Phil Sutcliffe - AC/DC: high-voltage rocknroll: the ultimate illustrated history

High-Voltage Rock n Roll :
The Ultimate Illustrated History

Voyageur Press

By

Phil Sutcliffe

with

Robert Alford

Joe Bonomo

Anthony Bozza

Jen Jewel Brown

Daniel Bukszpan

Garth Cartwright

Ian Christe

David Dunlap Jr.

Andrew Earles

Robert Ellis

Robert Francos

Gary Graff

Dave Hunter

Bob King

Jenny Lens

James McNair

Philip Morris

Graeme Plenter

Martin Popoff

Sylvie Simmons

Bill Voccia

First studio photography session, July 7, 1974. From left: Dave Evans, Rob Bailey, Malcolm Young, Peter Clack, and Angus Young. @ Philip Morris

A C/DC. Just think about that name and you start to sweatwhether you first saw them in 2010 on the Black Ice tour in a modern arena with 20,000 souls from every drenched, exalted generation or, like this writer, at The Marquee in London in 1976, jammed into a dank and dripping cave of a club.

Good rockin tonight. And every night.

Thats what AC/DC have always stood for. Pure and simple. Dirty and simple. Ablaze with the original spirit of rock n roll. They mingled the teenage joys of groin-stirring riffs, blood-stirring rhythm, and belly-laugh or sometimes gut-level-blue lyrics into an elixir of eternal youth promising age cannot wither us nor custom stale our infinite sweatiness at leastas the late bards William Shakespeare and Bon Scott might have agreed.

AC/DC play rock n roll as life met head-on. Scruffy reality, good times and bad.

Logic wont explain the minor miracles that create such a band. But exploring AC/DCs story, its striking that this enduring force sprang from a great European migration to the New Worldthe Australasian New World, that is. Driven by poverty, desperation, ambition, and high hope against all odds

The Young family was numerous and loving, George Redburn (born November 6, 1947), Malcolm John (January 6, 1953), and Angus McKinnon (March 31, 1955) being the last three of eight children spread over twenty-two years. Their mother, Margaret, born 1915 (maiden name Young, too), and father William (1910), who worked as a spray painter, valve grinder, and, during World War II, a Royal Air Force mechanic, brought them up in Cranhill, Glasgow, a Scottish shipbuilding city in decline.

By the 1950s, the city council had moved many slum dwellers from tenements in the citys center to new tenements in suburbs like Cranhill, and it was getting tough. With few residents owning cars, and few shops in walking distance, a succession of delivery vans circulated selling groceries, paraffin, fish and chips, and ice cream.

Like other kids, the Youngs played football on the streets, but they always had their music too. The only girl in the family, Margaret (born in 1936), introduced the household to black rock n roll from Fats Domino, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry, along with some Dixieland jazz. In 1991, talking to Musicians Charles M. Young (no relation), Angus recalled her taking him to see Louis Armstrong (this was probably in Australia): I liked the way he smiled. Some people, you get goose bumps when they perform, and he was one. You could tell he was honest, a good man and a happy man. The Youngs made their own entertainment via a parlor band comprising brothers Steven (born in 1933) on accordion, John (1938) and Alex (1938) on guitars, and the kids singing along.

The Easybeats, November 1966, from left: Dick Diamonde, Harrry Vanda, George Young, Gordon Snowy Fleet, and Stevie Wright (seated). Caroline Gillies/BIPs/Getty Images

The Easybeats, Shes So Fine w/ Say That Youre Mine, For My Woman, and The Old Oak Tree, 7-inch EP, Australia, 1965.

The Easybeats, Friday on My Mind b/w Made My Bed (Gonna Lie in It), Italy, 1966.

The Easybeats, Friday on My Mind w/ Remember Sam, Pretty Girl, and Made My Bed (Gonna Lie in It), 7-inch EP, France, 1967.

The Easybeats, St. Louis, promo single, U.S., 1969.

Easybeats George Young and Harry Vanda. Philip Morris

In 1963, the Youngs decided there had to be something better than Cranhill. As Angus said later (source unknown), Me dad found it impossible to support a family of our size, so he decided to try his luck Down Under. Abandoning everything they knew, the Youngs joined the 10 Poms, the million Britons who took up the Australian governments postWorld War II assisted passage scheme (almost as big as the United States, Australia had only 8 million people in 1945).

The familyminus Steven and Alex, the latter already playing in Hamburg, like The Beatlesflew to Sydney. Initially, they lived at Villawood migrant hostel (Tin huts, and it rained, relentlessly; when you got up in the morning, there was two inches of water in the hut and black worms swimming through it, Malcolm told David Fricke,