Gloomy Tunes: AC/DC Highway to Hell—Malcolm Young, RIP

If, like me, you’re of a certain age, AC/DC was hard to miss.  Sure, there was the insouciance of their songs, and the feral goofiness of their wearing school uniforms on stage (years before the Kinks Ray Davies took a whack at it), but for this teenager, the band’s appeal was rooted in Malcom Young’s guitar. It shook me…all night long. His thick, crunchy riffs made it possible for even this punk-rock besotted teen to bang his head along with them. Silly? Undeniably; at times they could even turn embarrassingly stupid. But every time I was ready to put them aside, their sheer power brought me back. So it’s very sad to report that Malcom Young, a co-founder of the band, and the man behind that massive guitar sound, died today, aged 64. According to Rolling Stone, he’d been battling dementia for the past three years, and died surrounded by family.   It may have been a long way to the top, but Malcom Young made it to the top of rock and roll.

Steven Mirkin

Steven Mirkin’s diverse career has taken him from politics to pop culture to high art, offering him a front row seat to some of the most fascinating events and personalities of our time: writing speeches, fundraising appeals and campaign materials for Ed Koch, John Heinz and independent presidential candidate John B. Anderson; chronicling the punk/new wave scenes in New York and London; interviewing musicians such as Elton John, John Lydon and Buck Owens; profiling modern masters Julian Schnabel, Paul Schrader and Jonathan Safran Foer; and writing for TV shows including 21, The Chamber, Let's Make A Deal, and Rock Star: INXS.