“I just go where the guitar takes me.”
― Angus Young
“I think that’s what it is with rock music. It helps you hang tough, I guess.”
― Angus Young
“I’m sick to death of people saying we’ve made 11 albums that sounds exactly the same, Infact, we’ve made 12 albums that sound exactly the same.”
― Angus Young
“Every guitarist I would cross paths with would tell me that I should have a flashy guitar, whatever the latest fashion model was, and I used to say, ‘Why? Mine works, doesn’t it? It’s a piece of wood and six strings, and it works.’”
― Angus Young
“We’re a rock group. we’re noisy, rowdy, sensational and weird.”
― Angus Young
“There’s more to playing the guitar than being able to split your legs.”
― Angus Young
“What we admit to is being a rock n’ roll band. From day one, I was a big Chuck Berry fan.”
― Angus Young
“I always liked the double cutaway. It looked like two horns. It’s like a red devil. So I went to the guitar shop, saw an SG that was sitting there looking rather lonely, and said, ‘Hey, that’s for me.’”
― Angus Young
“To me, meeting Buddy Guy was like meeting a piece of history.”
― Angus Young
“The misunderstanding out there is that we are a ‘hard rock’ band or a ‘heavy metal’ band. We’ve only ever been a rock n’ roll band.”
― Angus Young
“We came out in the midst of the hippie hangover. All this mellow music.”
― Angus Young
“I don’t know how many bands I saw who would try to wreck a hotel room, but I never wrecked a hotel room in my life! If I’m gonna sit there and throw a TV out the window… if it’s a good TV, maybe I should just take it home.”
― Angus Young
“When you sign on and say, ‘I’m gonna do this and that,’ it’s always good to say at the end of it, ‘I’ve done all I said I would do.’”
― Angus Young
“I don’t regard myself as a soloist. It’s a color; I put it in for excitement. It’s not great loss if a solo has to go. We’ve made songs without solos.”
― Angus Young
“I think we’re just one of those bands that we know what we do best.”
― Angus Young
“You’ve got to love what you do. You’ve got to like doing it, because it is a lot of your life.”
― Angus Young
“My part in AC/DC is just adding the color on top.”
― Angus Young
“A lot of people say, ‘AC/DC – that’s the band with the little guy who runs around in school shorts!’”
― Angus Young
“I honestly believe that you have to be able to play the guitar hard if you want to be able to get the whole spectrum of tones out of it. Since I normally play so hard, when I start picking a bit softer my tone changes completely, and that’s really useful sometimes for creating a more laid-back feel.”
― Angus Young
“It doesn’t take much for anyone to pick up anything I play – it’s quite simple. I go for a good song. And if you hear a good song, you don’t dissect it – you just listen, and every bit seems right.”
― Angus Young
“We knew when we started we wouldn’t be accepted overnight, that it was going to be a long haul.”
― Angus Young
“Riffs are a repeating thing. They come back to you. Some of the things on ‘Back in Black’ were ideas we had knocked around on tracks before that: ‘That bit – maybe we should take a chunk of that and slug it in here.’”
― Angus Young
“Actually, because I’m so small, when I strike an open A chord I get physically thrown to the left, and when I play an open G chord I go right. That’s how hard I play, and that’s how a lot of my stage act has come about. I just go where the guitar takes me.”
― Angus Young
“I saw Deep Purple live once and I paid money for it and I thought, ‘Geez, this is ridiculous.’ You just see through all that sort of stuff. I never liked those Deep Purples or those sort of things. I always hated it. I always thought it was a poor man’s Led Zeppelin.”
― Angus Young
“If I heard a noise at night, I’d think there was a burglar sneaking around; the first thing I’d do was check on my guitar.”
― Angus Young
“Key to longevity… drinking embalming fluid every year.”
― Angus Young
“There are all sorts of cute puppy dogs, but it doesn’t stop people from going out and buying Dobermans.”
― Angus Young
“I wouldn’t know any newer bands. We’re past the pimple stage.”
― Angus Young
“Yes, we’re still five little people with a noisy attitude.”
― Angus Young
“When I’m on stage the savage in me is released. It’s like going back to being a cave man. It takes me six hours to come down after a show.”
― Angus Young
“I remember one of the first gigs I played with that amp was at a local church. They wanted someone to fill in with the guitar and my friend say, ‘Ah, he can play.’ And so I dragged the amplifier down and started playing and everybody started yelling ‘turn it down!’”
― Angus Young
“Soloing was pretty easy for me because it was probably the first thing I’ve ever done.”
― Angus Young
“A lot of times you’ll hear bands and it’s a different sound coming out than what’s on stage. Because you can clean it up through a PA and make it sound completely different than what they really sound like.”
― Angus Young
“I never bothered with cars. I was probably one of the few kids in school who didn’t run around with hot-rod magazines. As I would be at home fiddling with my guitar, they would be fiddling with a car engine.”
― Angus Young
“That’s usually what happens with AC/DC: you make an album, and then you’re on the road flat out. And the only time you ever get near a studio is generally after you’ve done a year of touring.”
― Angus Young
“With AC/DC, we’ve always started with rock, and we’ve just kept it going. The critic’s view is always, ‘They just made an album and it’s the same as the last one.’ I’ll have fifteen of them, anytime.”
― Angus Young
“I can’t deny that Eric Clapton’s and Eddie Van Halen’s lead stuff has influenced a stack of people, but for me, it’s the rhythm thing that’s way more impressive and important to a band.”
― Angus Young
“The school suit allows me to be an extrovert. Basically, I’m the opposite of what I am on stage.”
― Angus Young
“I think what AC/DC does best is play live. That’s when everything comes together. Even after you make a studio album, when you go out and play live, that’s when you learn what being in a band is all about.”
― Angus Young
“I think the ’60s was a great time for music, especially for rock and roll. It was the era of The Beatles, of The Stones, and then later on The Who and Zeppelin. But at one point in the ’70s, it just kind of became… mellow.”
― Angus Young
“We just stuck to what we did best. Maybe that’s why people plug into us and go ‘They never change.’ We’re reliable. A bit like old shoes.”
― Angus Young
“We played by feel. We felt as though you could put us on any stage, and we would find a way to win that crowd over. We had that attitude: We can’t fail. You might not like it right now, but you will.”
― Angus Young
“The places we’d play were full of bikers, brawlers, and drinkers coming off a day of work looking for a good time, and all these guys would be looking at me like Hannibal Lecter looking at his next victim.”
― Angus Young
“My ambition was just to be able to play guitar.”
― Angus Young
“Australia is the place I know best.”
― Angus Young
“When we grew up, Australia was the land of opportunity; it really was.”
― Angus Young
“The media, being what it is, is always looking for the next new thing. There are still bands out there playing, no matter what the new thing is. The Stones go out there, and people go see them without records or even airplay.”
― Angus Young
“I never thought of us as a punk band, a metal band, or a new wave band. Just as a band band.”
― Angus Young
“Nothing happened overnight. Every country we went into, we started at the bottom. We knew that because the music we were playing and the attitude we had, we knew we’d be at the bottom and have to work our way up.”
― Angus Young
“Hearing a lot of early rock n’ roll records from a very young age was a huge influence.”
― Angus Young
“With seven boys and one sister, there was always a lot of music in the house. A few of my brothers were playing instruments, so it was from hearing that, coupled with discovering early rock, which triggered me to pick up a guitar and try to pick out the notes.”
― Angus Young
“You have to put a market value on what you do.”
― Angus Young
“The biggest tragedy we had early on was when Bon Scott died.”
― Angus Young
“We’ve been in front of really big audiences, and people have said there’s a couple of hundred thousand people out there, but I’ve never really noticed.”
― Angus Young
“When we were younger, playing a bar or a club, we did what we did to get as many people to like what we were doing. I wanted the person in the back of the room to like it as much as the ones in the front. That’s how I’ve always looked at it.”
― Angus Young
“I’ve always been someone who thought it didn’t matter where you were playing. I always shot for the best you could get. It never bothered me if it was small or it was big.”
― Angus Young
“For myself, I keep writing. I’ve got to do something. I can’t sit on my hands and do nothing.”
― Angus Young
“The guitar can go at a scream. It can yell at you.”
― Angus Young
“The mainstream media tend to lump everything together. To them, there’s no difference between Madonna, the Rolling Stones, or whatever.”
― Angus Young
“In the real world, people just get on with their lives. And that’s where AC/DC come in.”
― Angus Young
“If you know what you do well and stick to that, I think you can appeal to the different generations. You can strike a chord with them. I’ve got the brain of a teenager anyway.”
― Angus Young
“When we were younger and first starting out in Australia, we found that we sold more records by word of mouth because we were playing the bars, clubs, and small places and building a following. And as we got bigger, we still relied a lot on word of mouth.”
― Angus Young
“I’ve heard people say all our music sounds the same, but it’s usually just the people who don’t like us who say it.”
― Angus Young
“We never go overboard and above people’s heads. We strive to retain that energy, that spirit we’ve always had. We feel the more simple and original something is, the better.”
― Angus Young
“We don’t go around the world counting ticket and record sales, nor do we glue our ears to the radio to hear what’s trendy at the moment – we’re not that type of band.”
― Angus Young
“For the two hours I climb on stage, I become the schoolboy. But as soon as it is over, I get off stage and go home and get told to wipe my feet before I come in.”
― Angus Young
“The hardcore fans have hung with us because they go, ‘Hey, they don’t disappoint.’ And we stick to that style.”
― Angus Young
“Over the years, the critics have said, ‘They never change.’ Maybe the little guy’s got a new color of school uniform. I always thought, ‘Well, what were we going to change into?’ A jazz band? A keyboard band?”
― Angus Young
“The playing is great. The traveling is tough. It’s a hard thing.”
― Angus Young
“I plug into a lot of old rock & roll. Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis – I love all that stuff.”
― Angus Young
“Because we grew up in Australia, to find information about a lot of blues guys, I used to go to the library and find the jazz magazines. They didn’t even sell them at the time in news agents and stuff.”
― Angus Young
“Most people can do what I do – they can do guitar solos – but they can’t do a good, hard rhythm guitar and be dedicated to it.”
― Angus Young
“Blues is a big part of rock and roll. The best rock and roll got its birth in the blues. You hear it in Little Richard and Chuck Berry.”
― Angus Young
“From the first album, we’ve had songs like ‘The Jack’ that are blues based. We also did it in ‘Ride On,’ where we went into the blues.”
― Angus Young
“For me, New York has always been a city of unpredictability. You can never guess what’s going to happen next.”
― Angus Young
“I never thought we’d be put into any sort of historical thing. When we started as a band, it was a day-to-day thing. You sort of played a gig, you got your money and thought, ‘OK, where’s tomorrow’s gig?’ You never thought you’d get past a summer.”
― Angus Young
“When I was young, and I would see bands playing, I would dig the rock & roll and get excited, but when they would start to take the pace down, my attention span would start going.”
― Angus Young
“By the way he carried himself, you really thought that Bon Scott was immortal.”
― Angus Young
“A good record is one where I can tap my toes. I always say let your feet do the thinking.”
― Angus Young
“We’ve been involved in a lot of albums that were really rushed at the end.”
― Angus Young
“I’m constantly surprised when people say, ‘But you haven’t changed!’ It’s like saying, ‘You’ve got a wheel. Now why don’t you make it a square?’”
― Angus Young
“You’d be playing in a pub in the afternoon. Then late at night, you’d be playing a club. You got into that habit: ‘If we don’t play, we don’t eat.’”
― Angus Young
“When we play live, it’s always been a do or die effort. And everything we’ve ever done has always had that approach.”
― Angus Young
“’Rock Or Bust’ is a thing we’ve always done.”
― Angus Young
“Go back to the very beginning, when we first started playing in local pubs. We used to play Chuck Berry covers. Every now and then, we’d slip in one of our own songs, and we found that we were getting away with it – nobody seemed to know these were original tracks.”
― Angus Young
“I have this theory about us. When we started writing our own songs, we were 17 years old. When you’re 17, you write songs for other 17-year-olds. We stopped growing musically when we were 17. We still write songs for 17-year-olds.”
― Angus Young
“We’ve always been quite clear about how we want the songs to sound. If we can imagine the song being played at a party, and it gets people tapping their feet, then it’s in.”
― Angus Young
“In our hands, even the straightest lyric sounded shady.”
― Angus Young
“I used to run home from school, pick up my guitar, and lock myself in my room and play.”
― Angus Young
“I have the Internet, but the first that happens with it is my machine will crash. I get by when it’s operating. What would I know about updating?”
― Angus Young
“I’ve been shocked for a long time in a lot of circumstances. I get shocked when they say, ‘Hey, we’re paying ya.’”
― Angus Young
“We’re not the prettiest bunch of animals in the world.”
― Angus Young
“We always try to get new songs. That’s what AC/DC has always been about. You can listen to what we do, and you can go, ‘Well, it’s AC/DC, but it’s a new song.’ So that’s what we’ve always tried to achieve. So we’ve always got that style.”
― Angus Young
“There’s nothing worse than trying to patch something or make do. If there wasn’t something there in the beginning, it won’t be there at the end.”
― Angus Young
“I found that pedals were too much to fool around with. You’d be halfway through a solo, and the batteries would go dead and conk out. And if you tread on the lead going to the pedal, something would always go wrong. Or some crazy kid would pull the lead out just at the moment when you’re about to do your big number on it.”
― Angus Young
“In the studio, my brother and I have always used a lot of Marshall amps. We like to keep it pretty basic. We just use a couple of cabinets each – sometimes just one, if we think that’s enough. We mainly go for 100-watt and 50-watt heads.”
― Angus Young
“With guitar riffs, we always look for something that ‘s a little bit special. We’ve always found that it is harder to come up with something that’s nice and simple without getting something that’s hard but easy.”
― Angus Young
“I tried a Les Paul when I was a lot younger. I tried the Les Paul, and because of the weight of the thing, it nearly dislocated my hip.”
― Angus Young
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