The Tapes Archive

Ella Young(Angus’ Wife): Marc Allan please.

Marc Allan: This is Marc.

Ella Young: Marc it’s Ella Young here. I’ve got Angus for you on the phone.

Marc Allan: Thank you, okay.

Angus Young: Hello.

Marc Allan: Angus?

Angus Young: How are you Marc?

Marc Allan: How are you?

Angus Young: Good, good.

Marc Allan: Good, were you somewhere on the West coast today?

Angus Young: In San Francisco.

Marc Allan: San Francisco, good. Well, I hope you have better weather than you have when you get here.

Angus Young: I’ve heard it’s cold.

Marc Allan: It’s a little below zero and very cold.

Angus Young: We had some of that cold whether when we kicked off around the Carolinas, it was snowing. So we know what you’re going through.

Marc Allan: Okay, and yeah. So is it by accident that you picked the worst time of the year to tour? I guess, you always store in the winter, right?

Angus Young: We had actually started South and which was, I mean, I don’t think anyone expected that the winter would be that harsh.

Marc Allan: Yeah, it’s true. I guess it was late 1990 the last time we saw you here and the landscape has changed, the musical landscape has obviously changed just tremendously since you’ve been around last.

Angus Young: And the weather.

Marc Allan: No, the weather’s always ugly. Did you have any concern in coming back after five years plus that maybe people wouldn’t be there for you?

Angus Young: No, we’ve never been a band of… We’ve always been a band that we go out, we make a record and we’ve been lucky that we’ve had over the last few years, you get choice in your life to be able to do what you want to do. So we were never a band that really worried so much about what the musical environment around you.

Marc Allan: Are you surprised by the other things that are going on? I mean, how many bands have just dropped off the map?

Angus Young: Well, I think it goes through a lot of cycles, I think. Because if you actually look, you see a lot of it, it’s probably, the new cycles always sort of resurrect some of the old cycles who have, the godfathers as these, what they call the new music I suppose. There’s always been a… I know when we came here in the seventies, there was not a lot of rock music out there. I mean, as far as like I say radio was playing very much a lot of dance music and a lot of pop top 40. So even then, I mean, it was the same thing. Then it changes. Usually when, what seems to happen is usually when everyone changes to one form of music, it’s about time to change it to another one.

Marc Allan: And yet you’ve been so remarkably consistent over the years. And I’m wondering, do you think consistency is the key to your success?

Angus Young: Yeah, well, I think we stand our ground. We were always a band that we know what we do best, which is rock and roll music. And that’s where we always… We drew our line even in the beginning, because even in the beginning, there was always a lot, you get a lot of pressure of people were saying, “Well, people are listening to this now you should be recording that type of music,” or one year it’s punk music, next year it’s metal music, next year it’s pop music. We were always a band that said, “Well, this is what we do.”

Marc Allan: Should people learn from this that if you stand your ground and take care of your vision things will work out? Or is it just that you guys were able to do it?

Angus Young: It’s like this, you’ve still got Bob Dylan still performs. And he’s still performing the same as what he did as a young man. He’s still writing songs and still performing them. And you can’t be what you’re not.

Marc Allan: Now, when you first started and first came over to the States, you were basically considered a metal band, weren’t you?

Angus Young: Well, we’ve had a number of different tags. We’ve been, I mean, in our early years, when we went to England, they would call us a punk band. The only tag that we ever subscribed to really was, we would say we’re a rock and roll band. And I always find that more the image-makers of the world wanna tag a music. I first encountered it in England in those punk times, when that was tagging everyone with a name. I think it just gave them another word to write in the bio. File them under this. And then the weird part was they were actually giving birth then to some sort of mass production.

Marc Allan: People obviously have this impression that you’ve been away for five years. And I realize you’ve been doing other things. You have the live album and the song “And Last Action”.

Angus Young: I’ve been home two weeks in five years. The amount of time that I got for myself.

Marc Allan: So it wasn’t a five-year vacation. You weren’t just sitting up there counting the money and waiting for the next tour, huh?

Angus Young: No, no, no, no, no. It costs you money to live for five years.

Marc Allan: But you must find that people are like, they obviously, most people think you just took a vacation, right?

Angus Young: Yeah well, I think a lot of people do, yeah. I’ve been on the road and you’ve just had a record out and somebody says, “When’s the next record?” Well I’ve got it in my back pocket.

Marc Allan: Yeah, do you think you’ll wait five years for the next one?

Angus Young: No, I think it would be a lot quicker.

Marc Allan: Really? Okay.

Angus Young: Yeah, because the main reason we had the break, it’s probably the first time we had the time to really take a break. And we had been on the road since we started virtually. From up ’til that point, we had been touring all the time. It was a constant cycle of touring, recording, touring, recording. So there was never a lot of time to sit back and even look at where you were going, what you were doing.

Marc Allan: So you took a little-

Angus Young: So the guys went home to say hello to their teenage children who are now working.

Marc Allan: So you did have a little, at least a little time for reflection in that five years, a little time, sure. Okay, did you do anything fun? Do you have anything that you do outside rock and roll?

Angus Young: Oh, well, I mean, I’ve got my own hobbies. I do a little dabbling with painting, yeah. That’s always a big hobby of mine and a bit of sketching.

Marc Allan: Will we ever see an art show of yours?

Angus Young: Well, I wouldn’t force it on the public. I mean, I do it. It doesn’t mean to say I do it well.

Marc Allan: Ah, okay.

Angus Young: But I’ve done it since I was a child.

Marc Allan: Yeah, well, there’s no shortage of musicians, who have that as a hobby and are bringing it out on tour. I mean, John Entwistle’s got a tour running around the country now and Jerry Garcia had that for years. But we see all kinds of stuff like that. But we’re not gonna see the Angus tour of, Angus art tour of America?

Angus Young: I hope not.

Marc Allan: In recording the new album. And I gotta tell ya, I think this is just a great piece of work. I really enjoyed this.

Angus Young: Ah, thank you.

Marc Allan: Even I think more so than anything else you’ve done. And I can’t tell if it’s the sound of it or maybe I’m just ready for this after a long break. But at any rate I read where you said that this has kind of a dry sound and, or that’s what you were trying to achieve. And I’m wondering what you mean by that.

Angus Young: When we went to record it, we came up with the idea, we were trying to get free of the modern technology. And when we first started recording, it was a lot more basic than that. You didn’t have the computer world and there’s a tendency these days, they go well, instead of spreading a few microphones around, just taking the time to put them in the right position, they’ll just pull out the latest gadgets, flick it on and plug it in. And so, a lot of it was finding, even a very hard thing to find believe it or not, was finding recording studios that still had kept their basic room. And a lot of them had gone over, especially say through Europe, they had all gone on to, just catering to like dance music. So they had sort of followed that trend. And that’s sort of, a lot of them went out of business actually, because of it, because there’s only so many studios that could cater to that sort of thing. We actually came to Los Angeles, we could find a place that still had the old world sound and hadn’t fiddled with all the technology. They still had the old analog technology.

Marc Allan: So there went four of your five years, right there, just looking for a studio, right?

Angus Young: Just looking for the right place-

Marc Allan: Yeah.

Angus Young: And then finding a good acoustic room to deal with it.

Marc Allan: Last tour, I was thinking that, that of all the songs on “The Razor’s Edge” album, “Fire Your Guns” and “Rock Your Heart Out” would become concert staples. Are they in the set this year?

Angus Young: We actually started rehearsals. We just rehearsed as many songs as we could. And then what we’ve been doing a lot is you get feedback from fans that have been following you over the years. They always come with their lists, tell us what to play. So we’ve got a good sort of approach to it, I think. We’ll do some different songs each night, chop and change the set around that way.

Marc Allan: When you’re performing these days, is it all instinct or do you think about what you’re doing? Can you just go out there and wing it?

Angus Young: I concentrate on just what I’m doing on the guitar and everything else then becomes a bonus.

Marc Allan: Okay, and what do you do to get physically ready for this? ‘Cause man, you work hard.

Angus Young: Physically?

Marc Allan: Yeah.

Angus Young: Gee, I don’t know really. I probably smoke more cigarettes more than any-

Marc Allan: Yeah people are… I’ve been reading all these stories about people who’ve been interviewing you in person, and they say how you smoke so much. And I’m thinking, man, I can’t think of too many people who work harder on stage at night than you do. How do you do that?

Angus Young: It’s got me baffled too. My brother says it’s a nicotine withdrawal.

Marc Allan: You’re 41, is that right?

Angus Young: Well, I’m 40 now. I will be-

Marc Allan: You’re 40 there, okay. Yeah, so you’ve been doing this, I mean, for your whole life basically, it’s amazing.

Angus Young: It is, yeah. Been at it a long time now.

Marc Allan: A couple of other things, I’ll let you go. Tell me, how did the school boy outfit come up?

Angus Young: What, from the beginning?

Marc Allan: Yeah.

Angus Young: Yeah, well, it was my sister who came up with the idea and it come from when I would come home from school and I would run in the door before my mother had grabbed me and said to me, “Right, you’ve got to go on errands.” But I grabbed the guitar and run off to where my friends were, yeah. So she used to think it’s so funny. I was running around with a guitar, a big guitar under my arm in my little school uniform on. When Malcolm, my brother, when he put the band together and he got me, she said, “It’d be really good if you got your school uniform on and play. Give the people something to look at.”

Marc Allan: So this is an actual uniform, that kind of thing that you used to wear to school, huh?

Angus Young: It is, it is. That was my way of getting my own back on the school that I went to. So I used to have their actual logo on my jacket. I took it off now. I thought they’ve had punishment enough. This is a product of a state education.

Marc Allan: But so everybody wore that uniform to school, right?

Angus Young: Well, the school that I attended?

Marc Allan: Yeah, the school that you were going to, right? So what do you think of it yeah? I mean, that idea comes up periodically in American politics about wearing uniforms to school. What do you think of that?

Angus Young: Well, I gotta be honest. I would say, I always thought America had got it pretty right. The whole idea, I remember when I went to school, there was a case at the time. It would keep everyone the same. And I always thought, “Well, who wants to be the same?” And they always, it was a case of, it’s almost Communism.

Marc Allan: Obviously, even though it’s been a while since we’ve seen you, we’re reminded of you every night on “Beavis and Butt-Head”, and wondering, what do you think of Butt-Head wearing your T-shirt all the time?

Angus Young: Well, I suppose as long as it’s in good humor and in good taste.

Marc Allan: Yeah, “Beavis and Butt-Head” is in real good taste, yeah.

Angus Young: When I first saw it, I laughed. I think it was some of the MTV TV people played it for me. “What did you think?” And I laughed, I thought it was cute.

Marc Allan: And are you glad that the smarter of the two was wearing the AC/DC and the dumber guy’s were in the Metallica shirt?

Angus Young: I am damn glad. And we got the one with the C grade.

Marc Allan: Yeah, that’s right.

Angus Young: I don’t think the other one’s quite good for .

Marc Allan: No.

Marc Allan: You guys will be eligible for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in I think three years, right? 1999, right? That’d be 25 years for ya. Are you gonna get in? Do you care about it?

Angus Young: It’s a little bit for me. It’s a little bit celebrity golf.

Marc Allan: So if you get in, you can do care? I mean, do you wanna be in there?

Angus Young: We’ve never been a band to sort of sit around and say, “Give us a prize.”

Marc Allan: Right.

Angus Young: I don’t like when they have the sort of award things. It’s all a little bit backslapping. I was very saddened, I remember a couple of years back, I was in Los Angeles I think they were having some award thing and they had Little Richard and they give it, it was a Grammy thing. And I mean, I grew up on a lot of that music. So I love all that, the blues and from Jerry Lee Lewis, Presley and I love all that rock and roll, done at that period. And I was really… And they wouldn’t even give the guy, they give the guy an award backstage. I mean, it was still like saying, “You were a great band, but come in the back door would ya?” “We don’t want you to singing with the other people.”

Marc Allan: And then finally, can we expect a rock opera or a tour with a symphony from AC/DC?

Angus Young: A rock opera and a tour symphony.

Marc Allan: Yeah, can you do that?

Angus Young: I mean, that would mean we need a pay all the extras. It’s cheaper this way. You get the five guys.

Marc Allan: That’s right.

Angus Young: You get a better paycheck.

Marc Allan: Yeah, well, I know a lot of people here are looking forward to seeing you. Anything else you wanna to cover that we haven’t talked about?

Angus Young: I think you’ve covered it I think.

Marc Allan: Yeah, I think so too. Okay, well, this was fun. I can’t wait to see you. I feel like I need a little dose of AC/DC now. Things are a little too serious, I need it. I need to need a little soul-cleansing now.

Marc Allan: Re-birthing.

Angus Young: Absolutely. So I’m looking forward to it and good luck with everything and see you in about a month, I guess.

Marc Allan: Okay then Marc.

Angus Young: Take care.

Marc Allan: You take care.

Angus Young: Bye-bye.

Marc Allan: Bye-bye.