Angus Young

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.

Angus 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 was eleven Angus had flirted with a tutorial course, but he prefered 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 patented duckwalk 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 felt a right dick and he kept running across the floor. He made it look like a death scene, screaming all hell from the guitar. It was the only clap they got that night. Angus told his brother about it. Malcolm asked him to join the band he was putting together.