5 bands AC/DC’s Angus Young criticized in the 70s

AC/DC was formed by brothers Malcolm and Angus Young in Australia back in 1973 and changed the course of hard rock music, becoming a huge influence on countless musicians over the following decades. By the late ’70s, when they were still rising to international fame, Angus Young shared his honest opinions about other bands, criticizing some of them.

Of course, he was only in his 20s and still evolving both as a person and as a musician, so his views have likely changed since then and he even became good friends with members of some of those bands. But it’s interesting to look back and see what his perspective was on other bands from that era and the kind of music they were making.

5 bands AC/DC’s Angus Young criticized in the 70s

Led Zeppelin

The first group was Led Zeppelin but not because their music, it was their live show that bothered Angus. He went to see the legendary British group play but they were not doing a lot of their heavier songs that night. “I’ve seen that band live. They were on for three hours. For two-and-a-half hours, they bored the audience. Then at the end they pull out old rock’n’roll numbers to get the crowd movin’. That’s sick. They’re supposed to be the most excitin’ rock’n’roll band in the world”, he told Classic Rock magazine in 1977.

Although he wasn’t happy with what the band was doing during that era, he already said he was influenced by Jimmy Page, especially in the 60s, when he still was a member of The Yardbirds. He even had the chance to see them playing in Australia when he was still a young kid.

During the same interview he said Zeppelin was progressing the wrong way. “Led Zeppelin and all that have just been poor imitators of The Who and bands like that. That’s when I reckon it stopped. The rest I wouldn’t even call progressive,” Angus Young said

By 1977, when Angus talked about Zeppelin’s live show, AC/DC had already released some of their most famous albums like “High Voltage” (1975), “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” (1976) and “Let There Be Rock” (1977).

Three years later, in 1980, the two bands lost members tragically. AC/DC’s vocalist Bon Scott was replaced by Brian Johnson and Led Zeppelin decided they couldn’t go on without the drummer John Bonham, so that was the end for them.

Another band Angus Young said was progressing the wrong way The Rolling Stones, he preferred their early 70s albums and wasn’t not a big fan of what they were doing by the end of the decade. “Well, they musta progressed the wrong way. I’ll tell you when it stopped getting’ good – when the Rolling Stones put out Jumpin’ Jack Flash and Street Fighting Man. Past that, there’s nuthin’, (…) Them and the Stones. They’re not playin’ it. The Rolling Stones get up and play soul music these days. This is supposed to be rock’n’roll. Leave that to the people who do it best, the black people. If the Stones played what they do best, they’d be a helluva lot better. They’d probably find themselves at ease,” Angus Young said.

Keith and Angus are good friends and the Rolling Stones guitarist is a big fan of AC/DC. He talked about them in an interview made for the DVD about the Stones tour “Four Flicks“. (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage) “There are bands that you can’t tell who is doing what. Angus and Malcolm in a way, you know Angus gonna play the leads but their tightness is always impressive.”

“Being a guitar player is one thing, being a guitar player with another guitar player it’s to the power of. It’s not two guitars, it becomes five, six, ten. Doing these gigs together, we all enjoyed each other. I kind of like being taller than another guitar player as well (laughs). Bless their hearts, they are a great little bundle of energy,” Keith Richards said.

Deep Purple

Angus also didn’t have nice things to say about Deep Purple, even calling them a “poor man’s Led Zeppelin”. “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. So I always thought it was a poor man’s Led Zeppelin,” he told Guitar World magazine.

In 1975, when AC/DC was still not very well known, they played in the same festival as Deep Purple but things didn’t end up so well between the bands. As Young told ABC (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage), there was a fight between them and Deep Purple’s roadies. “We were playing on this pub on saturday and this manager got a hold of us and said ‘listen, can you guys (go) to Sunbury? Because the guy promoting was a bit worried, because he thought that Deep Purple doesn’t look like they’re gonna go on stage.”

“So he was a bit worried that no one was going to show. He didn’t want the kids to riot. So he wanted something as a safety. He thought, well ‘I’ll get AC/DC’. Maybe they can keep them at bay. Anyway, we got out there and we didn’t have gear, we didn’t even had a bass player. My brother George Young he filled in on bass, you know.”

Angus Young continued:

“There was a guy who drove us in, he got there and took one look at the festival and saw all these people with all this madness going and said ‘You’re on your own guys, I ain’t going no further’. He didn’t want his cab in the mud. So we got out, we walked through most of the kids, the audience, we must have walked about a mile and a half to get where the stage was. Then as just as we got there all these cars and these Rolls-Royces all come pulling down with Deep Purple.”

“They decided that they were gonna go on (on stage). We got out there and we were told that we were gonna go on at nine o’clock. Anyhow, everything was cool as far as we knew and then at the last minute something happened. I think it was our manager, somebody said that somebody threw a punch at our manager. (It) was one of the Deep Purple tour guys, so that was it. We were all bunched up in this caravan changing”.

“I remember we all came running out and it was quite funny in a way. Because we arrived there and we got a guy who was like a forklift truck driver, just a working guy. I remember him coming and saying ‘I’ll help. So we got on stage, there was this big security people. But I remember he dropped some equipment on some big guy and knocked him out. Then Bon (Scott) had someone like in a headlock and this guy was sort of spinning him (in the air). Bon was yelling out ‘Don’t worry, guys. I got him’ (laughs).”

Things got worse

“I suppose all chaos broke out and then I got on, on the microphone and I said (to the kids) in front ‘Hey, we need a bit of a hand up here. So they started come over the fence and we had like a standoff. The promoter said: ‘Deep Purple go on, then you can go on after’. So we thought ‘All right, we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt’. So Deep Purple got on and they played their set. I think they cut their set short and they walked off.”

“Then they started stripping the gear and the promoter started fighting with them, because he said ‘It’s a continuous festival and the kids had been waiting to see this band (AC/DC) all day, you know. Then again, (the fight) started up again. We never got to play in the end, but the next day was all you read about: ‘AC/DC in brawl with Deep Purple’. So in the end, it actually elevated us and more people came to see us,” Angus Young said.

Back then Deep Purple was fronted by David Coverdale, who later said that he became a good friend of the Australian group and they all laughed together about this story. The Hard Rock group even had Whitesnake as their opening act in the early 80s.

Yes

Angus Young defined in 1977 that seeing the Progressive Rock group Yes playing live was “boring”. “I don’t know anybody who’s gone to see any of those serious bands who’ve enjoyed it. They may say it was great, that the music was good, but somewhere during that set they were bored and were too scared to admit it. If I went to see somebody that was ‘musical’, I’d yawn my head off. I’d end up walking out to the bar. Bands like Yes would be a bore to see, unless they had some Sheila strippin’ off.”

“Well, even then, Hawkwind done that! That shows ya what they gotta resort to and yet people take them seriously. Yes would probably come on with a fantastic light show. I’ve never seen them, but they probably use a light show to cover up that they’re bored. Their music is borin’, and they’re not makin’ people jump!” Angus Young told Classic Rock magazine.

With Jon Anderson on vocals, Yes was formed in 1968, six years before AC/DC, and became one of the most influential Prog Rock groups of all time. By 1977, when Angus mentioned them they had already released classic albums like “Fragile” (1971) and “Close to the Edge” (1972).

Like the Australian group, Yes also changed their line-up several times over the decades. Until 2025 they have released 23 studio albums, the most recent one was “Mirror to The Sky” in 2023. Their only current classics members are the guitarist Steve Howe and the keyboardist Geoff Downes.

The Ramones

One of the most important Punk Rock bands of all time, The Ramones, were also criticized by Young back in the 70s. He wasn’t happy with the Punk movement and felt like they were just trying to copy bands like The Small Faces. “They’re not punk, they’re just shite,” he told Double J about the groups he saw in England. Then he talked about the American band: “You’ve got the Ramones and all that. They’re all trying to do a Small Faces thing”.

A few decades later Angus explained to Kerrang why he was not connected with Punk music. According to him, the lyrics were very political and they were singing about things he didn’t understand. The late Ramones vocalist and lyricist Joey Ramone was a huge fan of AC/DC and even called them many times one of his favorite bands.

Both bands curiously, were one of the few Rock groups who composed songs for movies inspired by Stephen King’s books. AC/DC wrote “Who Made Who” and other tracks for “Maximum Overdrive” (1986) and Ramones “Pet Semetary” for the movie of the same name released in 1989.