AC/DC and the Gospel of Rock & Roll

On a warm day in mid-October, at a rehearsal facility in a northeast suburb of Philadelphia, AC/DC are preparing for their first world tour since 2001, playing songs from Black Ice and warming up old numbers like "Girls Got Rhythm" and "Whole Lotta Rosie" from the records the band made in the Seventies with the late Bon Scott, Johnson's predecessor. (Scott died in February 1980, choking on his own vomit in a car in London while sleeping off a marathon night of drinking.) In two weeks, on opening night in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Angus, now 53, will turn into the atomic schoolboy again.

Today, he wears a light-blue T-shirt and jeans and sits in a folding metal chair. He is hunched over a Gibson SG, and his eyes are glued to his left hand as it skitters up and down the neck. Angus viciously bends the strings for the dirty, metallic squeals in the Black Ice single "Rock N Roll Train," solos in machine-gun spasms during "Smash N Grab" and doubles Malcolm's meaty-chord riff in the Scott-era hit "Highway to Hell." But the only thing that moves, other than Angus' fingers, is his left leg, pumping in time to Rudd and Williams' steady swing. When Angus gets up from that chair, it is either for a cigarette break outside — Rudd, Johnson and the Youngs smoke like chimneys — or the drive back to the band's hotel.

After rehearsal, over a pizza dinner, Angus recalls a session with producer Rick Rubin for AC/DC's 1995 album Ballbreaker. "He asked me, 'Don't you ever get off that stool and move around?'" No, Angus replied. "I'm not going to put on a show for myself — I want the music to be right first," he continues with a hard, proud tone in his voice. "I have to have substance first, to feel it in me, before I can do the show.

"That was always the thing for me — I want to play guitar," Angus says in a distinctive accent he shares with Malcolm, a mix of Scottish burr and Australian drawl that reflects their divided childhoods in Glasgow, where the brothers were born, and Sydney, after their family emigrated there in 1963. Without that suit, Angus confesses, "I would never have made the effort to get out there and have a presence. I was a lot more shy before that. I would stand back and play." He flashes a toothy grin. "But the suit pulls me."

"It's like he's floating on air," says Malcolm, 55 years old and five-feet-two. He and his younger brother Angus co-founded the band in Sydney in 1973, but Malcolm has always been happy standing in the back near the amps, a compact pillar of rhythm guitar next to the drum riser, while his brother eats up the spotlight. "Angus really gets around. But it's not like . . ." Malcolm makes a foot-stomping noise, pounding his hand on a table. "When we did the video for 'Rock N Roll Train,' they put him in front of a green screen. It really mesmerized me, watching him go back and forth on this little footpath. He's a good little dancer."

Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry often saw Angus in action in the late Seventies, when AC/DC opened shows for Aerosmith. "Through all that gymnastic stuff, he never missed a note," Perry says. "If you closed your eyes, you'd think he was standing there, tapping his foot. But he would be all over the stage, all over the amps." The Aerosmith crew had a name for Angus' nightly flip-outs, when he fell on his back and pumped his legs in the air: "bacon frying."

"I'm sure Angus doesn't even know, when he runs around and does that manic stuff, that his playing takes that into account," says George Young, Malcolm and Angus' older brother. In the Sixties, George was a rock star himself, a member of Australia's answer to the Beatles, the Easybeats. He also co-produced all of AC/DC's early records with ex-Easybeats guitarist Harry Vanda. "One of the things we worked on was the live album," George says, referring to 1978's If You Want Blood (You've Got It). "When I listened to those performances, I could imagine Angus doing particular things at particular times. If he does a twirl or kicks his legs, you can almost hear it in the notes and phrases he plays."

"It's hard to say Angus is underrated," says Brendan O'Brien, who produced Black Ice. "But I don't think people can separate that persona from the fact that he's a spectacular guitar player. If he wasn't in AC/DC and you put him on someone else's record, playing solos, you'd go, 'Wow, that guy's a great guitar player.'"