There was news of considerable importance in Australian music this week. Malcolm Young, founding member and iron-wristed bass player for rock gods AC/DC died, aged 64, a few weeks after his older brother, founding member and multi-instrumentalist for the Easybeats, Flash & The Pan and Vanda & Young, George. Within just over a month, we’ve lost 2/3 of the first family of Australian rock: only AC/DC lead guitarist Angus remains.

I wasn’t an AC/DC fan as a kid. Growing up in Rockingham, AC/DC was the soundtrack of brutality: it was the band of choice for the plaid-clad, DB-wearing bogan thugs that made my life a misery– underneath that plaid shirt was invariably an AC/DC tee-shirt, and if you didn’t have at least a Back in Black poster on your wall, you were certified poofter and fair prey. As a result I spurned their music, and got my heavy fix from other quarters.

It wasn’t until I escaped my teen years, and was able to fit them into a much wider view of musical taste, away from the Holy Bogan Trinity (AC/DC, Cold Chisel, and oddly, Australian Crawl), that I came to appreciate them, and just how individual and epic their particular brand of thunderous rock and roll was.

They may have– to paraphrase one memorable review some years ago– ‘released the same album seventeen times’, but it’s a hell of a sound, and a hell of a ‘same album’. The band’s anthemic high points have become family favourites, with three generations of heads banging whenever we’re all around and they hit the playlist.

So to commemorate one of Australia’s great rock and roll bassists, and the lasting impact he and his men have had on Australian music history, here are five of my favourite AC/DC bangers.

Rock in peace, Malcolm.

Five for Friday: AC/DC

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