LIFE AC/DC

“I am writing to you yet again to complain about your sons’ behaviour at school. All of their teachers have come to me with a range of complaints from abusive language and obscene gestures to obstreperousness… [Angus’s] uniform is filthy, his knees are constantly bruised, his eyes blackened, his nose running. Won’t you please, Mrs. Young, have a talk with Malcolm and Angus to help us try to make them into responsible citizens?”—Headmaster R.K. Lanning, Ashfield Boys High School, Sydney, Australia, circa 1964 IT’S A LONG WAY TO THE TOP… …if you want to rock and roll. And that was all Angus and Malcolm Young ever wanted to do. From their unruly youth in Australia to electrifying small-stage tours to selling out stadiums, all on the strength of roof-raising songs…

AN IMP IN A BLOODRED crushed-velvet schoolboy outfit held 50,000 rock and roll fanatics in the palm of his hand. Not literally, as he had his hands around a classic Gibson SG guitar. But he had the audience rapt. Diminutive and drool-flecked, Angus Young, then 60 years old, tore into a 12-minute guitar solo. Throughout the wailing, Young duckwalked across the mammoth stage at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts. He jammed away while standing on a hydraulic lift that rose three stories above the thunderstruck crowd. He crashed to the ground and kicked like a toddler having an epic temper tantrum—and he never missed a note. The year was 2015, during AC/DC’s last world tour. But if you had closed your eyes, it could have been 2002, or 1982, or…

The Young family’s first run-in with black ice—and snow drifts, blizzards, and a Siberian blast so cold it froze the sea—came in the winter of 1963. From London to Glasgow, the United Kingdom got a punishing dose of snow, sleet, and ice. It was enough to make one want to move from dreary Scotland to sunny Sydney. And that’s just what the Young family did. AC/DC’s architects, Malcolm and Angus, were born into a large Scottish brood—Malcolm on January 6, 1953, and Angus on March 31, 1955. Their father, William, and their mother, Margaret, had eight children: Steven, Margaret, John, Alex, William, George, Malcolm, and little Angus. Life was tough on the rough streets of Cranhill, a neighborhood of Glasgow. A criminal element hid barely under the surface, work was…

AC/DC made High Voltage in 10 days. More specifically, make that 10 nights. Big brother George and Harry Vanda knew they had a world-beater in AC/DC, or at least in parts of AC/DC, as a full-time rhythm section had yet to come together. Australian record label Albert Productions had trusted George and Vanda’s instincts since the days of the Easybeats. (Albert put out that band’s records.) But nobody was about to stick the greenhorns in AC/DC in a studio and give them piles of cash to experiment. First, it would have ruined the band’s from-the-hip appeal. Second, the band didn’t have the hours to devote to studio explorations. “We used to finish a gig at about two in the morning then drive down to the studio,” Malcolm told Mojo magazine…

ANGUS YOUNG is five-foot-two. His short stature has never gotten in his way. If anything, his height—combined with his onstage duckwalk, crowd mooning, floor spinning, and boundless energy—has given him a tremendous, Tasmanian Devil–like charm. But being so tiny means Angus has small hands. Thankfully Gibson SGs can have small necks. Part of Angus’s attraction to his signature guitar was simply about ergonomics. Of course, a lot of it was also about style and sound: It didn’t hurt that Pete Townshend windmilled on one or that the guitar’s body resembled demonic horns. “It had a really thin neck, almost like a custom neck,” Angus told Guitar World in 1984 of his first Gibson SG. “I liked the SGs because they were light. I tried Fenders but they were too heavy…

Next to nobody knew that Angus Young and AC/DC made their U.S. debut at Austin’s Armadillo World Headquarters on July 27, 1977. But that didn’t stop Young from taking over the club and doing a righteous Texas twister impression as he whirled into the audience. “Angus Young dove into the crowd and was carried for as far as his guitar cord would allow him to go,” remembered Al Rendon, a photographer at the show. “He was literally walking on people’s hands.” Texas rock promoter Jack Orbin may have gotten the deal of the century: four AC/DC shows for $1,000 each. The rare American fan, Orbin was convinced the band could conquer the States. Let There Be Rock’s sales didn’t back up the promoter’s faith. The American edition of the LP…