Top 109 Quotes & Sayings by Angus Young
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Scottish musician Angus Young.
Last updated on December 21, 2024.
The biggest tragedy we had early on was when Bon Scott died.
Hearing a lot of early rock n' roll records from a very young age was a huge influence.
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.
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.
I wouldn't know any newer bands. We're past the pimple stage.
There are all sorts of cute puppy dogs, but it doesn't stop people from going out and buying Dobermans.
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.
By the way he carried himself, you really thought that Bon Scott was immortal.
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?
When we grew up, Australia was the land of opportunity; it really was.
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.
A good record is one where I can tap my toes. I always say let your feet do the thinking.
The school suit allows me to be an extrovert. Basically, I'm the opposite of what I am on stage.
My part in AC/DC is just adding the color on top.
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.
You've got to love what you do. You've got to like doing it, because it is a lot of your life.
The guitar can go at a scream. It can yell at you.
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.
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.
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.'
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I just go where the guitar takes me.
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.
We came out in the midst of the hippie hangover. All this mellow music.
Key to longevity... drinking embalming fluid every year.
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.
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.
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.
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.'
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.
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.
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.
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.'
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.
I've been shocked for a long time in a lot of circumstances. I get shocked when they say, 'Hey, we're paying ya.'
A lot of people say, 'AC/DC - that's the band with the little guy who runs around in school shorts!'
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.
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.
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.
We're not the prettiest bunch of animals in the world.
We're a rock group. we're noisy, rowdy, sensational and weird.
In the real world, people just get on with their lives. And that's where AC/DC come in.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!'
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.
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?'
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.'
Soloing was pretty easy for me because it was probably the first thing I've ever done.
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.
Yes, we're still five little people with a noisy attitude.
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.
In our hands, even the straightest lyric sounded shady.
I think that's what it is with rock music. It helps you hang tough, I guess.
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