Highway to Hell

by Clinton Walker

  Jacques Albert had migrated to Australia from Switzerland in 1884 and set up shop as a music publisher. Immediate success with a single product called The Boomerang Songbook laid the foundations of the family fortune. Turnover was maintained as Alberts picked up Australian rights to an impressive array of song catalogues.

  Ted Albert was 26 when Beatlemania hit in 1963, and he got caught up in it. He wanted a Beatles of his own. Initially, he had headhunted the already successful Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs to work with his newly-formed Alberts Productions. But when Mike Vaughan invited him down to have a look at the new group he was representing, Ted, in his own words, almost broke his neck getting a contract drawn up. The Easybeats, after all, did what no other Australian band did—they wrote their own material. To a publisher this is obviously important.

  Ted immediately took the band into the old 2UW Radio Theatre (the family owned the station) to cut demos. A debut single, “For My Woman,” was released in March 1965 through Parlophone, and while it wasn’t a hit, it was encouragement enough to Ted to get any sort of reaction to original material. Two months later the Easybeats’ second single, “She’s So Fine,” shot to number one, and dragged the forgotten first single into the top five as well. “Easyfever” took hold; only Normie Rowe could compete with the group for the title of premier Australian pop attraction.

  The Easybeats went on to produce an incredible run of hits, and cut three albums before they left Australia in July 1966 for London, then the Mecca of the pop world.

  With the rise of the Easybeats, Alberts Productions also established itself as a force in the fledgling Australian music industry. George Young would later praise the urbane Ted Albert as a man who, self-taught in the art of recording rock’n’roll, “knew as much about feel and balls in a track as anyone I’ve ever met . . . and had a very good ear for picking the right songs.”

  Ted applied his instincts to running Alberts, and was rewarded with a string of hits for Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs as well as the Easybeats. Dirtier, uglier R&B merchants like the Throb and the Missing Links fared less well commercially, but left a lasting impact.

  When Ted followed the Easybeats overseas, Alberts wound down operations in Australia, at least temporarily. On the international scene, the Easybeats scored immediately, and massively, with the mod anthem “Friday On My Mind”—then spent the next three years falling apart in the search for a follow-up.

  Manager Mike Vaughan was out of his depth overseas. It reached a point, in 1967, where the band was signed “exclusively” to several record companies around the world, which left them hamstrung. All this experience gave George the bitter wisdom he would later apply to AC/DC’s career.

  Artistically too, as George would later regret, the Easybeats strayed off the track, or were led astray. The band progressed through two very distinct cycles, in Australia and then overseas, both of which began and ended with rock’n’roll, but in between went very wayward. Initially, in Australia, flushed with their first success, the band indulged itself and tried to be clever. Whilst the resulting songs like “Wedding Ring” and “Sad and Lonely and Blue” were still hits, albeit minor ones, George at least claims to have derived much greater satisfaction out of the band’s subsequent return to rock’n’roll with songs like “Women” and “Sorry.”

  By the time “Sorry” reached number one in Australia in November 1966, the Easybeats were ensconced in the studio in London with Who/ Kinks producer Shel Talmy, cutting “Friday on My Mind.” “Friday on My Mind” followed “Sorry” into the number one position in Australia a mere month later, and eventually, after a few false starts, made top ten in Britain and top 20 in America, not to mention hitting very big all across Europe, especially in Germany.

  But “Friday on My Mind” would prove to be both a blessing and a curse, as big hits sometimes are for bands. Despite the layers of businessmen who siphoned off much of the Easybeats’ earnings, it was certainly a meal ticket for Harry Vanda and George Young, at least, since they had written the song. It also made George aware of the value of the often overlooked European market.

  Contrary to all the evidence which suggests it seldom works, record companies inevitably want a band to produce a clone follow-up to consolidate the success of a first hit. To an artist, this sort of pressure is like a red rag to a bull. George and Harry, who by now had taken complete creative control of the Easybeats, would do anything but repeat themselves, or anything close. So the band’s singles that followed “Friday on My Mind” were all over the shop, a grab bag of psychedelic dabblings which only sporadically attained the vitality of their earlier work. It wasn’t until late 1968 with “Good Times,” a raging slab of rock’n’roll (successfully revived in Australia in 1988 by INXS and Jimmy Barnes), that George and Harry perhaps realized they’d been cutting off their nose to spite their face.

  The lesson in all of this for George, which he would pass on in no uncertain terms to his eager little brothers, was that you must stay true to your roots.

  “Good Times” came too late. By then, the public didn’t know who or what the Easybeats were, and the band themselves no longer shared the sense of unity they had when they all lived out of each other’s pockets. George and Harry had become estranged from the rest of the band, spending all their time together in the studio and refusing to tour at any length. Eventually they moved into their own four-track studio-flat in London.

  The band was on its last legs—broke, and with drugs beginning to eat away at it. Stevie Wright began the downward spiral that would lead to the heroin addiction which would blight his life for many years.

  The last album that bore the Easybeats’ name, Friends, was barely that. A ragtag collection of demos recorded by Harry and George, with only Stevie otherwise appearing on a few of the tracks, it did, however, yield the Easybeats’ last minor hit, the good-rocking “St Louis.”

  On the strength of that, the band managed to get it together sufficiently to tour Australia in the spring of 1969, when they were supported by the Valentines. It would be their last hurrah. At tour’s end, Harry and George headed straight back to their London studio lair. Word was that the band had finally broken up.

  Back in London, Harry and George picked up where they had left off. The next three years were like one long lost weekend as they worked at establishing themselves as an all-round production team, spotting talent, and writing and recording. They sold a few songs and produced a record or two, but nothing world-beating. Little wonder then that Ted Albert—who kept up an ongoing game of chess with George by telephone—was able to lure them back to Australia in 1973.

  Spurred by success with a young pop singer-songwriter, Englishman Ted Mulry, Alberts was reborn in the new decade as a record label in its own right. Mulry’s first single “Julie” was a minor hit. His second “Falling in Love Again,” penned by none other than Harry and George, and released for Christmas 1970, was a smash.

  The signing that consolidated Alberts’ comeback was John Paul Young. Englishman Simon Napier-Bell, former manager of the Yardbirds, among other, more dubious, distinctions (he later managed Wham!) was then working at Alberts on a kind of exchange program. He was looking for a singer to match with another of Harry and George’s demos which was lying around, a song called “Pasadena.” Cut with John Paul Young, it hit just outside the top ten in April 1972.

  At that point, Ted promised Harry and George the world, or at least that he would build them a studio, and that they could run it as they chose. Harry and George, in return, promised to get down to some serious work.

  AC/DC has always been Malcolm Young’s band—and it still is. Malcolm formed the band in the first place, and even as Angus has gradually assumed the role of front man, Malcolm was always the driving force—the primary writer, and the one to whom the last word in the band belonged. And while Angus has come to share much of the songwriting load with Malcolm, the pair’s equal, if silent partner in the band has always been big brother George. Having already been ar
ound the block with the Easybeats, suffering shortcomings and rip-offs, George was embittered, and in many ways AC/DC would be his revenge. AC/DC would achieve what the Easybeats couldn’t—control of their own destiny, and sustained success.

  George was much more than merely AC/DC’s coproducer—it was he who honed the band’s sound and songs into a coherent, commercially viable entity. But George’s brilliance was that he never tried to polish a turd. Where less incisive record producers would have tried to iron out AC/DC’s rough edges and tart up the sound, all George ever aimed to do was harness that power, give it shape and direction.

  As George’s crowning achievement, AC/DC also marked the inauguration of a dynasty in Australian rock’n’roll, one whose influence is still pervasive. It is felt not just in the success of AC/DC, but also in the seminal influence AC/DC exert all over the world, and in the other work George and Harry have done as part of the Alberts Productions axis. In the mid-seventies, Alberts produced an unprecedented string of hits for artists like Stevie Wright (by then a solo artist), John Paul Young, and the Ted Mulry Gang. Perhaps more importantly still, George and Harry’s production work for such bands as Rose Tattoo and the Angels virtually defined the unique Australian rock genre which grew out of the thriving pub circuit.

  George Young lived at home in Burwood—when he wasn’t on the road—right up until he went overseas in 1966. Growing up in his slipstream, it was almost inevitable that Malcolm and Angus would follow him into rock’n’roll. Angus would later recall: “One day George was a 16-year-old kid sitting on his bed playing guitar, the next day he was worshipped by the whole country. I was going to school at the time—or rather, trying not to go to school—and I was very impressed. He was getting all the girls.”

  As Angus has testified, there was always a guitar around the Youngs’ house. Nevertheless, as Malcolm told Glenn A. Baker, “We didn’t get much encouragement. Dad was still asking George when he was going to get a proper job. The Easybeats weren’t making much money in England by the end and I don’t think the family liked the drug thing that was happening in rock by that time.” But music was an irresistible force, and the two brothers picked up as much by osmosis as they did from old records by Muddy Waters, Ike and Tina Turner, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, the Who, the Stones or the Yardbirds.

  Both Malcolm and Angus attended nearby Ashfield Boys High, a school notorious for its toughness. Malcolm told Spunky, “Because we were little guys, everyone kept pushing us around, and we had to fight or get beat up.”

  The boys’ father insisted they get a trade no matter what, so when Malcolm left school at 15 he started work as an apprentice fitter. At the time, Sydney’s inner west was buzzing with music. The powerful Nova agency, which had handled Fraternity, had its offices in Ashfield, and the specter of new local bands like Sherbet, Blackfeather and the Flying Circus loomed large. Malcolm jammed around in mates’ bedrooms and garages.

  In 1971, when he was working as a sewing machine maintenance man for Berlei, who make the bras, Malcolm met a band presumptuously called the Velvet Underground, who had just moved to nearby Regents Park. They were looking for a guitarist, and Malcolm got the gig.

  The Velvet Underground had formed in Newcastle, a steel town on the New South Wales coast, in 1967. With a repertoire based around material by the Doors and Jefferson Airplane, they became top dogs on the local dance circuit. When front man Steve Phillipson threw in the towel, the band relocated to Sydney. Finding the guitarist they sought in Malcolm—they knew he was the brother of George Young, although Malcolm didn’t play up the fact—they experimented with vocalists until they settled on Andy Imlah, who was poached off a nondescript local outfit called Elm Tree.

  The band was picked up for representation by Dal Myles (now a newsreader on Sydney television), who constituted Nova’s sole rival. Thus the Velvet Underground became popular on Sydney’s suburban dance circuit, where they would often share the bill with another one of Myles’ clients, erstwhile Alberts solo artist Ted Mulry, who was then using the aforementioned Elm Tree as a backing band. Like the Valentines, Elm Tree had started life with two lead vocalists—a young sheet-metal worker by the name of John Paul Young sharing the spotlight with Andy Imlah—but the band was left in the lurch after Imlah went off to join the Velvet Underground.

  Malcolm already knew Ted Mulry through George, who’d met him at the 1970 Tokyo Song Festival where Mulry’s “Falling in Love Again” was unveiled.

  TED MULRY: “When I came back from Japan, it was around Christmas, and George was home for Christmas, and he said, What are you doing for Christmas? I said, I dunno, whatever; he said, Well, New Year’s Eve, we’re having a do at the folks’ place, come around. So I said, Alright. And you can imagine! You go along with your guitar, and they’re all musicians, and you have a few drinks . . . The funny thing was, I was the only non-Scot there, there wasn’t even any other Englishmen, and you couldn’t understand a word they were saying! But what a ball! We had a big singsong, and you’d get everything out, somebody had a squeeze-box, and there was a mouth organ, the bass would come out, guitars. It was great.”

  With the Velvet Underground gigging busily, Malcolm threw in his job and became a professional musician like the rest of the band. He would never work a day job again.

  The young Angus was allowed to go out and see his brother play—and he would sit wide-eyed at the front of stage—as long as he was brought straight home. But the Velvet Underground were pretty well-behaved anyway. They would go back to Burwood after gigs to drink Ovaltine.

  “We used to go round to pick Malcolm up,” recalls Velvet Underground drummer Herm Kovac. “The first time, this little punk skinhead answered the door. It was Angus. I hid behind Les [the guitarist] ; in those days you’d hear about the skinheads down at Burwood Station, Strathfield Station. Shaved head he had, big boots. He said, Eh, come in ’ere. So we follow him into his room, he straps on his SG, jumps on the bed, and goes off on this exhibition, running over the dressing table, showing off, couldn’t play any chords, just lead, and when he finishes he says, Whaddya reckon? You had to say, Pretty good, Angus. Every time you’d go there you’d have to go through this same ritual.”

  Malcolm Young’s first real band, the unapologetically named Velvet Underground, ca. 1972. L-R: Herm Kovac, Malcolm, Andy Imlah, Michael Szchefswick, and Les Hall. Both Kovac and Hall went on to play in the Ted Mulry Gang, AC/DC’s Alberts labelmates. (courtesy Herm Kovac)

  The Velvet Underground were writing a few songs of their own, but their set was still mainly covers—the Stones’ “Can You Hear Me Knockin’?” and “Brown Sugar,” and T Rex songs.

  HERM KOVAC: “Malcolm never had guitar heroes. You know, when you’re a teenager you have pin-ups on the wall. Malcolm and Angus never had any pictures on their bedroom wall. The one guitarist who was Malcolm’s hero, who he did have a picture of on the wall, was the guy you’d least expect—Marc Bolan. Malcolm made us do about six T Rex songs. I said, I hate ’em, they all sound the same. But Malcolm loved Marc Bolan. Mind you, the picture he had of him was tiny!”

  Ted Mulry had been the first to cut a version of George and Harry’s “Pasadena,” but Simon Napier-Bell was convinced there was a hit in it yet, and so he asked the Velvet Underground to do it. They demurred. They were a rock band, they protested, and “Pasadena” was pop schlock, even if it was one of Malcolm’s brother’s songs. The Velvet Underground in turn suggested that maybe “Mungy” Young, Elm Tree’s other singer, would be well suited to the song. John Paul Young was thus launched on his own career.

  With the dissolution of Elm Tree now complete, Ted Mulry, who was still producing hits as a solo artist, needed a new backing band, and so he became something of a double-act with the Velvet Underground. The Velvet Underground would open the show, and then play behind Ted for his set. But Malcolm was getting itchy fingers. He wanted to go off and get something of his own together. Late in 1972, then, the Velvet Underground folded. The rest of the band, plus Ted,
transmuted into the Ted Mulry Gang.

  HERM KOVAC: “When Malcolm left Velvet Underground, the reason he left was that Deep Purple had come out then, and he wanted to play all Deep Purple-type stuff. The rest of us weren’t really into that. So he went and tried it, couldn’t get any gigs, and then the early AC/DC played Beatles songs and all that, just to get work.”

  At around the same time Malcolm was starting to get something of his own together, George and Harry finally arrived back in Australia for good. But though they went back to work for Ted Albert, they did so with a guardedness that would become part of their trademark.

  Chris Gilbey joined Alberts around the same time, at the start of 1973. Gilbey, a Londoner who had played in small-time bands in the sixties before moving to the other side of the desk, arrived in Australia via South Africa.

  CHRIS GILBEY: “Ted had been giving George and Harry a retainer even when they were in England. They came back and I didn’t meet them for quite some time. Ted would have these meetings with them. I was doing—I don’t know what I was doing!—George and Harry were mysteriously making this record at EMI.”

  The record George and Harry were mysteriously making was the legendary Marcus Hook Roll Band album, Tales of Old Granddaddy, now a highly-prized collector’s item. This project provided Malcolm and Angus with their blooding in the recording studio, and it was an experience that had a profound effect on Malcolm in particular.

  The Marcus Hook Roll Band had its genesis during George and Harry’s final days in England, when a friend called Wally Allen, then working as an engineer for EMI at Abbey Road, got them into the studio to cut a few tracks just for fun. George and Harry returned to Australia soon after, and it wasn’t until EMI’s American affiliate Capitol Records contacted them that they even remembered doing the sessions. Capitol was hot for a track called “Natural Man,” and wanted more. “It was a free trip for Wally who wanted to see Bondi Beach,” George told Glenn A. Baker, “so he scored a ticket and came.