LET THERE BE ROCK AGAIN
In the end it all came down to one simple thing: Angus Young could not imagine a life without the band in which he has played lead guitar since 1973. He was just 18 when he formed AC/DC with his brother Malcolm on rhythm guitar. All of 47 years later, this band is still what he lives for. As he says now: “It’s part of what you are.”
AC/DC’s new album, Power Up, is dedicated to the memory of Malcolm Young, Angus’s elder brother and former AC/DC rhythm guitarist, who died in 2017. It’s also testimony to the staying power of Angus, and his determination to carry on as his brother had wished, making good on a promise he made when Malcolm was near the end of his life.
There’s a reassuringly familiar look to the AC/DC line-up in 2020. Alongside Angus are three long-serving veterans: singer Brian Johnson, who replaced the late Bon Scott in 1980, bassist Cliff Williams, ever-present since 1977, and drummer Phil Rudd, in the band on and off, but mostly on, since 1974. And on rhythm guitar, keeping it in the family, is Stevie Young, Angus’s nephew, only two years his junior. Stevie first played with AC/DC on a 1988 tour when Malcolm was in rehab, and was the only guy considered for the job in 2014 after Malcolm’s struggle with dementia forced him to withdraw from the band.
Equally reassuring is the sound of Power Up (or PWR/UP as its sleeve will tell you). As signposted by the lead single Shot In The Dark, this is AC/DC as they have always been: the riffs lean and mean, the boogie heavy, choruses shouted out, and Johnson still sounding, as Angus once said, like a guy who’s had a truck dropped on his foot. With a classic, no-frills production by Brendan O’Brien, who worked on the preceding Black Ice and Rock Or Bust, Power Up is straight-shooting hard rock’n’roll from the masters of the art.
While the album sounds like business as usual, the story of the band in recent years has been anything but. Ever since Malcolm stepped down in the early stages of his illness, leaving Angus to lead the band, it’s been a bumpy ride. Twice, Angus has had to shuffle his pack. First when Phil Rudd was sidelined ahead of the tour in 2014, following his arrest on charges of attempting to procure a murder, threatening to kill, and possession of controlled drugs. In Rudd’s absence, Angus turned to Chris Slade, who first played with AC/DC in 1990. Then, halfway through that tour, with Brian Johnson unable to continue, having sustained ear damage that threatened to render him permanently deaf, Angus had to bring in a substitute, Guns N’ Roses singer Axl Rose, to finish the job. Then when that troubled tour reached its end in September 2016, Cliff Williams had announced his retirement, commenting that it wasn’t the same, that the band was “a changed animal”, without Brian and Phil and Malcolm. At that point it seemed that the
