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Angus Young reveals the album that best defines AC/DC

The record’s mission: “Pure hard rock guitar.”

Angus Young Onstage

Photo: Kevin Winter / Getty Images

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Angus Young has named Let There Be Rock as AC/DC’s most defining record, the one he would play to impress someone who’s never heard the band.

The 65-year-old rock icon revealed his choice during an interview with Swiss radio station SRF 3. When asked what AC/DC album he would play to impress a first-time listener, Young answered without hesitation: “Let There Be Rock.”

Let There Be Rock, for me, is the album,” he said. “My brother, George, [asked] me and Malcolm […] ‘What sort of album do you wanna do this time?’ And Malcolm just looked at me, and he said, ‘We just want an album that’s just gonna be pure hard rock guitar’.”

Let There Be Rock featured the riffage of Angus and his brother Malcolm Young, but also the production talents of their brother, George, who also produced the band’s four prior records.

Young was particularly proud of AC/DC sticking to their rock ’n’ roll guns to put out the album in the late 70s, a time where music was diversifying at a growing pace.

“I thought it was great because everyone else in the world was into whole other genres – there was punk music, there was new wave; it was all this other stuff that was coming out,” he said. “And I just thought, ‘This is pure magic’. And that album defined AC/DC in my eyes. That’s when I went, ‘This is a great band’.”

AC/DC’s latest album, PWR/UP, is a tribute to Malcolm, who died in 2017 at 64. The late rhythm guitarist’s ideas can be heard throughout the record and he is credited as a writer on all 12 tracks alongside Angus.

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