Angus Young’s opinion on Buddy Guy

One of the most important Hard Rock guitarists of all time, Angus Young showed the world how Blues music could be amplified and played faster, with a different rhythm that would mesmerize millions of AC/DC fans worldwide.

Legendary American Bluesmen were a major influence on him and his late brother Malcolm Young. Listening to them was crucial for the development of their own sound, which blended Blues with Rock music. Over the decades, Angus spoke about many of those musicians, including Buddy Guy, who just like the Scottish guitarist surely also “got the Blues”.

What is Angus Young’s opinion on Buddy Guy

Angus Young is a huge fan of the famous Blues musicians and loves Buddy Guy. When asked about which musician he liked to listen to he listed names like Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis but also talked about how happy he was to meet the legendary Buddy Guy.

“Yeah (I listen to a lot of Blues guys). 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,” he said in an interview with Rolling Stone in 2001.

Angus Young said Buddy Guy was one of his guitar heroes

Angus Young had already listed Buddy Guy as one of his guitar heroes a few years before finally meeting him. He was asked by Paul Cashmere in 1993 which were his guitar heroes and mentioned Guy. “My guitar heroes, I like people like B.B. King, Buddy Guy is a great guitarist. My all time favorite (is) Chuck Berry,” he said (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).

It has always been the emotion of Blues music that attracted Angus since he was a kid. He also liked the humor in the lyrics that many artists wrote and although he was too far from the United States to relate to the places they would talk about he loved the grammar.

“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, and that’s what I’ve always loved.”

He continued:

“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,” he told Total Guitar in 2020.

Buddy Guy was born in Lettsworth, Louisiana, United States in 1936. He is an important member of the Chicago Blues movement, he influenced countless artists over the years. Besides Angus, some of them are Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

His career started in 1953 and since then Guy has released 33 studio albums and 15 live records. He also recorded with other artists like Junior Wells, Phil Guy and Memphis Slim. So far he won eight Grammy Awards and the National Medal of Arts, a Lifetime Achievement Award and the Kennedy Center Honors. Some of his most famous songs are “Damn Right, I’ve Got The Blues”, “Stone Crazy” and “Ain’t No Sunshine”. He recently did a special cameo in the successful and praised horror movie “Sinners” (2025), directed by Ryan Coogler.

How the Blues and Rock music were important for AC/DC’s sound

Although Hard Rock became something easily identifiable for fans of the genre, people often forget that the style is essentially Blues made heavier. Rock and Roll would have never been the same without the Blues, especially Hard Rock, which is heavily influenced by that genre. In an interview with The Guitar show in the 90s, Angus Young talked about those influences. (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage) “I wasn’t that much interested in solo guitar. A bit later on I started to hear some of the Blues stuff and people like Elmore James. For Rock and Roll, obviously, Chuck Berry.”

“I think that was probably, I think for Rock and Roll, especially at the time. It was probably everyone (around that era that inspired me). The Blues guys like Freddie King, he had the sort of single note thing. You would see people like Clapton do (that). Then you got Hendrix, to me it was a bit kind of, I suppose, a surf sound in a way. (It was) a surf thing, but (with) probably a modern-day sixties twist with all the freaking out with the whammy bar, the wah pedals and stuff.”

Angus Young continued:

“You heard (his playing) in people like Johnny Lee Hooker. It’s just more than the groove of it, you could sort of say ‘Well, I can busk through that, you know. Probably in my case, there was a lot of busking because when we first started. We were playing clubs and bars, Malcolm had more experience of playing around. We would do just half a dozen Rock and Roll tunes, with a lot more volume. Everyone used to (ask) ‘Is there a Chuck Berry song you were playing there?’ We would go ‘Yeah’ and they would say ‘It didn’t sound like it’ (laughs),” Angus Young said.