AC/DC's Malcolm Young

The late guitarist resisted the spotlight while creating rock’s most enduring anthems

- David Browne

‘I’VE NEVER FELT LIKE A POP STAR,” MALCOLM Young told Rolling Stone in 2008. “This is a 9-to-5 sort of gig.” Playing with AC/DC, the guitarist stood in the back, stone-faced, holding down the rhythm as his younger brother Angus soloed and stalked the stage in his trademark schoolboy outfit. When the Rolling Stones invited the Youngs onstage for a blues jam in 2003, Malcolm at first refused. “He said, ‘I can’t,’ ” former AC/DC singer Brian Johnson recalls. “There was nothing funnier than Keith Richards and Ron Wood trying to drag him up there. He did a bit of a song with them and then walked back to the amps. That’s just the way he was.”