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The mainstream media tend to lump everything together. To them, there's no difference between Madonna, the Rolling Stones, or whatever.
Blues is a big part of rock and roll. The best rock and roll got its birth in the blues. You hear it in Little Richard and Chuck Berry.
We just stuck to what we did best. Maybe that's why people plug into us and go 'They never change.' We're reliable. A bit like old shoes.
When I'm on stage the savage in me is released. It's like going back to being a cave man. It takes me six hours to come down after a show.
You should hear me on my own. It's horrendous.I saw Deep Purple live once and I paid money for it and I thought, Geez, this is ridiculous.
I'm sick to death of people saying we've made 11 albums that sounds exactly the same, Infact, we've made 12 albums that sound exactly the same.
There's nothing worse than trying to patch something or make do. If there wasn't something there in the beginning, it won't be there at the end.
I'm constantly surprised when people say, 'But you haven't changed!' It's like saying, 'You've got a wheel. Now why don't you make it a square?'
I have the Internet, but the first that happens with it is my machine will crash. I get by when it's operating. What would I know about updating?
You'd be playing in a pub in the afternoon. Then late at night, you'd be playing a club. You got into that habit: 'If we don't play, we don't eat.'
I don't regard myself as a soloist. It's a color; I put it in for excitement. It's not great loss if a solo has to go. We've made songs without solos.
We've been in front of really big audiences, and people have said there's a couple of hundred thousand people out there, but I've never really noticed.
For the two hours I climb on stage, I become the schoolboy. But as soon as it is over, I get off stage and go home and get told to wipe my feet before I come in.
We don't go around the world counting ticket and record sales, nor do we glue our ears to the radio to hear what's trendy at the moment - we're not that type of band.
Once you're on stage you can't go back, even when things go wrong people expect you to stay there and entertain them. When all else fails, you've got to try tap dancing.
I've always been someone who thought it didn't matter where you were playing. I always shot for the best you could get. It never bothered me if it was small or it was big.
We've always been quite clear about how we want the songs to sound. If we can imagine the song being played at a party, and it gets people tapping their feet, then it's in.
We never go overboard and above people's heads. We strive to retain that energy, that spirit we've always had. We feel the more simple and original something is, the better.
If you know what you do well and stick to that, I think you can appeal to the different generations. You can strike a chord with them. I've got the brain of a teenager anyway.
When I was young, and I would see bands playing, I would dig the rock & roll and get excited, but when they would start to take the pace down, my attention span would start going.
I can't deny that Eric Clapton's and Eddie Van Halen's lead stuff has influenced a stack of people, but for me, it's the rhythm thing that's way more impressive and important to a band.
That's usually what happens with AC/DC: you make an album, and then you're on the road flat out. And the only time you ever get near a studio is generally after you've done a year of touring.
It doesn't take much for anyone to pick up anything I play - it's quite simple. I go for a good song. And if you hear a good song, you don't dissect it - you just listen, and every bit seems right.
We played by feel. We felt as though you could put us on any stage, and we would find a way to win that crowd over. We had that attitude: We can't fail. You might not like it right now, but you will.
With AC/DC, we've always started with rock, and we've just kept it going. The critic's view is always, 'They just made an album and it's the same as the last one.' I'll have fifteen of them, anytime.
With AC/DC, we've always started with rock, and we've just kept it going. The critic's view is always , 'They just made an album and it's the same as the last one.' I'll have fifteen of them, anytime.
I always liked the double cutaway. It looked like two horns. It's like a red devil. So I went to the guitar shop, saw an SG that was sitting there looking rather lonely, and said, 'Hey, that's for me.'
Because we grew up in Australia, to find information about a lot of blues guys, I used to go to the library and find the jazz magazines. They didn't even sell them at the time in news agents and stuff.
I think what AC/DC does best is play live. That's when everything comes together. Even after you make a studio album, when you go out and play live, that's when you learn what being in a band is all about.
The places we'd play were full of bikers, brawlers, and drinkers coming off a day of work looking for a good time, and all these guys would be looking at me like Hannibal Lecter looking at his next victim.
A lot of times you'll hear bands and it's a different sound coming out than what's on stage. Because you can clean it up through a PA and make it sound completely different than what they really sound like.
I never bothered with cars. I was probably one of the few kids in school who didn't run around with hot-rod magazines. As I would be at home fiddling with my guitar, they would be fiddling with a car engine.
Over the years, the critics have said, 'They never change.' Maybe the little guy's got a new color of school uniform. I always thought, 'Well, what were we going to change into?' A jazz band? A keyboard band?
With guitar riffs, we always look for something that 's a little bit special. We've always found that it is harder to come up with something that's nice and simple without getting something that's hard but easy.
Nothing happened overnight. Every country we went into, we started at the bottom. We knew that because the music we were playing and the attitude we had, we knew we'd be at the bottom and have to work our way up.
Riffs are a repeating thing. They come back to you. Some of the things on 'Back in Black' were ideas we had knocked around on tracks before that: 'That bit - maybe we should take a chunk of that and slug it in here.'
I think the '60s was a great time for music, especially for rock and roll. It was the era of The Beatles, of The Stones, and then later on The Who and Zeppelin. But at one point in the '70s, it just kind of became... mellow.
I don't know how many bands I saw who would try to wreck a hotel room, but I never wrecked a hotel room in my life! If I'm gonna sit there and throw a TV out the window... if it's a good TV, maybe I should just take it home.
The media, being what it is, is always looking for the next new thing. There are still bands out there playing, no matter what the new thing is. The Stones go out there, and people go see them without records or even airplay.
I have this theory about us. When we started writing our own songs, we were 17 years old. When you're 17, you write songs for other 17-year-olds. We stopped growing musically when we were 17. We still write songs for 17-year-olds.
Every guitarist I would cross paths with would tell me that I should have a flashy guitar, whatever the latest fashion model was, and I used to say, 'Why? Mine works, doesn't it? It's a piece of wood and six strings, and it works.'
We always try to get new songs. That's what AC/DC has always been about. You can listen to what we do, and you can go, 'Well, it's AC/DC, but it's a new song.' So that's what we've always tried to achieve. So we've always got that style.
In the studio, my brother and I have always used a lot of Marshall amps. We like to keep it pretty basic. We just use a couple of cabinets each - sometimes just one, if we think that's enough. We mainly go for 100-watt and 50-watt heads.
When we were younger, playing a bar or a club, we did what we did to get as many people to like what we were doing. I wanted the person in the back of the room to like it as much as the ones in the front. That's how I've always looked at it.
I never thought we'd be put into any sort of historical thing. When we started as a band, it was a day-to-day thing. You sort of played a gig, you got your money and thought, 'OK, where's tomorrow's gig?' You never thought you'd get past a summer.
When we were younger and first starting out in Australia, we found that we sold more records by word of mouth because we were playing the bars, clubs, and small places and building a following. And as we got bigger, we still relied a lot on word of mouth.
Actually, because I'm so small, when I strike an open A chord I get physically thrown to the left, and when I play an open G chord I go right. That's how hard I play, and that's how a lot of my stage act has come about. I just go where the guitar takes me.
With seven boys and one sister, there was always a lot of music in the house. A few of my brothers were playing instruments, so it was from hearing that, coupled with discovering early rock, which triggered me to pick up a guitar and try to pick out the notes.
I remember one of the first gigs I played with that amp was at a local church. They wanted someone to fill in with the guitar and my friend say, 'Ah, he can play.' And so I dragged the amplifier down and started playing and everybody started yelling 'turn it down!'
Go back to the very beginning, when we first started playing in local pubs. We used to play Chuck Berry covers. Every now and then, we'd slip in one of our own songs, and we found that we were getting away with it - nobody seemed to know these were original tracks.