Here’s this weeks blog for “If You Want Blood”
I want to share with you my series of lessons that I did for Australian Guitar Magazine on AC/DC’s Angus Young.
First up let’s look at one Angus Young’s powerhouse performances “If You Want Love”.
The best thing about my “Guitar Heroes” show was meeting and playing with some of the legends of Australian Rock music.
I can tell you that each of them had a big story behind them which is why I wanted interview them, hear their stories and learn from them.
In the ten years that I did the interviews for Australian Guitar Magazine I must have conducted over 300 interviews and each one was more than interesting, they were insightful and an education.
Apart from these interviews I also created quite a catalog of lessons for the magazine.
I did four categories and columns.
“Masters of Rock” was my opportunity to explore the Classic Rock guitar heroes.
The 2nd column was on improvisation.
The 3rd was on slide guitar
The 4th column was where I’d make an arrangement of a pop song like “Everybody Wants to Rule The World” or “Sir Duke”
It was an incredible period of growth for me personally, I learnt a lot but that was my ambition, that’s what I wanted to achieve with the “Guitar Heroes” and my time with Australian Guitar Magazine.
The American documentary maker, Ken Burns, was asked in an interview why he made the “Jazz” documentary series.
His answer was very interesting, he said “because I didn’t know much about Jazz, I wanted to learn about it so I thought the best way would be to make a documentary about it”.
So like Ken Burns, I really wanted to learn about the Classic Rock genre and I thought the best way was to create lessons so AC/DC was a band that I wanted explore.
I found Angus Young’s playing powerful, strong and representative of the Blues/Rock style, you can only improve by working through these licks.
If you look at video clips of Led Zeppelin, women loved Jimmie Page and Robert Plant, they were “sex symbols”.
That interplay between the singer and master guitarist is a powerful combination.
Like when a great Flamenco guitarist and great Flamenco singer go head to head it creates excitement and drama.
While Page and Plant were a killer combo and sex symbols, I don’t think anyone would describe Bonn Scott and Angus Young as sex symbols, they were kind of a parody of Led Zeppelin but their attraction was different.
Everyone that I’ve spoken to that knew Bonn Scott said the same thing, he was a great guy, funny and fun to be around and that comes across in the video of “If You Want Blood”.
As Bonn puts on an incredible vocal performance Angus answers and compliments with a collage of impressive Blues licks in the mould of Hendrix, Clapton and Page.
What scales does he use? Whose licks does he source from? Where did he get his ideas?
Check out this lesson and see if I helped answer these questions.