AC/DC 1976: ‘We’re not fucking punks, we’re a rock band!’

Despite having achieved enormous success, the AC/DC they never lost the ‘us against the world’ mentality developed during their years of apprenticeship in Australian pubs.

As reported Paul Brannigan on Loudersoundonce the now deceased guitarist of the Australian band Malcolm Young he told him about it: “We were just five kids carrying our gear around in a van and it was always tough. But we never backed down from anyone. When you have five kids going, ‘Hey? What the fuck are you doing?’, people think, ‘Wait a minute… maybe they have guns or something.’ or they pointed guns at us.”

The AC/DC moved to London in the spring of 1976, the group’s brazen, rebellious attitude and their aggressive 12-bar blues songs led to them being lumped in with the bands of the nascent punk scene, much to their irritation. Always Malcolm Young he once said: “We never said we were punk. In every interview we gave we said: ‘We’re not fucking punks, we’re a rock band!'”. Malcolm’s brother, Angus instead he recalls an episode: “In a club a boy spat on me when I left. I replied: ‘No less!’ and I kicked him in the face. He never did it again.”

Malcolm Young he loved to tell an anecdote about an evening in 1976, when his band supported the Stranglers somewhere in the north of England, a story that perfectly illustrates the fighting attitude of the AC/DC. “When the Stranglers came into our shared dressing room, they looked at our hair and said, ‘You fucking hippies.’ Loaded like never before AC/DC they rocked out on stage for 25 minutes. “We went back in: ‘Fuck it.’ They were sitting there with their mouths open, couldn’t say a fucking word.”

That kind of attitude has never gone away over time. When in 2003 the AC/DC in Toronto, Canada, supported the Rolling Stones their presence was almost completely ignored by the media in the days leading up to the concert, something that irritated them greatly. Malcolm Young Speaking to Kerrang magazine, he explained: “We thought, ‘We’ll show them!’ That night, we went all in. We were like animals charging onto the stage, and everything went smoothly. That night, we definitely outclassed the Stones. The next day, all the newspapers were talking about us. But more importantly, the audience knew it. That’s what matters.”