“The wildest thing”: The song that Angus Young said no one can beat
Rock and roll has never been about what was trendy at the time. Any pop star can manage to latch themselves onto a decent hook that sounds vaguely like everything else on the radio, but for any rock star, it doesn’t get much better than plugging into an amplifier and trying to get the most feral sounds that they can out of a couple of chords. And while there have been many people carrying the torch for the genre over the years, there isn’t anyone who knows the art of the power chord and loud amplifiers better than Angus Young.
Out of all the other iconic acts of the 1970s, AC/DC were always in it for the purest reasons. Many people like to get into the business only for the money and the fame, but even on the latest tours, the band are content to be the same no-frills rock and roll act they were when they were kicking ass up and down the Australian club scene.
And what’s even crazier is the fact that they have no real flashy effects to get them where they need to go. There’s not even a boatload of distortion on the band’s amplifiers whenever they play. After all, the real grit comes from the fingers rather than the effects, so it’s worth it to hear them punish their guitar strings rather than try to make something too delicate whenever they make a record.
When Angus and his brother Malcolm started making music, there wasn’t much they could be proud of on the charts. The entire world had gravitated to the world of the singer-songwriter, and no matter how many beautiful melodies those artists wrote, it would be a cold day in hell before Angus broke out the acoustic guitar and tried to channel his inner James Taylor.
During the Bon Scott era, most of their greatest tunes came from being passed down by artists like Chuck Berry. They could certainly respect blues artists when they could and love listening to people like Jimi Hendrix, but for Angus, there was no point in anyone trying to outdo what Little Richard could when he was first breaking out. As far as many people were concerned, that was the birth of rock and roll, and Angus was more than willing to take the plunge.
“I was never interested in modern-day sorta music. You put Little Richard’s ‘Tutti Frutti’ on and put the wildest thing from today next to it, and it sounds timid in comparison.”
Angus Young
When discussing his influences, Angus said that no other artist could even hope to touch what Little Richard did, saying, “I was never interested in modern-day sorta music. I get off on all the old stuff. All the other stuff seems poor in comparison, even the production. You put Little Richard’s ‘Tutti Frutti’ on and put the wildest thing from today next to it, and it sounds timid in comparison.”
But that’s because every single rock singer that has come out since then has tried to mimic what Richard was doing. There have been some influential singers that have taken different approaches like Ronnie James Dio or James Hetfield, but anyone wanting to sing hard rock has been a descendant of Little Richard whether they know it or not, whether that’s Robert Plant wailing over Led Zeppelin tracks or even Chris Cornell bringing his own feral shriek to the grunge era.
So when Angus talks about no one being able to come close to Little Richard, it’s not about someone not having the talent to match him. Anyone can spend their lives trying to hone that scream and reach for those same high notes, but if that kind of voice sounds exciting to modern ears, imagine what it sounded like back in the day when the only other singer on the scene was Bing Crosby.
