The 3 guitarists Angus Young listed as his heroes

Since AC/DC rose to fame in the 1970s, the band’s co-founder and lead guitarist Angus Young has been a hero to millions of guitarists around the world, who even 50 years later are still influenced by his playing.

Growing up in Australia with his brother Malcolm, Angus was inspired by Rock and Blues guitarists, who laid the foundation for what the two would later create and develop in the evolution of Hard Rock music. Over the decades, Angus has spoken about many guitarists and even named three that he considered his heroes.

The 3 guitarists Angus Young listed as his heroes

Chuck Berry

“I think Chuck Berry probably (gave us) a lot of gifts. Because he brought together Blues, Country music, Folk music and blended it all into this, you know, and a bit of Jazz. (He) put it all together in what we call Rock and Roll. He started from that little well and a lot of people have drunk from. You had The Beatles, The Beach Boys in America, The Stones and it continued on.”

“So I think he is probably the one that inspired the most, even Presley and people like Little Richard. Besides being a talented songwriter, he is a great lyricist, a great player and a great entertainer. So he had a lot of elements, all put into one man. It’s a pure talent, I think, and an inspiration,” Angus Young said in an interview with Charlotte Roche in 2000 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).

Berry was mentioned as one of his heroes in an interview with Paul Cashmere in 1992 and he was actually Angus Young’s favorite guitarist of all time. He had the chance to see him playing live when he was younger. “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 recalled in an interview with Johnnie Walker in 2021.

The Chuck and Angus “duckwalk”

Curiously, it was not only Chuck’s music that inspired the AC/DC guitarist, also his moves on stage. The famous Angus duckwalk is inspired by the original one done by Chuck Berry since the 50s.

The Scottish musician even said that Chuck was much better than Eric Clapton. “Well, even on a bad night, Chuck Berry is a lot better than Clapton will ever be. 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”, he told Guitar World magazine in 1986.

Buddy Guy

The second guitarist Angus mentioned was Buddy Guy, one of the greatest Blues musicians of all time. Angus once had the chance to meet the American legend, but he was so starstruck that he could hardly find the courage to talk to him properly.

“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.

Born in Lettsworth, Louisiana, United States in 1936, Buddy Guy influenced many other famous artists. Some of them are Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

B.B. King

The third one was B.B. King, another legendary Blues guitarist and singer, who were one of the greatest of all time. “My guitar heroes, I like people like B.B. King, Buddy Guy is a great guitarist. My all time favorite (is) Chuck Berry,” he told Paul Cashmere in 1993.

In Angus’ view of the evolution of Blues and Rock, there would be no Stones, Led Zeppelin or The Who if artists like B.B. King hadn’t existed. As he told Guitar World in 1992, they were essential to influence bands like AC/DC too.

“I love what’s come from America, musically. But I don’t think the people here see it for what it is a lot of times. For me, the culture is blues music. That’s what I grew up on, and I have great respect for Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Chuck Berry, Willie Dixon. If those people weren’t there, you wouldn’t have your Stones, your Zeppelins, the Who… all the big blues-based bands. The Beatles – same thing.”

“I mean, if Paul McCartney played in Boston tomorrow, he would finish off the night with seven or eight Little Richard songs. That, to me, is Rock music. The other things are really the housewife, ‘cry in the tea towel’ shit. That ain’t rock music,” Angus Young said.

B.B. King was one of the most prolific artists of all time, as well. During his career, which lasted from 1942 to 2014 (Until his death at 89) he released an incredible amount of 43 studio albums. The final one was “One Kind Favor”, released in 2008.