(Credits: Far Out / Spotify)
Wed 1 October 2025 14:55, UK
As Malcolm Young lay in bed, coming towards an unfitting ordinary end to what was the most extraordinary life, his brother and bandmate, Angus, flicked through albums to play him.
The two brothers were united by a great deal, but there is no escaping the fact that music is what always bound them together. For their entire lives, an adoration of great guitar music has kept the two on the road, making music, and persistently revelling in the world of rock together. These are two artists who have been left unchanged in the ever-changing landscape that is music, and it’s their love of the classics, of R&B and blues, that has kept them so unwavering.
Obviously, given they have such a love for these classic, timeless genres, they’re also fans of bands who championed them. Arguably, one of the most popular bands in the world who have always kept the sound of artists like Muddy Waters infused into their guitar riffs was The Rolling Stones, hence why Angus started playing one of their records when his brother took a turn for the worst.
“One of the last records I ever played him was The Rolling Stones when they were doing a lot of blues tracks [2016’s Blue and Lonesome],” recalled Angus. What a fitting record, a modern iteration of the Stones playing covers of the songs that inspired them to pick up instruments in the first place, the same songs that likely inspired Malcolm and Angus. “He just thought it was great.”
That iconic Rolling Stones sound is deeply rooted in the blues. The riffs they put together were relatively simple, but they were played with such rigour, with so much emotion and passion, that even the most basic of chord structures sound as though they could bring down buildings. Yes, it’s simplistic, and the band have received criticism for that in the past, but some of the best riffs in the world are made up of just a few notes.
Look at Deep Purple and ‘Smoke On The Water’, that’s a riff that proved to be so popular they had to ban people from playing it in guitar shops to save the people who worked there hearing the same notes day in day out. The same can be said for the likes of The Kinks with their pioneering ‘You Really Got Me’, Guns N’ Roses with the aggressive but powerful ‘Paradise City’, and one of the Rolling Stones biggest hits, ‘Satisfaction’.
Angus Young was a big fan of the song ‘Satisfaction’ because he felt it was the kind of track that you hear the minute you think of the Rolling Stones. It was a classic in its own right, and a real earworm as it’s the song you associate with Jagger and Co, a masterpiece in its simplicity and its execution. However, while he loved that song, he felt there was an AC/DC track which took what the Stones did with ‘Satisfaction’ and one-upped them.
“I love playing ‘Back in Black‘ – it’s like my wife said to me once about songs, you know,” he explained, “Instantly if you hear The Stones, you hear ‘Satisfaction,’ and I said, ‘Well, we got one better, we got one.’ [Laughs] And you know exactly who it is.”
Related Topics