Malcolm Young

Malcolm Young (2010)

Malcolm Mitchell Young (born January 6, 1953 in Glasgow , Scotland , † November 18, 2017 in Elizabeth Bay, Australia ) was an Australian musician. He was the founder, rhythm guitarist and songwriter of the Australian hard rock band AC / DC .

Life

Childhood and youth

Malcolm Young was born as the seventh child in the family. In 1963 the family emigrated from Scotland to Australia for professional reasons . Young began playing the guitar during his school days and quickly switched from acoustic to electric guitar. His older brother George was a member of The Easybeats group and gave him advice on guitar playing. Malcolm Young dropped out of school around the age of 15 and formed his first bands, but none of them were particularly successful.

AC / DC

In 1973 he founded the band AC / DC on his own , later his brother Angus , who was now the lead guitarist , joined the rock band. Malcolm Young was the leading force in AC / DC as a guitarist and songwriter. With his Gretsch guitar, he was primarily responsible for the powerful guitar playing and was often referred to as the best rhythm guitarist in the world by many fans and specialist journalists .

He preferred a "dry" sound, almost free of distortion , although his attack on the guitar is described as "extremely hard". Because of this attack, he also used strings with a minimum thickness of 0.12 - mostly from the American guitar manufacturer Gibson . Another important characteristic of his playing was the use of open chords, which he modified from the basic form and thus gave them the "AC / DC sound". As a result, he was significantly involved in the typical sound of the band and formed the rhythm section with drummer Phil Rudd and bassist Cliff Williams and thus the musical AC / DC framework, which was mainly characterized by extremely precise timing.

Used guitars

Malcolm Young with his Gretsch Jet Firebird, AC / DC Monsters of Rock Tour

At AC / DC, Malcolm Young almost exclusively played a 1963-built Gretsch G6131 - popular as the Gretsch Jet Firebird - with a solid body and two cutaways . He modified this guitar (nickname "The Beast") in the course of time in his own way. So he sanded off the red glaze of the body on the front and changed various parts of the mechanics. Originally, the model has two humbuckers -Pickups type Vintage "Patent Number" FilterTron on which the US patent number of the series is eingepunzt 2,892,371th First he installed a third, middle pickup, later he removed the middle and also the originally installed, neck-side pickup. Only the original humbucker on the bridge remained there. In the mid-1970s he screwed a pickguard over the holes for the two pickups , which he removed around 1978. The two holes of the removed pickups became the trademark of his Gretsch. Towards the end of the 1970s, he removed the original Burns tailpiece with tremolo and the original space control bridge and replaced them with a fixed bridge . From the Stiff Upper Lip tour in 2000, the original Burns tailpiece and space control bridge were attached again.

Occasionally he also played a 1959 white Gretsch White Falcon with a semi-resonance body , which was his favorite model on the album Back in Black and the tour that followed. On the Black Ice Tour 2009 he played another White Falcon. Since 2008 Gretsch Guitars has been editing “The Beast” as a special G6131MY model for fans.

Health problems and death

In April 2014, AC / DC announced on their website that Malcolm Young was sick and was taking a break from the music business until further notice. The singer Brian Johnson denied to the Daily Telegraph that the band was breaking up because of this; the other musicians went to the recording studio a little later. In September 2014, the band announced that Malcolm Young had left the band for good for health reasons. Due to a stroke, he suffers from dementia , which causes a complete loss of his short-term memory . In November 2014 it was announced that Young had already shown symptoms of the onset of dementia when shooting Black Ice in 2008 .

While the band was hoping to get better, he had to undergo lung and heart surgery, which further affected his health. The decision to leave the band came from himself. Although he was still involved in the writing process of the album Rock or Bust , he was no longer able to take part in the recording. During the recordings and on the tour planned for 2015, he was replaced by his three-year-old nephew Stevie Young , who has since become a permanent member of the band.

Malcolm Young died on November 18, 2017 at the age of 64. He leaves behind his wife Linda, to whom he has been married since 1979, as well as a daughter and a son.

Quote

“He is the creator of the simple and irresistible riffs that have made the Australian band so distinctive. Malcolm Young is the metronome of AC / DC, the guarantee of consistency, the loom of the heavy solid carpet on which the whole sound of the band and his brother's solos are based [...] Malcolm Young created most of the riffs for eternity . No other band is as sure to be recognizable within three seconds as AC / DC. Malcolm Young is the USP, the Unique Selling Point of AC / DC. "

- Christoph Schwennicke : Süddeutsche Zeitung from September 26, 2014

literature

• Jess Fink: The YOUNG Brothers - Everything about the founders of AC / DC . Hannibal Verlag, Höfen 2015, ISBN 978-3-85445-466-3 (Original edition: The Youngs - the brothers who built AC / DC )

Web links

Commons : Malcolm Young  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Works by and about Malcolm Young in the catalog of the German National Library
• Malcolm Young in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Edo Reents: The End of AC / DC. It was always Malcolm behind every decision. In: FAZ.NET of April 28, 2014.
2. ↑ Special edition Malcolm Young by Gretsch (accessed on November 19, 2017)
3. ↑ Report on Malcolm Young's illness on acdc.com ( Memento from April 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ We are not retiring, interview with Brian Johnson. telegraph.co.uk, April 16, 2014, accessed May 26, 2014 . 
5. ^ New Reports: AC / DC's Malcolm Young Suffered a Stroke and Now Has Severe Dementia. loudwire.com, September 26, 2014, accessed September 27, 2014 . 
6. ↑ AC / DC: Malcolm Young had the first signs of dementia while recording "Black Ice". rollingstone.de, September 17, 2014, accessed on September 18, 2014 . 
7. ↑ Is AC / DC now kicking out the drummer? nordkurier.de, November 17, 2014, accessed on November 18, 2014 . 
8. ↑ Malcolm Young retires , sueddeutsche.de on September 24, 2014; Christoph Schwennicke: Malcolm Young. Retired heavy metal rocker . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of September 26, 2014, p. 4.
9. ↑ AC / DC co-founder Malcolm Young dead at 64.9news.com.au, November 19, 2017, accessed on November 18, 2017 .