ANGUS YOUNG Looks Back On AC/DC's First Time In America - "These People Thought We Were A Freak Show"
March 16, 2021, 3 years ago
In a new interview with Patrick Prince of Goldmine, AC/DC legend Angus Young reveals what the band thought when they first came to America in the 1970s.
"When we arrived in L.A., after Hawaii, these people thought we were a freak show," says Angus. "Then we had to go to Texas for our first gig. We get on an airplane and it was stopping everywhere. Then Bon got lost. He got off in Phoenix or somewhere and went to a bar. Then he missed the flight to get back. And he didn’t even know where to go!
"We got to Texas without him, and the record company people called up and said, “We’ve got someone who says he’s your singer…and he’s stoned.” He’d managed to call somebody who got through to somebody else and they put him on the right flight and he finally got to Texas, where we played our first show in America.
"But what I found was it was just like anywhere else. At that time, the record company people kept saying how the music of the day is so soft with a lot of middle-of-the-road stuff. Rock music was not such a big item. But when you’re playing live in an arena after being told that, you’d go, “Now, wait a minute, the people in the streets aren’t into what was on the Top 40.” That’s what I found.
"It was two worlds: the mainstream thinking this is how their world was, but the real world was here (in this arena). And I always took great pride in the fact that we were in the real world and they were in the twilight zone in some ways."
Read the full interview at Goldmine.
