Everyone has favorite bands and musicians who have passed away and whom they never had the chance to see perform live. The same goes for AC/DC co-founder and lead guitarist Angus Young, who regrets never having seen some of his musical heroes on stage. He once mentioned two of them, and Rock and Roll Garage has selected what he has said about those artists throughout his career.
The 2 musicians Angus Young wishes he could have seen live
Elmore James
“There’s a lot (of artists I would have liked to see but) probably Elmore James. He is great, great Blues player,” Angus Young told Amazon in 2014. As the guitarist said in a quote in Paul Stenning’s AC/DC biography “Two Sides of Every Glory“, Elmore’s playing was very clever. “I like a lot of the Chicago thing, and a lot of different players. Elmore James, I very much like that style of playing. When you hear it you think it’s very simple, but it’s not. It’s actually very clever, and he executed it so well. You never hear it even if you see someone and go, ‘Oh, they’re going to imitate it,’ they never pull it off,” Angus Young said.
Called the “King of the Slide Guitar”, Elmore James is one of the most influential Blues players of all time. His musical career started in the early 1940s and last until his passing in 1963 at the age of 45. He was also praised by his stirring voice and the use of loud amplification. Some of his most famous songs are “Dust My Broom”, “I Believe”, “Standing at the Crossroads” and “Dust My Blues”. When growing up, the only way Angus could search for information about musicians was in the library. He once recalled he used to do that and one of the artists he looked for information was Elmore.
He said:
“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 told Rolling Stone in 2001.
Buddy Holly
The other musician Angus mentioned was Buddy Holly, whose music he had previously said gets 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,” he told Rolling Stone magazine in 2001.
After his brother Malcolm had to step away from the band due to dementia, Angus said that one of the things he enjoyed most during his final years was listening to music. Buddy Holly was one of the artists they played for him. “He still likes his music. We make sure he has his Chuck Berry, a little Buddy Holly,” he said when promoting “Rock or Bust” in 2014.
They came from a very musical family, with their brother George having been a member of The Easybeats, who had a hit with “Friday on My Mind”. Music was played constantly at home when they were growing up, and Buddy Holly was part of that musical environment. Holly 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”.