The singer Angus Young thinks defines rock ‘n’ roll
From day one, Angus Young wasn’t interested in playing anything that wasn’t pure uncut rock and roll. Throughout the beginnings of AC/DC, Angus and his brother Malcolm were focused on making the sound that created excitement in someone’s gut whenever they heard a distorted amplifier. While AC/DC may be the perfect example of what balls-to-the-wall rock and roll sounds like, Young points to this rock icon as the true example of rock at its finest.
Long before the Young brothers began putting together their rock and roll dreams in Australia, the stone age of rock was still being paved. Starting as an offshoot of the blues, acts like Chuck Berry were laying the blueprint for what good rock and roll was supposed to look like.
While the basis of many Berry songs relied on a standard I-IV-V blues progression, the way he incorporated stories of going to school and the joy of playing the guitar resonated with everyone who heard him for the first time. Although Berry’s music would turn artists like John Lennon inside out when he first heard him, it wasn’t until Little Richard came along that listeners tasted something wild.
Being confined to the piano for most of his performance, Richard was known for his magnetic stage presence whenever he played live. Clad in glamorous makeup and singing the fiercest music he could, Richard would shred his larynx throughout every song he sang, creating a massive clangour that would have its effect on millions of hard rock singers to come.
Although Young may have co-opted the look of Chuck Berry for his now-famous ‘duckwalk’ across the stage, he counted Richard among the most significant examples of rock music, recalling to Forbes, “Little Richard, I loved the energy. Still to this day if I want to hear rock and roll and that energy and songs that pack a punch it’s Little Richard”.
Considering the kind of music that AC/DC would go on to trademark, though, Little Richard could practically qualify as the group’s unofficial godfather. Aside from the basic chord structures of their tunes, the gargled-with-razorblades style of singing employed by both Bon Scott and Brian Johnson is taken from Richard’s playbook, sounding like the leftover sessions from songs like ‘Tutti Frutti’ and ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’.
Young would go on to say how Richard had a profound impact on Scott and even served as the inspiration to get Johnson into the band as the singer’s replacement, telling Rolling Stone, “Bon was a great fan of Little Richard. He always said that for someone singing rock & roll, Little Richard was the icon. He told us a story about how he’d seen Brian in a club in London really belting out a Little Richard tune. So he said it always stuck with him”.
Even though both Little Richard and AC/DC have built their careers off of playing basic chords over an uptempo rhythm, the musical chops were never at the forefront of either artist. It was all about the energy created both in the studio and onstage, and Young’s way of turning the audience inside out onstage is something that Little Richard had trademarked.