Angus Young

My part in AC/DC is just adding the color on top.

A lot of people say, 'AC/DC - that's the band with the little guy who runs around in school shorts!'

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.

Soloing was pretty easy for me because it was probably the first thing I've ever done.

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!'

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.

I wouldn't know any newer bands. We're past the pimple stage.

The misunderstanding out there is that we are a 'hard rock' band or a 'heavy metal' band. We've only ever been a rock n' roll band.

I found that pedals were too much to fool around with. You'd be halfway through a solo, and the batteries would go dead and conk out. And if you tread on the lead going to the pedal, something would always go wrong. Or some crazy kid would pull the lead out just at the moment when you're about to do your big number on it.

I think that's what it is with rock music. It helps you hang tough, I guess.

I've heard people say all our music sounds the same, but it's usually just the people who don't like us who say it.

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 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.

I saw Deep Purple live once and I paid money for it and I thought, 'Geez, this is ridiculous.' You just see through all that sort of stuff. I never liked those Deep Purples or those sort of things. I always hated it. I always thought it was a poor man's Led Zeppelin.

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 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.'

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.'

Australia is the place I know best.

We're a rock group. we're noisy, rowdy, sensational and weird.

The mainstream media tend to lump everything together. To them, there's no difference between Madonna, the Rolling Stones, or whatever.

You've got to love what you do. You've got to like doing it, because it is a lot of your life.

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.

I just go where the guitar takes me.

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.

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.

The biggest tragedy we had early on was when Bon Scott died.

You have to put a market value on what you do.

When you sign on and say, 'I'm gonna do this and that,' it's always good to say at the end of it, 'I've done all I said I would do.'

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.

Hearing a lot of early rock n' roll records from a very young age was a huge influence.

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.

I never thought of us as a punk band, a metal band, or a new wave band. Just as a band band.

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.

When we grew up, Australia was the land of opportunity; it really was.

My ambition was just to be able to play guitar.

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.

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.

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.

Key to longevity... drinking embalming fluid every year.

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 school suit allows me to be an extrovert. Basically, I'm the opposite of what I am on stage.

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.

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.

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.

I honestly believe that you have to be able to play the guitar hard if you want to be able to get the whole spectrum of tones out of it. Since I normally play so hard, when I start picking a bit softer my tone changes completely, and that's really useful sometimes for creating a more laid-back feel.

There are all sorts of cute puppy dogs, but it doesn't stop people from going out and buying Dobermans.

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.

Yes, we're still five little people with a noisy attitude.