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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781250096524 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Press |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2015 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| File size: | 312 KB |
About the Author
Martin Huxley is the author of Nine Inch Nails, Aerosmith, and AC/DC, all for St. Martin's Press. He lives in New York City.
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AC/DC
The World's Heaviest Rock
By Martin Huxley
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 1996 Martin HuxleyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-09652-4
CHAPTER 1
WHO MADE WHO
Glasgow, Scotland, in the early 1960s was a rough, crowded industrial town whose depressed economy offered few options for working-class families. At the same time that much of Britain was experiencing economic hard times, a postwar boom was still in force in Australia. That underpopulated continent, bursting with natural resources but lacking sufficient population to fully exploit them, was particularly eager to encourage struggling Brits to emigrate to its shores.
In 1947 Australia had instituted a massive immigration program. Despite a significant influx of economically beleaguered Britons yearning for the challenge of a new frontier, newcomers arrived in numbers that fell short of the government's expectations. The Australian government subsequently instituted the Assisted Passage Scheme, which allowed immigrants to sail southward for a mere ten pounds (about twenty-five dollars at the time) a head. Many working-class Scottish families answered the call.
One such family was that of William and Margaret Young, who emigrated to Australia in 1963. As Angus, the last born of the Youngs' eight children, later told the British music weekly Sounds, "Me dad couldn't get work in Scotland. He found it impossible to support a family of our size, so he decided to try his luck down under."
Malcolm Young was born on January 6, 1953, in Glasgow. His brother Angus came into the world on March 31, 1955 (although some accounts would later push the date of Angus's birth back by one to four years). Malcolm and Angus were the youngest of eight children, the next in line being George, whose own musical experiences would soon make him a crucial influence on Malcolm and Angus. Just above George in the Young pecking order was brother Alex, who'd become a professional musician before the rest of his family left Scotland, playing in the Big Six, which succeeded the prestardom Beatles as Hamburg-based English rocker Tony Sheridan's backing group. In the late sixties, Alex would record for the Beatles' Apple label as a member of the avant-garde combo Grapefruit.
But Angus and Malcolm's introduction to rock 'n' roll came through their eldest sibling and only sister, also named Margaret, who while growing up in Glasgow had become a devotee of the raw early rock 'n' roll sounds of such American artists as Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Fats Domino, whose U.S. releases found their way into town through the city's seaport. Margaret's listening habits introduced Angus and Malcolm to the gritty, elemental power of black American music. It was one of the most important lessons they'd ever learn.
"When I was six or seven, [Margaret] took me to see Louis Armstrong," Angus later recalled. "I liked the way he smiled, the big teeth. Some people, you get goose bumps when they perform, and he was one. You could tell he was honest, a good man and a happy man."
Thanks to the influx of recent immigrants, Australia's national character in the first half of the 1960s was rather schizophrenic, divided between the traditional ties of its British immigrant population and a more modern obsession with the bigger-than-life symbols of American pop culture. This cultural schism was reflected in the decidedly shaky early stirrings of Australian rock 'n' roll.
Like many aspects of down-under culture, Australia's version of rock music started off several steps behind its American cousin. In America the rock 'n' roll explosion had been brewing in the steady erosion of social conventions that had begun around the end of World War II. In geographically and culturally isolated Australia, teenagers, for the most part, had yet to rebel against their parents, and kids and adults still pretty much listened to the same music. While Britain would outgrow its own awkward early attempts at mimicking American rock 'n' roll and begin carving out a rock 'n' roll tradition of its own in the early 1960s, Australia — where U.S. R&B discs were rarely released, denying young listeners access to the raw material that inspired the explosion of white American rock 'n' roll — would have to wait several more years to produce a credible homegrown rock act. Indeed, the most prominent of Australia's early rockers, Johnny O'Keefe, was but a pallid imitation of his American predecessors.
While the three eldest Young boys, like their father, settled into factory jobs, it didn't take George Young long to discover his true calling. Shortly after the Young family settled in the Sydney suburb of Burwood — an immigrant enclave that played host to a thriving garage-band scene — the budding guitarist/songwriter put a band together with a quartet of fellow transplants, Brits Stevie Wright (vocals) and Snowy Fleet (drums) and Dutchmen Harry Vanda (guitar) and Dick Diamond (bass). It's ironically appropriate that the Easybeats, which would soon prove to be Australia's first truly significant rock band, was comprised entirely of non-Australians.
The Easybeats began playing in late 1964 and quickly distinguished themselves from the local competition. Savvy, sharply dressed and sexier than other Australian combos, with a riveting frontman in Wright, the fivesome possessed a genuine performing and songwriting flair that marked them as the first Australian group to possess the talent, charisma and vision to potentially break into the international pop scene.
Through their manager, Mike Vaughan, the Easybeats met Ted Albert, a twenty-something music-publishing mogul who represented the third generation of Australia's oldest and most respected music-publishing house, J. Albert and Son, which had been established in the 1880s. The company would eventually emerge as a key force in the Australian rock scene and play a major role in the career of AC/DC, but in the mid-1960s it was just getting its feet wet in the pop market. Convinced that Australia was on the verge of a homegrown popular-music revolution in which the Easybeats could play a significant role, Ted formed Albert Productions, a production company offshoot of J. Albert and Son, and launched the new venture by signing the Easybeats.
Albert's gamble quickly paid off. In the summer of 1965 the Easybeats became major Australian stars with their second single, "She's So Fine," which began a run of hits. "Easyfever," an Antipodean answer to Beatlemania, was soon a national phenomenon. One day Angus Young returned home from school to find that hundreds of young girls had descended upon his family's house, hoping to get a look at his pop-star brother. As Angus later recalled, "One day George was a sixteen-year-old sitting on his bed playing guitar, the next day he was worshipped by the whole country."
While the scene undoubtedly planted some awareness of stardom's fringe benefits in the young Angus's mind, a more immediate concern at the time was the fact that the local police had set up barricades around the house and wouldn't let Angus through.
The Easybeats did manage to achieve some degree of success overseas. The band's biggest hit was the anthemic 1967 single "Friday on My Mind," which rose to number 6 in Britain and number 16 in the U.S. and has remained a rock standard, thanks to its perfect encapsulation of the frustrations of nine-to-five life and the emotional release provided by the weekend. By the time that song was released, the Easybeats had relocated to London. But while the band scored a few more minor international hits and remained major stars in Australia, a combination of managerial inexperience and loss of musical focus kept them from further expanding their audience, and in 1970 the Easybeats disbanded.
CHAPTER 2PROBLEM CHILD
One cannot understate the influence of the Easybeats on both Australian musical history and Angus and Malcolm Young. As the brothers grew increasingly frustrated with the staid, conservative society in which they were growing up, they turned to rock 'n' roll as an outlet for their frustrations.
"In my family," Angus recalled, "music was always there, probably because there were a lot of brothers that were playing music from different generations. Music was never looked at as a bad thing, it was always looked at as a good thing ... There was always a record player around or always a radio on. And I never heard my father say, 'You can't listen to that.' They always felt, the more music the better."
But Angus and Malcolm were not encouraged by their parents to follow Alex and George's lead in pursuing music as a career choice. For Angus, the Easybeats were "definitely an inspiration," but "Mal and me were kept away from them. In school, you got frowned upon because obviously your brother or your family was an influence to rebel. At that time, it was better for us not to be sort of pushed at it. My parents thought we'd be better off doing something else."
So it was that Mr. and Mrs. Young were probably less than pleased when their two youngest children revealed their plans to pursue careers as rock musicians. "We didn't get much encouragement," stated Malcolm, adding, "Dad was still asking George when he was going to get a proper job."
As it happened, Angus's and Malcolm's academic careers didn't bode well for their chances in more conventional fields of endeavor. Malcolm, upon arriving in Australia, had wasted little time in earning a reputation as a schoolyard brawler. Angus, despite showing a talent for art, was an unenthusiastic student — and the frequent recipient of corporal punishment, which was still common in Australian schools. "I was caned the first day," said Angus. "The guy said, 'What's your name?' 'Young.' 'Come out here, I'm going to make an example of you.'
"I was an unhappy schoolboy," Angus confessed. "Always played truant. I was a bad pupil and only really liked art because you could do what you liked. I once made a six-foot-long fly out of papier-mâché which scared the shit out of everyone on the bus home.
"It was so military," Angus recalled of his educational background. "They seemed to take great pride in keeping you in the dark. They didn't seem to want you to know what was going on in the rest of the world. I was really surprised at the way people lived outside Australia when I left it. People were getting away with a lot more than I ever did."
When the Easybeats hit it big, Angus's headmaster vented his anti–rock 'n' roll sentiment by ordering him to cut his hair and telling him that his big brother had entered "a profession for perverts." This brought out the feistier side of Mrs. Young, who informed the educator that Angus's family would be the ones to decide when he would have his hair cut. "She didn't like us being bullied about by authority," Angus said.
"I wasn't really a bad sort of kid," insisted Angus. "I mean, I listened. If I wanted to learn something, my old man used to say, 'Angus, do yourself a favor. There's a library down the road, go in there.' When I'd truant, that was the first place I'd head to. It was great. There'd be racks of the magazine Down Beat from America which had articles on Muddy Waters. And I liked reading about that. So I much preferred going there because they didn't sell it at the newsstands."
As is common for working-class Australian kids, Angus was given the choice of leaving school just before reaching the age of fifteen. He opted to cash in his chips after being presented with what he would later describe as "a very fine option — 'Either you leave or we'll throw you out.' If you weren't there for so many days a year, they figured you weren't worth teaching, so they got rid of you."
As Angus recalled, "At fourteen and nine months — that was the legal age you could leave school — the headmaster lined us all up and said, 'Well, morning guys, you're at that age. You know, the leaving age.' He sort of said, 'Well, Mr. Young, you're lazy. You're never here, so ...'"
In Australia at the time, according to Angus, "There were not many choices out there, really, when you come from a sort of a working-class background. The options for me and Malcolm both were the factory."
Actually, Angus put in stints as a janitor and typesetter, while Malcolm worked as sewing-machine maintenance mechanic in a brassiere factory. While toiling at their unfulfilling jobs during the day, both Angus and Malcolm whiled away their evenings playing with a variety of local bands.
In 1971 the eighteen-year-old Malcolm had joined the rather oddly named Velvet Underground. Not to be confused with Lou Reed and John Cale's groundbreaking New York–based band of the same name, these Velvets had formed in Newcastle, England, in 1967 but had recently relocated to the Sydney area and specialized in covers of songs by American West Coast bands like the Doors and Jefferson Airplane. With Malcolm (who insisted on adding several numbers by his then idol, Marc Bolan, to the set) and Australian vocalist Andy Imlah added to the lineup, the Velvet Underground became a popular attraction on Sydney's dance-club circuit. The gig allowed Malcolm to quit his job and begin earning a living from playing music.
A frequent onlooker at Malcolm's gigs was Angus, who would stand directly in front of the stage and stare awestruck at his brother. At the time, Angus — then sporting a skinhead haircut — was already wielding his trademark Gibson SG, jamming informally with friends and playing at home for Malcolm and his bandmates. Even then, Angus, who had received a few formal guitar lessons at age eleven but was for the most part a self-taught musician, wouldn't play any chords, just leads. "I jumped ahead when I was first starting out," he admits. "I learned a solo before I learned a chord."
Whatever Angus may have lacked in subtlety, he made up in style. "I was always small, and I'd go to those clubs right after school," he later told Hit Parader. "Most of the guys who were hanging out there were much older and really tough looking. For some reason they just took to me. They'd let me play with their bands, and once they found out that people were actually coming to see me play, they started advertising the fact that I was with their band."
The older musicians would often bill Angus as "the baby guitar star" — an appropriate enough nickname, since Angus was underage at the time. "The club owners used to say, 'How old is the little guy?' And we'd always have to lie and say, 'Oh, he's a dwarf.' That got me in."
Even then, Angus knew that this was what he wanted to do with his life. "I had drive. I wanted to do it and I knew I'd do it. I just wanted people to sit up and take notice of me ... I never mellowed. I never changed. I just stuck at it."
Following the Easybeats' breakup, George Young and Harry Vanda returned to Australia to work as a songwriting/production team for Albert Productions. The pair would eventually help define a vital strain of raucous Australian hard rock, working with AC/DC and other Australian acts like the Angels (aka Angel City) and Rose Tattoo.
At the time, though, George and Harry were working on an album of their own, Tales of Old Granddaddy, under the nom de disc guise of the Marcus Hook Roll Band. The project had begun in London as a casual, tongue-in-cheek diversion but took on a more serious aura after EMI's American division expressed interest in a full album by the pseudonymous outfit. In the process, Vanda and Young recruited George's younger brothers as supporting players.
"That was the first thing that Malcolm and Angus did before AC/DC," George later told Australian rock journalist Glenn A. Baker. "We didn't take it very seriously, so we thought we'd include them to give them an idea of what recording was all about."
By the end of 1972 Malcolm was working steadily with the Velvet Underground, often doing double duty at gigs by playing their own sets and backing up singer Ted Mulry, a member of the Albert Productions stable. But Malcolm was growing increasingly impatient with the Velvet Underground's unimaginative repertoire and was eager to be involved with music a bit closer to his own heart. So he quit, determined to start a new band that would be a more accurate representation of his own musical desires.
The Marcus Hook Roll Band project had had a profound effect on Malcolm Young, who decided that the standard process of overdubbing tracks one by one went against his idea of how rock 'n' roll ought to be made. He decided that his band wouldn't do that. Indeed, Malcolm had some very specific ideas about the kind of band he wanted to be a member of.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from AC/DC by Martin Huxley. Copyright © 1996 Martin Huxley. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Acknowledgments,
Introduction,
1. Who Made Who,
2. Problem Child,
3. It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll),
4. Bad Boy Boogie,
5. Show Business,
6. Ain't No Fun (Waiting Around to Be a Millionaire),
7. Send for the Man,
8. Shoot to Thrill,
9. Show Business,
10. Live Wire,
11. Riff Raff,
12. Dog Eat Dog,
13. There's Gonna Be Some Rockin',
14. Rock 'n' Roll Damnation,
15. This Means War,
16. This House Is on Fire,
17. Kicked in the Teeth,
18. Back in Business,
19. Rising Power,
20. Are You Ready?,
21. Shake Your Foundations,
22. Nervous Shakedown,
23. Guns for Hire,
24. Deep in the Hole,
25. Shake a Leg,
26. Shoot to Thrill,
27. Get It Hot,
28. Ruff Stuff,
29. Hell or High Water,
30. Hard as a Rock,
31. Ride On,
32. That's the Way I Wanna Rock 'n' Roll (AC/DC Album Discography),
About the Author,
Copyright,