Malcolm Young
Co-founder and rhythm guitarist of the hard rock band AC/DC who led it to commercial success
MALCOLM YOUNG, who has died aged 64, was the rhythm guitarist with the Scottish-australian hard rock band AC/DC, which formed in 1973 and has sold more than
200 million albums.
AC/DC has been unusual in that what went on behind closed doors has stayed that way, with few members of the press or public privy to the comings and goings of their various band members. What is clear is that Malcolm Young had the final say on every important decision, even though his younger brother Angus – the flamboyant lead guitarist, famous for his schoolboy stagewear – was the group’s most visible member.
Interviewed in 1990, Malcolm said of the brothers’ relationship: “We have tiffs all the time, but musically we tend to think pretty much the same. I think we battled more before we were in a group, because we didn’t have to keep anything together then.”
Born into a poor Glasgow family on January 6 1953, Malcolm Young emigrated 10 years later with his parents and two of his three siblings to the Burwood district of Sydney, where he developed an interest in blues and rock and roll.
His older brother George became a pop star with the Australian group the Easybeats, famous for their 1966 hit Friday On My Mind, and encouraged Malcolm and Angus to form bands of their own.
At first their musical direction was a far cry from the sledgehammer riffage which would make AC/DC famous. “For a while, before we got AC/DC together, I went off rock and roll a bit,” Malcolm later recalled. “We were into jazz chords and progressive music … But that only lasted a year, because really we grew up on rock and roll, and we’ve been progressing through rock and roll ever since.”
After a spell with a New South Wales band called the Velvet Underground (no relation to the more famous American group of the same name), Malcolm Young formed AC/DC in late 1973 and invited Angus and the singer Dave Evans to join the line-up. Three years of playing gigs in front of unforgiving crowds in working men’s clubs helped to instill a toughness in the band, an impression that was reinforced when Bon Scott replaced Evans as the singer in 1974.
In 1976 AC/DC moved to Britain, where they achieved significant international success with albums such as Let There Be Rock (1977) and
Highway to Hell (1979). Further recognition came in 1980 with the
Back in Black album, released as a tribute to Scott, who had died of alcohol poisoning in February that year. With a new singer, Brian Johnson, Young led the band to great critical and commercial success, touring the world and playing theatrical, high-volume sets in huge stadiums.
The group’s music rarely deviated from blues-influenced rock, but AC/DC did not follow the established pattern for such performers, being unwilling to indulge in backstage debauchery. Asked why AC/DC remained so true to their musical roots, Malcolm Young explained: “If you look at the Beatles, they started out as a rock and roll band, playing in Hamburg. They became really successful. And then they started doing things like Sgt Pepper and
Magical Mystery Tour, but eventually they came back to playing straightforward rock and roll like Get Back. We’ve learned from bands like that that it’s best just to stay where you’re at: you’re going to come back there anyway, so why leave in the first place? Why not simply work better and harder at what you’ve got?”
In 1988 Young was obliged to sit out AC/DC’S Blow Up Your Video world tour in order to undergo treatment for alcoholism. “I could feel things were going downhill for me,” he later recalled. “I was losing my enthusiasm for everything – the group, life in general. It was just the drink, dragging me down. I had to pack it in.” In his absence, AC/DC’S rhythm guitar parts were played by his nephew, Stevie Young.
AC/DC were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003, and five years later they released their last album to date, Black Ice. The largescale tour which followed the album was up to AC/DC’S usual standards, with cannon fire and a large inflatable model of a lingerie-clad, middle-aged woman accompanying the song Whole Lotta Rosie.
In April 2014 a message appeared on AC/DC’S website announcing that Young was a taking a break “due to ill health”, a reference to encroaching dementia. However, Brian Johnson indicated that the band might continue, explaining: “We’re going to pick up guitars, have a plonk and see if anybody has got any tunes or ideas. If anything happens we’ll record it.” Once again Young’s nephew stepped into the breach.
Malcolm Young is survived by his wife, Linda, and their son and daughter.
Malcolm Young, born January 6 1953, died November 18 2017