A few years ago, I had to learn (or brush up on) the lead guitar parts and solos for about 83 songs – everything from classic Merle Haggard and Kinks tunes to the Cars’ Bye Bye Love to two entire Beatles albums – all of which I eventually performed at clubs, theaters, and outdoor festivals that spring and summer.
Buried on this two-ton list of tunes was Friday on My Minda late-1966 single by the Easybeats, a high-energy Aussie band that churned out some seriously catchy power pop.
The song was huge by the spring of ’67; it reached Number 16 in the U.S., Number 1 in Australia, and Number 6 in the U.K. It even was voted “Best Australian Song” of all time by the Australasian Performing Rights Association back in 2001.
The most striking thing about the tune – from a guitarist’s point of view – is the deftly and relentlessly alternate-picked root-fifth and root-octave figures that outline an implied chord progression during the intro and verses.
And then there’s the Eastern-flavored use of the harmonic minor scale and its fifth mode, Phrygian-dominant, in the single-note fills! And how can we ignore the contrapuntal interplay between the primary and secondary guitar parts, featuring contrary melodic motion?
Anyway, I was so intrigued by the song that I actually paused in the middle of all my relentless song-learnin’ to do a bit of serious research about the band and their guitarists. That’s when I stumbled upon their connection to AC/DC.
First of all, the band – as heard on this particular tune – featured Stevie Wright (lead vocals), Harry Vanda (guitar), George Young (guitar), Dick Diamonde (bass), and Gordon “Snowy” Fleet (drums), and the song was composed by Vanda and Young. As any AC/DC super-fan knows, Young was the older brother of AC/DC cofounders Malcolm and Angus Young.
When the Easybeats called it quits in 1969, Young and Vanda concentrated on writing and producing songs for other artists – not to mention a few for themselves, most of which were recorded under different stage names. One of their studio-based groups, the Marcus Hook Roll Band, featured Malcolm and Angus.
George (along with Vanda) went on to co-produce AC/DC’s early albums, including Let There Be Rock, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, T.N.T., Powerage, and High Voltage. He played bass for the band very early on and wound up producing their 2000 album, Stiff Upper Lip.
George Young’s famous saying to his younger brothers was, “You can’t call yourself a band until you’ve done at least 200 gigs.”
In a 1992 interview with Guitar WorldAngus Young reflected on what he learned from his older brother, saying he “was so quick that you learned a lot when you were with him. Especially when you were 14 or something.
“He’d pick up a bass and hand you the guitar. And you’d think you were incompetent, but before you knew it you were playing with him. He’d go ‘G… A…’ And you were away.
He was never a fan of light strings – he’d say, ‘You can’t tune ‘em’
Angus Young, on George Young
“He also taught me… like, say you play a song five nights in one key, but on the sixth night the singer’s throat ain’t makin’ it. You might have to go down a tone or so. George was really used to that, and he got me used to that.”
The elder Young’s six-string eccentricities also left a large impression on his brothers.
“He was into some crazy things too, you know,” Angus told Guitar World. “Like he’d tell me the D string annoyed him. The G string, too. ‘Too sweet for rock and roll,’ he’d say – so off went the G string!
“When I last saw him in the Easybeats, he had like four strings on that guitar. He was never a fan of light strings either – especially when those slinky strings came out. He’d say, ‘You can’t tune ‘em.’”
Young died on October 22, 2017, only a month before his younger brother, Malcolm.
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