by Fink, Jesse
Smith, Neil
Smith, Silver
Somalia, American forces in
Somerville, Mike
Sony
Sooty Blotch see Baby Sugar Loud
“Sorry”
Sorum, Matt
“Soul Stripper”
sound effects
Speakeasy Club (London)
Spector, Phil
The Spektors
“Spellbound”
Spinal Tap
Split Enz
sports venues
Springfield, Dusty
Squiers, Kurt
“St. Louis”
stadium band
Stark, Tony (Marvel character)
Stax Records
Steinman, Jim
Stevie: The Life and Music of Stevie Wright and The Easybeats
Stewart, Rod
“Stiff Upper Lip”
Stiff Upper Lip
Stigwood, Robert
Storace, Marc
studio bands
Sugerman, Danny
Sunbury Festival (1975)
Sunday Times Rich List of Music Millionaires
Supernatural
Sutcliffe, Phil
Swan, John
Sydney Opera House
T
Tait, John
Tales of Old Grand-Daddy
Talking Heads
Talmy, Shel
Tanner, Lisa
taxes
Taylor, Noel
Ted Nugent
Teenage Roadshow
Tek, Deniz
testosterone rock
Texas
Thaler, Doug
Thames Agency
Thoener, David
Thorpe, Billy
“Thunderstruck”
“Thunderstruck” (film clip)
Thunderstruck (movie)
Time magazine
“TNT”
TNT
torture
tour earnings
touring in America
Townshend, Pete
trademark
tribute bands
Tudor, Ron
“Turn Up Your Radio”
Twain, Shania
2JJ/2JJJ
2SM Concert of the Decade
Tyler, Steven
U
United Artists Records
“Urgent”
V
The Valentines
Van Halen
Van Halen, Eddie
Van Kriedt, Larry
Van Zant, Ronnie
Vanda, Harry, see also Vanda & Young
Vanda, Pamela
Vanda & Young
arranging
co-production
co-songwriting
eight-track home studio
“Evie”
“High Voltage”
Jackie Christian & Flight
replaced as producers
“Rock ’n’ Roll Damnation”
Rose Tattoo
Vaughan, Mike
Vigil
vinyl
viruses (computer)
W
“Waiting for a Girl Like You”
WAIV see WPDQ/WAIV
Walker, Clinton
“Walking in the Rain”
Wall, Mick
“War Machine”
Warner Bros Records
Warner Music Group
Watts, Charlie
WaveAid concert (2005)
WBCN
“We Can’t Be Beaten”
WEA convention (Fort Lauderdale)
Weaver, Gil
website, AC/DC official
Weinstein, Harvey
Wells, Pete
West, Mae
Wexler, Jerry
Wheatley, Glenn
Wheeler, John
Whisky A Go-Go (Los Angeles)
“Who Made Who”
Who Made Who
“Whole Lotta Rosie”
Willesee, Peter
Williams, Big Joe
Williams, Cliff
Williams, Hank, Jr
Williams, Paul
Wilson, Cosmo
Windmill Lane Studios (Dublin)
WIOQ
Wisefield, Laurie
Wishbone Ash
“Wishing Well”
WLVQ
WNEW
Wood, Ron
Worthington, Sam
WPDQ/WAIV
Wright, Simon
Wright, Stevie see also The Easybeats
AC/DC
All Stars
Brian Johnson
Currenti
“Evie”
“Good Times”
“Hells Bells”
heroin addiction
Mark Evans
Sydney Opera House (1974)
2SM Concert of the Decade
the Youngs
The Wrights (supergroup)
WTAC
Wyman, Bill
Y
Yannuzzi, Joseph see Anthony, Joe
Yasgar, Larry
“Yesterday’s Hero”
Yothu Yindi
“You Ain’t Got a Hold on Me”
“You Shook Me All Night Long”
“You Shook Me All Night Long” (film clip)
Young, Alex
Young, Alex, Jr
Young, Angus
as Australian
cars
the fans
Gibson SG
“Jailbreak”
John Proud
lead guitar
Leber
lyric writing
Malcolm and
“Riff Raff”
role in AC/DC
“Thunderstruck”
Young, George see also Vanda & Young
as “angel”
co-songwriting with Wright
in The Easybeats
“Evie”
“Good Times” cover
“High Voltage”
“Jailbreak”
mastering
musical talent
psychological techniques
The Razors Edge
role in AC/DC
as songwriter
Young, John Paul
Young, Malcolm
Angus and
as Australian
Back in Black
Dave Evans
“Evie”
Gretsch Falcon
Gretsch Firebird
illness
“It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ’n’ Roll)”
“Jailbreak”
John Proud
Leber
lyric writing
Mark Evans
Powerage
rhythm guitar
role in AC/DC
Young, Margaret and William (parents)
Young, Margaret (sister)
Young, Monica
Young, Stevie
Young, Stevie, Sr
Young, Stewart
Young, Yvette
Younger, Rob
the Youngs
as AC/DC
class consciousness
erudition
family orientation
fist fights
Glasgow
“It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ’n’ Roll)”
privacy
sense of humor
toughness
wariness of management
Wright
Yunupingu, Mandawuy
Z
Zomba Group
ZZ Top
“Bon [Scott] got some of his performance characteristics from Stevie,” says former Rose Tattoo guitarist Rob Riley. Stevie Wright responds humbly: “I find it hard to believe because he was so good that I admired him.” Wright’s three-part 1974 epic, “Evie,” written by Harry Vanda and George Young, was a runaway hit in Australia but didn’t take off in America.
AC/DC and Stevie Wright session drummer Tony Currenti takes a cigarette break at
his pizzeria in Penshurst, Sydney. Currenti played most of the drums on 1975’s High Voltage. He taught himself how to play drums by bashing whatever he could find with spoons. INSET: Currenti (BELOW) as a child in Italy.
Bon Scott (LEFT) in London, 1976, with AC/DC manager Michael Browning (CENTER) and the routinely misidentified Australian radio personality Ken Evans (RIGHT), program director for Radio Luxembourg and formerly of pirate stations Radio Caroline and Radio Atlanta.
American radio’s first champion of AC/DC, Jacksonville’s Bill Bartlett (CENTER), with fellow DJ Lee Walsh (LEFT) and visiting 2JJ Sydney station coordinator Ron Moss (RIGHT). Moss headed 2JJ when Holger Brockmann played “It’s a Long Way to the Top” on radio for the first time anywhere in the world. And Brockmann didn’t just play the song once. He loved it so much that he played it five times in a row.
Mark Evans fitted so well aesthetically and musically with AC/DC but was dramatically sacked by the Youngs in 1977, just before the band’s first tour of the United States. “It’s like a divorce,” he says. “Not only does your employment change but because you’re living with the guys in the band your whole lifestyle changes. It was a wrench.”
Designer Gerard Huerta with the AC/DC logo commissioned solely for the U.S. release of Let There Be Rock. He has not received any royalties for the logo’s subsequent use on other AC/DC albums or in AC/DC merchandise.
The original artwork, which was inspired by the letterforms of the Gutenberg Bible. Says Huerta: “It is the only piece of lettering I have done that is made entirely of straight lines.”
All eyes on the “atomic microbe” during the recording of Live From the Atlantic Studios, New York City, 1977. ALSO PICTURED: Atlantic promotion executive Judy Libow (THIRD FROM LEFT AT FRONT), radio program director and future MTV founder Robert Pittman (RIGHT OF LIBOW), AC/DC’s U.S. publisher Barry Bergman (BEHIND BON SCOTT, IN GLASSES), Atlantic promotion executive Perry Cooper (BEHIND ANGUS YOUNG), and Philadelphia DJ Ed Sciaky (RIGHT OF COOPER).
In New York, 1977, with two giants of Atlantic Records: marketing and promotion executive Michael Klenfner (LEFT) and cofounder Ahmet Ertegun (CENTER). Klenfner, widely regarded inside Atlantic as the band’s champion, would get fired over his resistance to Mutt Lange as producer of Highway to Hell. Ertegun was a crucial player behind the U.S. success of the INXS-Jimmy Barnes cover of The Easybeats track “Good Times.”
One of a treasure trove of seldom seen AC/DC images from the Powerage sessions in Sydney, 1978, never before published in book form. FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: Malcolm Young, music journalist and later record-company executive Jon O’Rourke, and Angus Young.
“Malcolm no doubt was the leader of the band,” says Powerage engineer Mark Opitz. “George had had his day with The Easybeats. Not strongly, not overtly, but you could feel during Powerage Malcolm was starting to stake his ground a bit [in the brothers’ pecking order].”
The underrated but incomparable Phil Rudd, the drummer who AC/DC cast aside for a decade and then reinstated. “Three notes get right to your soul whereas others can play 50 million and not touch you,” he says. “That’s my style. I don’t do a lot but I do it right.”
Phil Rudd (RIGHT) lights a cigarette for George Young during the sessions for Powerage, considered by aficionados to be AC/DC’s best album. As a bass player George is “a little bit similar to how Ronnie Lane was with The Small Faces,” according to Mark Evans. “Very loopy and very notey, but he always picks the great lines.”
Mark Opitz (LEFT) with Harry Vanda recording Powerage. Says Opitz: “In a way it was AC/DC’s Sgt. Pepper’s. When we came to do Powerage, George, Harry, and the band did serious rehearsals at Studio 2 in Alberts. George playing bass with the band just out in the studio, Harry and me in the control room.” Opitz later produced the INXS-Jimmy Barnes cover of “Good Times.”
Possessed! Angus Young with Tony Berardini, the DJ who broke AC/DC at KTIM in San Rafael, California, and at WBCN in Boston. Berardini MCed their gig at Paradise Theater, Boston, 1978.
On stage at Royal Oak Theater, Michigan, 1978. “Angus and Malcolm both play off each other so well that it almost sounds like one massive wall of power,” says Rhino Bucket’s Georg Dolivo.
“[Bon] was the best,” says Steve Leber of AC/DC’s legendary and much-missed singer, here pictured at Cobo Arena, Detroit, 1978. “When he was alive there was nothing like it.” Could AC/DC have got as big without him?
Ex-Atlantic president Jerry Greenberg believes he was instrumental to AC/DC’s success: “I supported them not only with coming down from the presidential office to the troops [and telling them] that they needed this band but also by writing the checks. AC/DC were very heavily in the red before they finally broke.” Greenberg was also behind the push to hire Mutt Lange.
The man who signed AC/DC to Atlantic in 1975, Phil Carson, playing bass with Robert Plant. “AC/DC saw me as their ally in much the same way that I was treated by Led Zeppelin,” he says. “AC/DC wanted that personal contact with the guy at the label who really had decision-making capabilities that could change their lives.”
Publicity-shy AC/DC manager Peter Mensch (LEFT) with Bun E. Carlos and Robin Zander (HOLDING POOL CUE) of Cheap Trick, and Bon Scott in Germany, 1979. AC/DC sacked Mensch after the Monsters of Rock concert at Castle Donington, England, 1981. He now manages Metallica and Red Hot Chili Peppers.
The 1981 U.S. version of the long-shelved Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap conspicuously missing “Jailbreak,” a song deemed “too horrific for teenage consumption.” Released after Back in Black and before For Those About to Rock, Phil Carson considers the timing of its exhuming “one of the most crass decisions ever made by a record-company executive.”
A rare photo of Mutt Lange with AC/DC, Paris, 1981. FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: Brian Johnson, Malcolm Young, David Thoener (IN GLASSES), assistant engineer Mark Haliday, and Lange. “It was a privilege and honor to work with AC/DC and Mutt, and I will forever be grateful,” says For Those About to Rock engineer Thoener, who went on to win two Grammys for his work with Santana.
Thoener with Johnson. “I never worked with AC/DC again because I never got a call,” he says. “That’s something an engineer/mixer gets used to. Even though you can work on a record that sells millions, it doesn’t mean you’ll get a call the next time they record. In a year’s time there’s a new ‘hot’ guy that people want to check out.”
Rose Tattoo were “more primitive and raucous than AC/DC” but Jerry Greenberg couldn’t break Australia’s tattooed wild boys in the United States. FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: Rob Riley, Pete Wells, Greenberg, Dallas “Digger” Royall, Angry Anderson, and Geordie Leach.
An AC/DC pinball machine in Chinatown, New York, 2013. The Youngs’ musical output has dried up but Gerard Huerta’s logo and the band’s catalog continue to produce rivers of gold.
Brian Johnson pretends to strangle Perry Cooper while Ellen Young, Angus’s wife, offers her hand. Says Renée Cooper, Perry’s daughter: “AC/DC and my father were really tight. After Bon died, my dad and Brian became best friends. When Bon passed, they found the emergency-person-to-contact card and it was my dad.”
Angus in full flight during the unstoppable Back in Black era. Comments AC/DC’s longtime film and concert director David Mallet: “Pink Floyd is about a spectacle. Each song, each number in concert has a different type of spectacle. AC/DC is about the same spectacle every time. Called Angus Young.”
AC/DC performs on their Black Ice tour in Sydney, 2010. “I don’t think AC/DC are capable of changing their format because they have no desire to,” says Australian rock singer and Young family friend John Swan. “It’s a work in progress. As long as my arse points towards the floor, AC/DC will be AC/DC and they will never be anything else.”
PRAISE FOR THE YOUNGS
“The best book I’ve ever read about AC/DC.”
—Mark Evans, bass player of AC/DC, 1975–77
“I loved it.”
—Jerry Greenberg, president of Atlantic Records, 1974�
��80
“A great job.”
—Tony Platt, engineer of Back in Black and Highway to Hell
“Jesse Fink delivers a fresh biographical take on AC/DC. The accomplished journalist balances a serious appreciation for the music with a driving desire to cut through the mystery and misinformation shrouding this seminal rock ’n’ roll band. Fink’s book should satisfy both diehard fans and those who love reading good biographies.”
—iTunes “Editor’s Notes” (Australia)
“Recent books [about AC/DC by Murray Engleheart and Mick Wall] … didn’t offer much to change our perception of the band. Jesse Fink’s study of the Young brothers takes a different approach … giving us a different version of many stories, especially when it comes to the wheeling and dealing behind the rock. Fink is clearly in love with AC/DC, but he knows the old bird has some warts under her make-up, and doesn’t shy away from revelations that cast the Youngs in a less than flattering light.”
—Rolling Stone (Australia)
“While a lot’s been written about them over the years, [The Youngs] provides a definitive history of the trio.”
—GQ (Australia)
“Being an all-around nice guy is no prerequisite to getting rich. Jaw-dropping reinforcement of this point is about to hit your local bookstore in the form of The Youngs by Jesse Fink.”
—BRW (Australia)
“A savvy new book … Fink, quite properly, can’t stand the kind of music critic who feels pleasing a crowd is a suspect achievement, somehow antithetical to the spirit of rock. In the end, [he] seems to be in two minds about AC/DC. That seems the right number of minds for an adult to be in about them, especially an adult who encountered their best albums during the sweet spot of his youth … like all great popular art, [AC/DC’s music] slips past the higher faculties. It makes you forget, for three minutes or so, that there’s anything else you’d rather hear.”