If you want to know where the Young Brothers got their rock aesthetic from, what become the iconic and distilled sound of AC/DC, you must look to their older brother George, whose work with The Easybeats prefigured the basic song structure template that AC/DC built a career on.
For many years George’s work as a co-songwriter and co-producer with Harry Vanda led to a slew of hits.
Sadly, George has passed away:
George Young, the brother of AC/DC co-founders Malcolm and Angus Young, has died at the age of 70.
A former member of The Easybeats, George co-produced AC/DC’s early albums, including “TNT”, “Dirty Deeds Done Cheap” and “Let There Be Rock”. He started his own production company when The Easybeats split in 1970… He returned to co-produce AC/DC’s 1988 album “Blow Up Your Video” and 2000’s “Stiff Upper Lip”.
Here is a wonderful song by The Easybeats called “Sorry” (1966), written by George Young and Stevie Wright. You can hear the seeds of the AC/DC sound in this song’s power chords and overall song structure:
Here is another Easybeats song called “Good Times” (1968), written by Vanda & Young. Supposedly, when he heard this song for the first time on BBC radio, Paul McCartney called the radio station to request they immediately replay the song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Adq6CrkiyZ0
Finally, you can really hear the roots of AC/DC in the song “Natural Man” (1973) by the Marcus Hook Roll Band, a short-lived rock band formed by Vanda and Young. (A very young Malcolm & Angus Young played on the band’s one album.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi_S99uexdI
