AC/DC's ANGUS YOUNG Says Band Has 'Rooms Full Of Boxes Of Ideas' For Next Album

Darryl Sterdan of the QMI Agency conducted an exclusive Canadian interview with AC/DC guitarist Angus Young and vocalist Brian Johnson about the band's new DVD, "Live at River Plate", filmed in HD during the Australian rock legends' "Black Ice" world tour stop in Argentina in 2009. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

QMI Agency: South American audiences are known for being insane, and the one on the DVD certainly fills the bill. Does crowd response still mean anything after all these years?

Johnson: It certainly does. It gives me goose bumps some nights. You've really got to concentrate on what you're doing, because if you start looking at the crowd, you forget what you're doing.

Young: Some shows, you can feel a buzz before you even come out. It's almost like you don't have to be there. They're already having fun. And you can't hype an audience. It never works.

Johnson: I actually think if you talk to an audience too much, you start to sound like a politician or a union boss. Just shut the fuck up and start playing.

QMI Agency: How far along are you in the process of making another album?

Young: It's still early. But we're hoping that it comes quick. The only formula for when Malcolm [Young] and I write is that there's no formula. Sometimes you have boxes and boxes of ideas in our case, rooms full of them. It's just a matter of taking the best and probably because we're brothers, we can easily say, "That's good, that's crap, that's good... "

Johnson: I think if you put a date on something, you put yourself under pressure. As soon as somebody says "late November," it's like, "Oh fuck."

QMI Agency: You guys play the same set in the same order night after night. Doesn't that get boring after 150 shows?

Young: Well, I'm lucky. I've got a switch. I've always had it. I've got another persona. I put on the school suit and I become stronger. I become more powerful. Even my vision becomes better.

Johnson: Fucking Clark Kent, this one is.

QMI Agency: Brian, you were joking about being dead in another eight years...

Johnson: Joking? I wasn't joking!

QMI Agency: Does that mean this tour took a little more out of you than the last one did? You play a pretty physical game.

Young: Well, you get these things that happen. This tour, I had this leg thing. It wasn't a hamstring; I can't remember what it was.

The doctor said it was something like a tube. But funny enough, it was affecting me more offstage. When I went onstage it was fine.

Johnson: But it is physical. What you've got to understand is that we do what a footballer does but we don't have a week to recuperate. And if we did, I would just sit and smoke! So instead, you keep yourself fit. I go to the gym every other day.

Because you want to keep that level up there the last thing you want is somebody feeling sorry for you, saying, "Oh, you should have seen them before."

Thing is, I'm being physical, but Angus is doing what I'm doing, and he has to manipulate a fucking banjo at the same time.

That's like what I do but with a rucksack on your back. To him, it's not a tough gig. But everybody else in the world thinks it is.

Read the entire interview from the QMI Agency.