Youngs : The Brothers Who Built Ac/Dc (9781466865204)

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Youngs : The Brothers Who Built Ac/Dc (9781466865204) Page 31

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.”

 

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