Angus Young is one of the most identifiable guitar players of all time and AC/DC has maintained the same characteristic sound since their first album. He was a huge influence on countless artists and played a crucial role in the evolution of Hard Rock music. Their simple but powerful riffs helped make them one of the best-selling bands of all time, with an estimated 200 million records sold worldwide. Over the decades, Angus has spoken about many of his peers but not always positively. There is one he once said "set the music world back 20 years." The guitarist that Angus Young said set music back 20 years That guitarist is Hank Marvin, who is famous for his work with The Shadows and Cliff Richard. "I just plugged it into the amp and played. I never used any of those ‘wangy’ bars or stuff like that. Those things (tremolos) never appealed to me. If I want to get a similar kind of sound, I just de-tune the strings. Cliff Richards used to have this guy in his backing band, Hank Marvin, who used that thing on almost every note." "He was like a Buddy Holly clone, he used to do these silly little steps. Guys like Hank set the music world back 20 years. I couldn’t believe guitarists like Beck looked at him as inspiration. Whenever I saw guys like Hank Marvin, I would always go in the complete reverse of what they were doing. Consequently, whenever I hear a tremolo, I can only think of him,” Angus Young said in an interview with Guitar World magazine in 1986. Angus Young believed that his way of playing the guitar sounded dated https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TwULx_wDiI&list=RD7TwULx_wDiI&start_radio=1&pp=ygUSdGhlIHNoYWRvd3MgYXBhY2hloAcB Angus' opinion obviously might have changed over the past decades but at least in the 80s, he really wasn't a fan of what Hank did. Three years before, when talking with Steven Rosen in 1983, he once again mentioned the British musician when talking about tremolos. "They (my early instruments) did (have tremolos) but I took it off. I used to fool around with them but you begin sounding like Hank Marvin," he said. The main reason Angus doesn’t like that kind of guitar playing is that, according to him, it makes the music sound dated. "It’s like when the music of the day dictates that the guitarist has a wah pedal or a tremolo effect or something. You listen to it five years later, and go, 'Jeez, it sounds so dated.' We never did that," he said in an interview with Guitar World in 2003. The Shadows formed in 1958 and served as the backing band for Cliff Richard until 1968. But meanwhile the group also released their own albums. From 1961 to 1990 they released 21 records and reunited several times on their own and with Cliff. Some of their most famous songs are "Apache", "Summer Holiday", "Wonderful Land" and "The Young Ones". Marvin also has an extensive solo career and collaborated with many artists who were influenced by him. Some of them are Roger Daltrey, Paul McCartney, Dire Straits, Brian May and Peter Frampton. His first solo album was released in 1969 and the most recent one is "Foolin' With The Feds" (2023). It was a collaborative record with Nunzio Mondia and Gary Taylor. Although he is not a fan of Hank Marvin he likes Buddy Holly When Angus Young explained why he didn't like Hank Marvin's guitar playing, he said the musician was a Buddy Holly clone. But Angus actually likes the late legendary American musician and still listens to his music. When asked by Rolling Stone about which kind of music he liked to hear the musician mentioned Holly as one of the artists who 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,” Angus Young said. Buddy Holly was born in Lubbock, Texas in 1936. He sadly had a short career, tragically dying at the age of 22 in 1959. He was in the plane that crashed with two other famous artists: Richie Valens and The Big Bopper. After that accident, February 3 became known as “the day that the music died”. Some of his most famous songs are “Everyday” and “That’ll Be The Day”.
