(Credits: Far Out / Harry Potts)
Wed 31 December 2025 13:19, UK
As an industry veteran with more than 50 years of experience at the top of the rock ‘n’ roll game, Angus Young has seen great guitarists come and go, which has made the AC/DC guitarist more qualified than most to speak on the subject.
Even before AC/DC became one of the biggest rock groups on the planet, music had been an all-encompassing aspect of his life that helped drive him to greatness. To this day, those significant early influences that made him want to be in a band and devote his life to the cause remain a vital part of his artistry, which is impossible to shake.
Young didn’t make a concerted choice to fall in love with playing the guitar; it was in his bones. Picking up his instrument of choice wasn’t a pivotal moment in his life, as they were always lying around his family home for as long as he could remember, which helped him and his brother, Malcolm, take AC/DC to unprecedented heights.
There was no single epiphany for Young, such as hearing a song on the radio that made him fall in love with rock ‘n’ roll. However, he did have one hero that he worshipped the ground they walked on, which was Jimi Hendrix.
By the time Hendrix made his way onto his radar, Young had years of experience under his belt and naively thought he knew enough to be a scholar. However, listening to Hendrix provided him with a stone-cold reality check and redefined the sounds that he believed were possible.
The iconic Jimi Hendrix. (Credits: Far Out / Wikimedia)
During an interview with Guitar in 2021, Young said of discovering Hendrix: “I could play guitar a little bit, but I really got focused on it around the years when I was about 12 into my teenage years, I started to focus more on it. And around when I was about 13-14, that’s when Jimi Hendrix appeared on the horizon. And when I first heard the song ‘Purple Haze’, I was totally enthralled. ‘How’s he doing that?’ I was just so impressed with it.”
Due to Young being based in Australia, it wasn’t the most accessible of locations to see his favourite bands, who were mainly from the United Kingdom. Therefore, seeing Hendrix in the flesh wasn’t an opportunity that presented itself, but he did witness The Yardbirds, which was a life-changing moment, sharing, “When we saw them, they didn’t have Jeff Beck – they had Jimmy Page on guitar. So that was good because, at that time, that kind of sound, especially for guitar, it jumped out at you, the sound of it. So that was really good.”
However, as much as he was thrilled by seeing Page strut his stuff with The Yardbirds, hearing Hendrix, even on record, was incomparable to anything else, adding, “But then when along came Hendrix, you kind of went, ‘Woah! This is another level on guitar.’ So I was very much a fan of that.”
Although from a stylistic perspective, Hendrix and Young are different breeds of guitarists who operate uniquely. Nevertheless, the latter’s discovery of the former injected bundles of energy into his pursuit of playing the instrument and made his love affair even more deep-rooted.
From that moment on, if it wasn’t certain before, he knew nothing else apart from rock ‘n’ roll would consume his life. While Hendrix’s sad and premature death prevented them from ever duelling on-stage or Young telling him how much he means, the Australian will always view the legend as the greatest guitarist to have ever lived.
Related Topics