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9 guitarists that AC/DC’s Angus Young praised
One of the most important guitar players of all time, Angus Young is the face and lead guitarist of AC/DC. He has been a huge influence on countless bands over the decades. An incredible songwriter as well, he co-wrote most of the band’s songs with Bon Scott, his brother Malcolm, and Brian Johnson.
Throughout his career, he has spoken about many artists, and Rock and Roll Garage has selected nine guitar players he has praised.
9 guitarists that AC/DC’s Angus Young praised
Jimi Hendrix
The first one obviously would be Jimi Hendrix, since he changed the course of guitar playing forever and influenced almost everybody, including Angus. By the time he had the chance to hear “Purple Haze” for the first time he already knew how to play the guitar a little bit and that song impressed him a lot.
“I could play guitar a little bit, but I really got focused on it around the years when I was about 12 into my teenage years, I started to focus more on it.”
“And around when I was about 13-14, that’s when Jimi Hendrix appeared on the horizon. And when I first heard the song ‘Purple Haze,’ I was totally enthralled. ‘How’s he doing that?’ I was just so impressed with it. When along came Hendrix, you kind of went, ‘Woah! This is another level on guitar.’ So I was very much a fan of that,” Angus Young told Guitar magazine in 2021.
Since he didn’t own a record by the late legendary American guitarist/singer, Angus Young never saw a photo of him for a while. He was so inspired by his songs that he finally went to a magazine store and “I found a little picture of this guy with a guitar, and I was going, ‘Wow! I wanna look that cool,’” he told Tiny TV 2020
Hendrix tragically died in 1970 at the age of 27, three years before AC/DC was formed. So he never had the chance to hear their music.
Eddie Van Halen
Angus Young also praised Eddie Van Halen, the late guitarist who a big part of the Rock scene says was the most influential guitar player after Hendrix. The AC/DC leader puts him in the same category as Hendrix as he said on the hardcover of the photo book “Eddie Van Halen” by Neil Zlozower (Via VNHD).
“AC/DC played on a bill with Van Halen back in 1978 or 1979 for a Bill Graham Day on the Green show. I didn’t know much about Van Halen then except that I remember seeing film clips of them, especially the one of Eddie playing the solo piece, ‘Eruption, and I was very impressed. But I didn’t meet Eddie until years later when there was a Monsters of Rock open-air festival in England. I was shocked to hear he liked my playing, because I’ve never rated myself as a guitarist.
He continued:
“Eddie is an innovator. When I grew up we had a lot of guys from England who were great players, like Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, and Jeff Beck. And then, of course, when Jimi Hendrix came along, he changed the game. I’d put Eddie in that category of being an innovator like Hendrix. He changed the game for his style of playing. When Eddie came along he spawned so many imitators.”
“Like Hendrix, suddenly you started to see people wanting to buy the same guitars he played and also play his licks. He turned the rule book upside down in terms of his approach. There was a lot of experimentation to his playing. Eddie also crosses into that avant-garde thing, which puts him in the same category as Hendrix.”
Angus Young continued:
“‘Eruption’ is a favorite track. He’s got everything characteristic of his playing in that song-there’s a bit of everything. When Jimi Hendrix came along it was like, ‘Where did this guy come from?’ and I think that was the same feeling with Eddie. When Eddie appeared on the scene, every guitarist I ran into said, ‘You’ve gotta hear this guy!” Angus Young said.
Eddie himself was a huge fan of AC/DC and was a good friend of the late guitarist Malcolm Young, who he said was the heart and soul of the band. His favorite album by them was “Powerage” (1978) and whenever he had the chance to see AC/DC live he would ask the brothers if they would play songs from that record.
The musician died in 2020 at the age of 65 (Like Angus, he was born in 1955) and Angus Young posted a special tribute to him on AC/DC’s social media, saying his guitar playing was pure wizardry.
“Eddie was a guitar wonder, his playing pure wizardry. To the world of music he was a special gift. To those of us fortunate enough to have met him, a very special person. He leaves a big hole in a lot of hearts. To the Van Halen family my heartfelt sympathies,” Angus Young said.
Chuck Berry
One of the godfathers of Rock and Roll music, Chuck Berry was praised by Angus many times and the musician even chose him as his “Rock God”. He shared all his admiration for Berry on BBC’s “The Rock Show With Johnnie Walker” in 2021. “Chuck Berry was probably one of the great guitar people for rock and roll. He combined a lot of elements — he combined blues, a bit of jazz and his own unique style.”
“He melded all these kind of different genres of music, but he seemed to bring it together and bring it out and it [came] out in that rock and roll style — so plain and simple, but it was so effective. I saw him live once when I was younger. I just loved his stage presence and how he performed. He was one of those people, when he got on a stage, he owned it,” Angus Young said.
Curiously, a few decades before, in 1986, the AC/DC guitarist talked with Guitar World magazine and said that Chuck Berry was much better than Eric Clapton, for example. “Chuck Berry was never a caring person. He didn’t care whether he was playing his tune, out of tune, or someone else’s tune. Whenever he plays guitar, he has a big grin from ear to ear. Everyone always used to rave about Clapton when I was growing up, saying he was a guitar genius and stuff like that. Well, even on a bad night, Chuck Berry is a lot better than Clapton will ever be.”
Angus Young continued:
“Clapton just sticks licks together that he has taken from other people—like B.B. King and the other old blues players—and puts them together in some mish-mashed fashion. The only great album he ever made was the Blues Breaker album he did with John Mayall, and maybe a couple of good songs he did with Cream. The guy more or less built his reputation on that. I never saw what the big fuss was about Clapton to begin with,” Angus Young said.
The famous Chuck Berry duck walk certainly was an inspiration for the similar movements Angus Young does in every show. The American musician died in 2017 at the age of 90.
Buddy Holly
Another musician that started his career in the 50s that Angus Young already praised is the late Buddy Holly, who is also considered one of the most important Rock musicians from that era. That love for the artist was shared between Angus and his late brother Malcolm Young, who died in 2017 at the age of 64 after battling dementia for several years.
In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine in 2001, he mentioned Buddy Holly as one of the artists that got his “toe tapping”.
“I plug into a lot of old rock & roll. Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. I love all that stuff. In fact, if I get a chance and I’m on my way to a gig, I’ll put one of their tapes on. Because they’re good vibe-meters and I still get off on them.”
The American musician was born in Lubbock, Texas in 1936 and tragically passed away at the age of 22 in 1959. He was in a plane that crashed with two other famous musicians: Richie Valens and The Big Bopper. February 3, the day of their death is still known as “the day that the music died”.
Some of his most famous songs are “Everyday” and “That’ll Be The Day”.
Jeff Beck
The first British musician on the list, Jeff Beck was an inspiration for Angus and the musician likes his music. In 1986 he told Guitar World magazine that Beck was one of the few guitarists that could play really well without boring the audience.
“There are guys out there who can play real good without boring people. Jeff Beck is one of them. He’s more of a technical guy, but when he wants to rock and roll he sure knows how to do it with guts. I really like the early albums he did with Rod Stewart,” Angus Young said.
Those early albums are “Truth” (1968) and “Beck-Ola” (1969). Both of them had Rod Stewart as the vocalist and Ronnie Wood as the bassist. Some famous tracks from those albums are a version of The Yardbirds’ “Shapes of Things”, “You Shook Me” (Classic Blues track later on recorded by Led Zeppelin), “Beck’s Bolero” (Written by Jimmy Page) and “I Ain’t Superstitious” (Another Blues classic written by Willie Dixon).
Angus and Malcolm were lucky enough to have watched The Yardbirds playing live when they were kids. The brothers were excited that they would have the chance to see Jeff Beck playing but by the time they played in Australia he had already left the band and Jimmy Page was the guitar player.
Buddy Guy
Without the Blues Rock and Roll wouldn’t exist and AC/DC took that music genre mixed with Rock and made it heavier. So Angus was deeply influenced by many Blues players, including Buddy Guy.
He had the chance to meet him but didn’t have the courage to talk with him that much as he told Rolling Stone in 2001.
Yeah (I listen to a lot of Blues). And I’m lucky that now there’s a saturation of blues music released on CD. Because I’m a big fan of that stuff. I got a chance to sit and say hello to Buddy Guy once in L.A. I was dumb, I couldn’t open my mouth. 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. So I’d go into the library and read all about where these people were playing, like Muddy Waters and Elmore James. To me, meeting Buddy Guy was like meeting a piece of history. That’s why I was just standing there quiet. I thought, “I don’t want to upset any ear space whatsoever,” Angus Young said.
Born in 1936, Buddy Guy is one of the final classic Blues players who were there from the beginning.
Muddy Waters
Another legendary Blues legend Angus praised was the late Muddy Waters. In an interview with Guitar Tricks Insider magazine in 2016, Young chose Waters’ album “Hard Again” as one of his favorites of all time. The record was released in 1977, six years before the musician’s death in 1983 at the age of 70. That record was produced by Johnny Winter and has classic songs like “Mannish Boy” and “I Can’t Be Satisfied”
The AC/DC leader always preferred the “happy side” of the Blues and as he told Total Guitar in 2020, Muddy Waters was part of that. “It’s the emotion in those old blues records. I’ve never really been into the depression stuff. I’ve always liked the happy sort of blues music, like Muddy Waters. Even though he might have been singing about his woman running off with a nineteen year-old bus driver from Florida, there would be an element of humor in it. That’s what I’ve always loved.”
“I’ve never been a great lover of the real sad element of the blues. There are some great sad songs. But I prefer the happier side. And the grammar in blues music is fantastic. Some of the things that Muddy would sing: ‘I just love them pretty womens. I’ll kill for them young pretty things. They’d sing ‘whummen’ instead of women, and ‘choo’ instead of you. But you get what they mean,” Angus Young said.
Malcolm Young
The list certainly wouldn’t be complete without his brother Malcolm, who Angus divided the stage for almost 40 years. “He’s certainly an underrated rhythm guitar player. That’s true. Musically, I’m the left hand and he’s the right hand. Add the two together, we play as one. As for writing, I might have an idea, like the riff for ‘Moneytalks’. I’ll play it for Malcolm when we come to do an album, and he does the same. Then we play critic with each other – ‘Oh, that’s a good one…’,” Angus Young told Classic Rock magazine in 1992.
When promoting the 2020 album “Power Up”, Angus noted that it was a kind of a tribute to Malcolm and recalled how important he was for the band’s sound.
“I always used to say, if we were onstage, and my guitar goes down, you wouldn’t notice. But if his guitar went down, you’d notice! He stamped that backbeat, very driving, very confident. He was always that way as a player. Very strong.”
Angus continued:
“He was the most confident guy I ever saw with a guitar. Probably because he’d been playing that well since he was very young. He was always ahead of the game. And he was always on top of whatever he did. Even in the early days, when we played clubs and (cover) bars. People would get rowdy, and go on, ‘Play this song, play that song.’ We’d play it, and he would just play, even if he never played it before.”
“I’d be like two miles behind just watching him! I’d be like, “What’s the next chord?” And he’d always know it. And the way he played! He’d always be so confident, y’know?” Angus Young told Goldmine.
John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers
Although Angus didn’t always said good things about Eric Clapton, the 1966 album “Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton” by John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers was a huge inspiration for him and his brother.
It was one of the albums he listed to Guitar Tricks Insider magazine in 2016 as one of his favorites of all time. Already in 1982, talking with Steve Newton the guitarist had said John Mayall’s records were an influence to them.
Eric Clapton joined John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers after leaving The Yardbirds. But he only recorded this album with the group. The record also had the bassists: John McVie (Fleetwood Mac) and Jack Bruce (Cream).
Some of the most famous tracks are “All Your Love”, Hideaway” and “Key To Love”.
