(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Mon 16 February 2026 20:00, UK
Throughout his over 40 years on rhythm guitar duties for Aussie hard rock royalty AC/DC, Malcolm Young always pursued a stripped-down, raw approach to conjuring the holy riff.
Such a meat-and-potatoes attitude amid the AC/DC camp served them handsomely. With Young’s unfussy riff economics and younger schoolboy brother Angus’ added electric fretwork, the pair were able to duckwalk across the 1970s and early 1980s, paving the way for the new wave of British heavy metal while also enjoying a secure footing in pop accessibility. Indeed, the lads are one of the world’s most commercially successful acts, 1980’s Back in Black, the second biggest selling album of all time behind only Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
It scored their cartoon bravado perfectly. Whether fronted by the brawny Bon Scott or Brian Johnson’s Geordie bellow, a recurring lyrical theme of being ‘ard, chasing women, and saluting those who rock demanded a certain guitar heft firmly rooted in rock and roll’s primordial soup to match AC/DC’s gleefully primitive perma-adolescence.
It explains the songs Young reportedly clung to late in life. During AC/DC’s celebrated Black Ice World Tour, a diagnosis of lung cancer added an extra health complication on top of an emerging dementia issue formally announced in 2014. It turned out that even during the Black Ice sessions six years earlier, Young had been reportedly suffering lapses in concentration and was struggling to remember with clarity the riffs during his mammoth tour.
Once the news was out in the world, AC/DC officially announced Young’s retirement from the group, and he moved to a nursing home in Sydney’s Elizabeth Bay.
At the time, younger brother Angus gave an insight into the struggles the former AC/DC riff conjurer was amiably going through. “He had to relearn a lot of things,” he told Rolling Stone, reflecting on the cognitive struggles during Black Ice. “It was very strange for him. But he was always a confident guy, and we made it work.”
He added, “He still likes his music. We make sure he has his Chuck Berry, a little Buddy Holly.”
It’s no surprise. AC/DC’s permanent tether to rock’s elemental essentiality ultimately will lead to its big bang pioneers, still taking notes on ‘Johnny B Goode’s high-energy strut or the wry smirk etched on ‘That’ll Be the Day’s rockabilly stroll decades after first landing on global charts. There’s a reason why NASA sent Berry into space to be picked up by potential aliens, such is the old master’s foundational template that all of rock would look back to.
Young’s dementia would eventually claim his life in November 2017 at the age of 64, not long after his brother and Easybeat member George passed away. As anyone who works in an old folks home can testify, music has a powerful ability to reach into the psyche and coax one out of whatever ailments their personality has been clouded by. It’s likely that one blast of ‘Go, Johnny Go!’ or ‘Peggy Sue’ switched on a rock and roll light for Young and fired off moments of lucidity in the twilight of his life.