Angus & Malcolm Young

The most famous twin guitar attack in the world detonated from Burwood in Sydney’s western suburbs – the
working-class music hotbed where William and Margaret Young emigrated to from Scotland with their six kids in 1963. Malcolm was 10 and wee Angus, six.

The Young clan were musical. Although oldest brother Alex was part of The Big Six (who backed Tony Sheridan after The Beatles walked out on him), it was big sister Margaret who played the family LPs by Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino and Muddy Waters.

While Mal strummed along and Ang re-stringed an old battered banjo to join in, another big brother, George, was riding a sonic tsunami as guitarist in the chart-topping Easybeats. The Sydney slum band’s sleazy R’n’B sound inspired Easyfever and riots of schoolgirls descended on the Young home and trampled Malcom and Angus. Little wonder the brothers became fixated on rock’n’roll and let their studies at Ashfi eld Boys High slide. Soon they were both free from school and playing in Burwood’s thriving garage band scene while holding down shitty day jobs – fi tter and turner Malcolm selling bras for Berlei and playing in Velvet Underground, and Angus as a compositor for porn mag Ribald and gigging in Tantrum.

After a blooding in the studio as Marcus Hook Roll Band, the boys formed AC/DC, named for a warning sign on Margaret’s sewing machine and, also at her suggestion, fronted by Angus in the tatty school uniform that stayed welded to his body as he rushed between gigs and jams.

Although Angus was always intended as the most visible member of the band, AC/DC has always been Malcolm’s – he founded the outfi t in 1973, wrote the music and became the business, brains and brawn as they began their long ride to stardom.

With ‘conspiratorial uncle’ Bon leading the way, AC/DC played their first gig at Brighton Le Sands
Masonic Hall and began touring in Bon’s $90 Holden, earning $30 a week (dope and scotch – and endless Kit Kats for Angus – on top), supporting everyone from Lou Reed to Kings Cross tranny Carlotta. The band subsisted on fast riffs, fast food and faster women and soon suburban dances gave way to festival stages, concert halls and Countdown sets and the wider world beckoned.

AC/DC’s arrival in London in 1976 preceded punk and sent shockwaves through the industry. Soon the US were demanding the stage antics of Angus and the power riffing of Malcolm. The brothers’ extraordinary
telepathy – Mal’s rocksteady rhythms and Angus shredding and spasming solos – made for scorching live shows and fuelled six seminal hard rock albums produced by brother George.

AC/DC became a juggernaut and head-banging and air-guitaring to Young/Scott/Young compositions became a rite of passage for all Aussie kids. Angus and Malcom became the twin titans of riffage and the purveyors of a sound now recognised as Sydney in excelsis. Four weeks after burying Bon in 1980, the Youngs replaced him with Brian Johnson and uncoiled Back in Black, the album that cemented their legend and today stands as the fifth highest selling album ever, accounting for 42 of the band’s 200 million total sales. Ang and Mal haven’t looked back since, and today stand with the Rolling Stones as rock’s premiere live exponents.

Although they now live mainly abroad, both Angus and Malcolm still call Sydney home and live here for part of the year. And 35 years after laying down their first album in a Castlereagh Street studio in the Sydney CBD, AC/DC last week released Black Ice, their 16th album. In 2008, the blues brothers from Burwood remain forever Young. 

LIFELINE

1963 Youngs hit Sydney from Glasgow. Mal is ten, Angus, six
1965‘Ang & Mal’ trampled at their Burwood home at peak of ‘Easyfever’
1972 Angus quits Ashfield Boys High but keeps the school uniform
1973 AC/DC form from ashes of Sydney garage bands
1976 ‘Long Way to the Top’ becomes a hit. AC/DC conquer UK
1980 Bon Scott dies. Back in Black hits #1. Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain teaches himself guitar to it.
1988 Malcolm leaves band to dry out
2003 Inducted in Rockn’n’ Roll Hall of Fame
2008 Release Black Ice, 16th studio LP

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