Dave Mustaine’s opinion on Malcolm and Angus Young

Dave Mustaine is one of the few famous guitar players who both play rhythm and lead guitar really well and has done so in Megadeth since the band was formed in the ’80s. Although he was extremely influenced by Heavy Metal bands, there were many hard rock groups he loved, including AC/DC. Over the years, he talked a lot about the band and gave his opinion on Malcolm and Angus Young as guitar players.

What is Dave Mustaine’s opinion on Malcolm and Angus Young

Malcolm and Angs Young are two of Dave Mustaine’s biggest heroes and he was extremely influenced by them. “Once I figured out that rhythm and lead (guitar playing) are two different animals, I thought why not do both and be the most well-rounded, almost athletic to a point guitar player. When it got to a point where I realized the difference between rhythm guitar playing, it was clear to me the best rhythm guitar player that I had met up until that point was Malcolm from AC/DC”

“(…) I think the trinity of rhythm guitar players in the Metal world is Malcolm, Hetfield and myself. (But) I think that’s being very ostentatious me saying that about myself. But you know, truth be told, I think that’s the three most well adapted to our job. If I can say that without sounding like a dick. (…) As far as lead guitar player is concerned, having been so enamored with AC/DC when I started listening to them, it was no surprise that I would be influenced by Angus. But I also loved Ace Frehley, Ted Nugent, Jimmy Page. George Harrison was an amazing guitar player, such is Keith Richards, you know,” he said in an interview with Gibson TV in 2021 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).

He always loved especially the Bon Scott era with the band but in the early 2000s, noted that the band would always be relevant to him. “AC/DC will always have relevance to me. Just because what Angus meant to me as a player, what Malcolm meant to me as a rhythm guitar player, what Bon meant to me as a frontman. AC/DC is just one of the greatest bands in the world,” he said in an interview.

One of his favorite AC/DC albums is “Let There Be Rock”

Megadeth’s leader once revealed that “Let There Be Rock” (1977) was the first AC/DC album he ever heard and he was instantly shocked. His love for the band continued to grow to a point that he had many different copies of all the albums they had released. “So this is the very first record that I’ve got from my girl at the record store (‘Let There Be Rock’). I went home and like I said, I’ve been listening to UFO and I thought that was really great stuff. But my world had not been completely rocked yet. I never had my world rocked and when this record came out it was the first time. It hasn’t happened since very often.”

“It happened when ‘Appetite For Destruction’ (Guns N’ Roses) came out. Also happened with us for ‘Countdown (To Extinction)’, for Metallica with ‘The Black Album’, happened for Soundgarden for ‘Loud Love’. These are all bands that have singers that have voices and have something. I knew when I heard (AC/DC) that these guys were going to be massive.”

He continued:

“You know, I’m just a kid at the time. So I don’t know that I’ve got this gift to be able to hear music and know the bands that are going to be making it and the bands that won’t. This was probably the purest, most rawest form of speed and adrenaline that a person could ever get without physically ingesting any kind of a substance. So yeah, I loved this record. I remember I became such an AC/DC fan that I had every version of every record you could possibly get, every different release. Different versions of the same exact album, just because the song order is mixed up.”

“I was in! The last time that I did anything with AC/DC, we did this tour with them. AC/DC doesn’t have to pay anybody to tour with them, so they paid us 5.000 bucks a show. We ended up going almost 200.000 dollars in the whole to do this,” he told AXS TV in 2026. Megadeth toured with AC/DC back in 2001, supporting them on their “Stiff Upper Lip” tour.

“Walk All Over You” and “Kicked in the Teeth” has two of his favorite guitar riffs

After Malcolm’s death in 2017, Mustaine talked with Rolling Stone and revealed two guitar riffs he loved from the band. “(Malcolm was) a hero of mine. Most people don’t know AC/DC was Malcolm’s band and that they weren’t Australian; they were Scottish. Tidbits like that are part of what made them unique. I was in a band that did a bunch of AC/DC covers. Doing those songs introduced me to a totally different approach to playing, where you don’t have billions of layers.”

“It’s all based on the riff. Prior to that, rock and roll was all strumming chords and not playing riffs. A riff is a cyclical melody, and if it isn’t good, you’ll know. A good riff you can play over and over again, and Malcolm wrote a lot of that music. ‘Kicked in the Teeth’ and ‘Walk All Over You’ are two of my favorite songs of theirs.”

Malcolm allowed Angus and Bon to do their job. He knew he was the best there was at rhythm guitar. He and other guys held down the fort and anchored the rhythm. That was his role, and he loved it,” he said.