AC/DC: a premature obituary

And here we are. A post I didn't really think about but kind of knew I was going to have to write since April, when the news first broke that Malcolm Young, AC/DC co-founder, songwriter and rhythm guitarist, was either "taking a break" or leaving the band, due to ill health.

Now it's pretty clear. Malcolm Young, age 61, is too ill ever to tour again and has retired from the band. He won't be on the album due out in November - so I was wrong about that - nor will he be touring with them next year.

It's Wikipedia official, people.

This is, effectively, the end of the band. Malcolm Young will be replaced both in studio and on tour by his nephew Stevie Young, 57 (Angus and Malcolm are the babies of their generation), who previously filled in for Malcolm on a 1988-89 tour while Malcolm was in rehab. Malcolm's brother Angus, the flamboyant lead guitarist, may be the face of the band and Brian Johnson may be the singer, but ask any AC/DC fan and they'll tell you that Malcolm Young is very much the power behind the throne.

So I'm sure some people will say this is premature - there's an album and a tour coming up - but I'm going to go ahead and write the band's obituary now. And also laugh at the word "premature" being applied to anything related to this band, whose lead guitarist to this day wears a schoolboy uniform on stage.


AC/DC was formed in 1973 by brothers Angus and Malcolm Young, whose family had immigrated from Scotland to Australia ten years previously. The early lineups changed practically every month, but it's worth noting that their original bassist, Larry Van Kriedt, could also play the saxophone; for some songs Malcolm would switch to bass and Van Kriedt would play the sax.

By 1975 something approximating a stable lineup had emerged, with fellow ex-Scottish immigrant Ronald "Bon" Scott on vocals and Aussies Mark Evans on bass and Phil Rudd on drums, and the band had released two Australia-only albums, High Voltage and T.N.T.  A tour of the UK followed, garnering the band enough attention to merit an international release of a compilation album, also called High Voltage but mostly comprised of tracks from T.N.T. (Record producers, man.)  Their third album, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, was released in 1976 (although not in the U.S., as the band hadn't cracked the market there yet).

1977's Let There Be Rock prompted the band's first U.S. appearance, and the success was followed by a new bassist, Cliff Williams, and 1978's studio album Powerage and live album If You Want Blood You've Got It (video above). With a solid batch of songs under their belt including "Problem Child," "Whole Lotta Rosie," "Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be," "Riff Raff," and "Sin City," AC/DC were very much a force to be reckoned with.

Through 1978, the band's albums had been produced by Angus's and Malcolm's older brother George Young and Harry Vanda. For 1979's effort, they switched to noted record producer "Mutt" Lange, who gave the band a cleaner sound and more prominent backing vocals without sacrificing their raw power. That album was Highway to Hell, the first AC/DC album to break into the U.S. top 100.

Six months after the release of Highway to Hell, in February 1980, singer Bon Scott died after a night of heavy drinking. Later that same year, Led Zeppelin would throw in the towel after their drummer John Bonham met a similar fate, but AC/DC decided to carry on.  They recruited Brian Johnson and recorded Back in Black, an album that eventually outsold such classics as Led Zeppelin's fourth album and Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon.

The band's popularity prompted their label to finally release Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap in the U.S., and eventually followed it up with an EP of early songs left out of the American versions of High Voltage and Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, entitled '74 Jailbreak. Success waned after the release of 1981's For Those About to Rock, the band's final album produced by Lange. The mid-eighties saw a pair of underwhelming self-produced albums, Flick of the Switch and Fly on the Wall, as well as the departure of drummer Phil Rudd. His replacement, Simon Wright, played on Fly on the Wall, Who Made Who, and Blow Up Your Video, before being replaced by Chris Slade for 1990's The Razors Edge.

The Razors Edge and its massive hit, "Thunderstruck," prompted a worldwide comeback tour that saw the release of AC/DC's second(ish - see Bonfire, discussed below) live album, titled, um, Live, and also saw AC/DC become one of the first hard rock acts to play behind the Iron Curtain. (Apparently nobody told the Russians that the band used cannons as part of their song "For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)," prompting an amusing incident with the security forces.)

Since The Razors Edge, AC/DC, once again with Rudd on drums, have had sporadic releases: Ballbreaker in 1995, Bonfire (a box set of live performances and studio outtakes from the Bon Scott era) in 1997, Stiff Upper Lip in 2000, and Black Ice in 2008. Depending on how you count them, either their 16th or their 17th album is due out this November.