Angus Young

Angus McKinnon Young was born on March 31, 1955 in Glasgow, Scotland. At school, Angus was an unenthusiastic student. His only real academic interest was art which allowed him some freedom of expression. He gave up school at 15 and went to work for a soft porn magazine called Ribald as a printer. But his ambitions laid elsewhere anyway, and for a year prior to leaving school Angus had been practising guitar almost constantly, jamming around with friends and playing at school dances. In the beginning, Angus messed around with Malcolm's guitars for years before his mother finally bought him his own, a cheap little acoustic. By the time he was eleven Angus had flirted with a tutorial course, but he prefered to learn by himself and most of his musical education was pure trial and error.

While his older brother Malcolm was hatching plans for his new band, Angus was well on his way toward establishing a distinctive stage persona. His spasmodic, seemingly out-of-control onstage body language has always come naturally. Such trademark Angus moves as his patented duckwalk and his on-the-floor body spasms could be handy attention-getting devices when playing for drunken, rowdy barroom crowds. Many of these gestures grew out of accidents.

One night Tantrum, the pre-AC/DC band Angus was playing with, was going down really badly. Angus walked across the stage and tripped over the guitar lead, so he felt like a dick and he kept running across the floor. He made it look like a death scene, screaming all hell from the guitar. It was the only clap they got that night. Angus told his brother about it. Malcolm asked him to join the band he was putting together.

Angus is of course the younger brother of his band mate Malcolm Young. The two brothers started the band in 1973 and recorded the band's first song "Can I Sit Next to You Girl" with the band's first front man Dave Evans in 1974. Angus is pretty much a self-taught guitarist by the fact that he took few formal lessons. Angus learned guitar solos by playing around with his Gibson SG before he knew any cords! Angus still plays his 1968 Gibson SG, it is as much his trade mark as his school suit. Angus began wearing his school suit because many of the gigs he would play as a young boy would start right after school and it was easier for him to leave the school suit on rather than change clothes. People became accustom to seeing the guitarist in his suit so he left it in the act! For those of you who have not seen Angus preform live in concert, I highly recomend watching one of AC/DC's many concert videos to see Angus on stage. His stage presence is by far one of the most impressive in the world!

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Steve Taylor.