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Angus
Young Biography
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 practicing 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 |
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was eleven Angus had flirted with a
tutorial course, but he preferred 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 version of Chuck Berry's "duck-walk" 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 just made it look like a death
scene, screaming all hell from the guitar. It was the only clap
they got that night. Shortly after Angus told his brother
Malcolm about "the incident" he was
asked to join the band brother Mal was putting together.
Angus originally joined as a second "lead" guitar. Malcolm must
have noticed right off that his younger brother's stage persona
gave the band something original and Angus was the undisputed
star of the act. At that point Malcolm decided he would play
rhythm guitar. Angus Young then became ACDC's lead guitarist and
one of rocks most legendary and influential guitarist of all
time. |
