said. However, he seems to have gotten over that, as he’s now, at the age of 81, playing the track almost 1000 times since its release in 1965.
Well, AC/DC have more than smashed that number. The band have played the track live over 1,200 times in far fewer years. But still, Angus Young can’t get enough of it as he feeds off the crowd’s energy each and every time.
