I was in a heavy metal band once, kind of by accident, couldn’t help myself: said I’d play a couple of songs with them at a party and that was that, joined the circus. That band was called Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction and I loved them for many reasons: looked great; one really, really good song; guitar player was a karate black belt; drummer taught music at a high-security prison; the singer was a thoughtful and fearless vagabond king. They were all exceptionally bright and they got through a lot of bass players; some died, some ran away, but I was with them for ages, captivated by high voltage and high volume.
I still have the heavily embroidered denim jacket the band bequeathed to me. It’s the jacket all their bass players wore, next to the skin at every, sweaty gig. The jacket has never once been washed, a potent mess of provocation and stitched-on symbolism. Boy, it felt good to make so much noise, more relaxing and peaceful somehow than sitting in a really comfortable chair in the sunshine.
Until that point, I didn’t think I liked rock music but when I scratched its ugly surface, there were actually lots of beautiful things beneath. Having said that, I still wouldn’t be too thrilled at the prospect of going to see any of the remaining rock dinosaur tribes perform. Iron Maiden, Metallica, Deep Purple, even Led Zeppelin, all just a little bit corny or rubbish one way or another, and those are the best ones. Rock music has to be loud, obviously, and it has to be fairly simple and aggressive. Possibly for those reasons, bad rock is the worst, the ugliest music you’ll ever hear. But when it’s good, it’s really, really good.
It was because of the boys from Zodiac Mindwarp that I started listening to AC/DC. AC/DC have been going since 1973 without ever really stopping, even for a moment when their first singer died. I went to see them at the NEC last week, and I’ve been grinning ever since.
AC/DC have sold more records than The Beatles, the head of their label tells me. They are not on the radio much, never see them on TV. You can’t buy their music on iTunes. Women hate them. Old people hate them. But they are the biggest band in the world, and for all the darkness and bloody mayhem suggested by their scary album covers they are great artists. I think the opening chords of ‘Back in Black’ are, for despair, on a par with Munch’s ‘The Scream’ or the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth played by the Vienna Philharmonic with Carlos Kleiber conducting: one of the great moments in music in the hands of its masters. It really is perfect.
I could show you how to play the opening bars of ‘Back in Black’ in less than five minutes, even if you can’t play the guitar, but no one else will ever be able to play them like Angus Young, AC/DC’s lead guitarist. Angus is the star of the band, plays a Gibson SG all the way through the show. The sound doesn’t change. It never has. It’s his sound. The drummer pretty much plays the same beat the whole time. It’s his beat. The singing is technically quite astonishing, a hell for leather tenor, but what you really get at an AC/DC show — what a packed, ecstatic, surprisingly friendly NEC got last Thursday — was a masterclass in guitar playing.
Angus Young is an heir to Paganini, simply a brilliant exponent of his instrument. He looks, even once he has stripped down to his shorts, without his trademark school uniform, like a little monster, a being from another world, a man completely possessed, utterly in his music. Watching Gustavo Dudamel conduct on YouTube when I got home afterwards, the nice man with the big hair seemed contrived by comparison, an interminable square, a child politely playing with a big train set. Watching Angus was like being run over by the Flying Scotsman. We got all the hits and we punched the air. We thought we’d seen everything, but at the end of the show the rest of the band, the engine room, stopped playing. Angus climbed high onto a scaffold and played a solo that had the entire arena transfixed. Never seen anything like it. It’s hard to say how long it went on for. We were all in it with him, elsewhere. Was it jazz? Was it rock? Was it Baroque? Lordy, it was Angus Young letting rip, and there really isn’t much to compare with it. q
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