I wanna be Angus Young

I wanna be Angus Young
He’s thunderstruck
I wanna be Angus Young
Half his fuckin’ luck.
- Flange Gasket, 1998

It’s hard to take it seriously when your best mate starts getting described as the next swashbuckling, uber-cool, don’t-give-a-fuck Aussie rock god, even by hyperbolic music journalists who you happen to know are shagging seven shades of shite out of him at the time. It’s particularly to buy into your man’s sainted kick-arse hero status when you clearly recall him squealing like a little bitch when his mum dropped him off at school for his first day in kindergarten. Sure, a lot of kids cried, mostly the lads - can’t say I was hugely happy myself with the idea of being parentally abandoned, but I held it together. A lot of kids cried, but little Sam McCarthy bawled. For a good, solid half-hour, maybe forty minutes. I was awestruck at the lad’s staying power and lung capacity. Can’t say the thought of starting a rock band with him came immediately to mind, though.

Later, at playlunch, I discovered he had a more impressive collection of Matchbox cars than me (even though I’d inherited my older brother Matthew’s awesome garage) and decided to buddy up with him immediately. It ended up being a good choice - we were well matched. Though capable of being a big sook at times, McCarthy was a good kid, and a funny little bugger into the bargain.

At the time, McCarthy’s family lived near the river in the small township of Broadwater (aka Backwater) about twenty minutes south of Ballina on the Pacific Highway, and home to not a lot of note, apart from the second-southernmost sugar mill in Australia (Harwood Island, about 50km south of us, held that highly sought after distinction.) Sugar was the main local industry. I grew up on a cane farm a little way out of town, which my parents still run to this day, though nowadays shared with Jeff and Beck (or Jeff Beck as I call them.) Our farm was, and is, along the road which followed the opposite bank of the river south of the Broadwater township, so every day I took my BMX over on the ferry across the river to town, and met up with my mate Samboy for the ride along the cyclepath (dodging the cane trucks on the highway) over to Broadwater Public School on the north side of town, for the day’s formalities. The ferry's gone now, there's a concrete bridge now - probably a better idea for the volume of cane trucks during harvest season, but a little bit of my childhood which ain't ever coming back.

It’s easy to idealize your own childhood, unless you had bastards for parents, but I can pretty much recommend mine for doing a decent job - ditto McCarthy’s who were (and are) lovely folk. Lots of open spaces to wreak havoc in - the farm, the bush, the beach, the river - and lots of havoc to wreak by way of bikes (BMXs eventually giving way to trailbikes and chook-chaser farm bikes), backyard cricket, backyard footy, backyard just-about-bloody-anything. Throw in endless summer afternoons, and the lack of urban sprawl, traffic (other than the Pacific Highway which bisected town and which we knew to stay away from), kiddy fiddlers or other hazards of a city childhood.

Later, after McCarthy and I had started high school and he'd started to insist on us calling him Uncle Sam rather than Samboy (which meant we still called him Samboy), the McCarthy family moved to nearby Evans Head (on the beach, around ten kays east of Broadwater) largely to be closer to the native plant nursery which McCarthy’s old man enthusiastically and successfully operated after chucking in teaching (his mum taught English at Alstonville High, so it was no closer for her to get to work, but not much further either). This had an unexpected result: surfing, which up to then had been a fairly casual interest, became most afternoons’ and every weekends' preoccupation, if not flat-out obsession. After an after-school surf of an afternoon I’d leave my board at the McCarthys at Evans and ride home to the farm on my bike at dusk, or in later years catch a lift home with elder brother Matt in his glorious ’73 Torana GTR, resplendent in iridescent metal-flake orange. The Atomic Mandarin used to run a monstrous four barrel Holley carby on its ‘202’ six, as well as a thunderous sports exhaust system which sounded like Satan’s own flatulence. All of which ensured the Atomic Mandarin would go past pretty much anything on the open road, other than petrol stations.

Matt was a few years older than both of us, the same vintage as McCarthy’s older sister Anne, though Anne and Matt didn’t really associate with each other much - she shopped in more exclusive circles. Unlike us, Matt wasn’t a surfer – dabbled a bit but wasn’t that into it – but he had something just as addictive to fill his after school afternons while McCarthy and I were out chasing swell before sundown: he and a few mates had a band together. Actually, calling it a band suggests a more formal arrangement than really existed, as well as the possible existence of things like actual gigs or some form of fan base. None of the above. Instead, the boys would get together of an afternoon and jam with old busted equipment, on old busted riffs - Stones, Zeppelin, Hendrix, Purple, AC/DC, Sabbath, all the good stuff from the late ‘60s and ‘70s. Which marked them as retro throwbacks even then, given that this was the late ‘80s when Gunners-style hair metal predominated, in the years before the grunge era drove them all into the sea. One of the boys’ parents had split, and his father had been given the thin edge of the wedge as regards custody of the kids, so if it meant seeing more of his lads he was more than happy to turn over his garage and turn a generous blind eye to some of the goings-on therein - which to be fair amounted to not much more than a few underage beers and the odd toke. As time progressed and adolescence continued, the younger brothers were declared cool enough to drop by after (or instead of) a surf and sit in on the sessions. Matt generally never partook of the contraband, for two reasons: one, he was usually driving, and two - and I mean this in the nicest possible sense - though he liked to portray the image of a hard-living lady-killing guitar rebel, he just wasn't. At heart he was just a big straightie, as we would say back then. (Arrr, in the olden days, begorrah.) He didn’t drink or smoke (anything), and tended to stay well out of trouble. Truth be told, Matt was a very smart kid, and showed great promise at school, trying hard (though trying even harder not to show it) and getting consistently good marks right through. As such he made life hell for myself, and later Jeff, by ramping up parental expectations as to the future academic achievements of anyone surnamed Young.

But we never really begrudged him for that. For myself, Jeff, and probably Uncle Sam, Matt was a hero. Of all the many things he taught us which would enrich our lives forever, two stood out: how to play the guitar, and how to find music which reverberated with its correct usage. Not just Hendrix, Led Zep and the old-skool masters which he was hugely into (I still had an ‘Are You Experienced’ album cover poster which I inherited from him years ago, one of the many dog-eared elements of the original décor which Bethany wasn’t too keen on), but everything from the local garage punk explosion of the late ‘70s (Birdman, Saints etc) to Van Halen, Aerosmith and the best of the ‘80s hair farmers - and yes, there was some decent stuff in there amongst all the crap. Of which there was no shortage of supply.

Uncle Sam McCarthy, like Matt if not even more so, was always an obsessive sort when it came to his interests – he immersed himself in cars, bikes, English and Euro football, comedy (he went on a total bender with Monty Python for most of high school - talk about total immersion therapy), and of course music. McCarthy would delve deep into the archives, seeking out the obscure stuff which predated and influenced the stuff everyone knew – not to try and one-up anyone (though that was an amusing side benefit), mostly just to learn more. And he practised, endlessly practised his chops on a battered acoustic which he picked up at the Byron markets for fifty bucks, until he got better than any of us, Matt included. He even went and got actual, proper lessons - which I thought was cheating - and as a mark of his developing technical skills, he actually got good at ‘tapping’ solos a la Eddie Van Halen or Joe Satriani. On the acoustic, mind you. Kudos to you sir.

For me, though, it was all about AC/DC, to begin with at least. It just hit a chord. A big loud, distorted, overdriven chord, reverberating through a towering Marshall stack, and probably from a 12-bar blues progression. One moment crystallizes in my mind - school holidays, maybe fourteen or so, cruising down to the beach on a blazing summer’s day in Matt’s thundering Torana. All the Young boys packed in, plus honorary Young ‘un McCarthy; surfboards on the roof, elbows out the windows, Back In Black thundering out of the stereo at brain-shattering, earwax-liquefying volume. That day, for the first time in my life - and there haven’t been many since - I fell in love. In the following months, I copied all of Matt’s AC/DC albums onto tape, playing them (and along with them) relentlessly, aping my namesakes’ handiwork on Matt’s guitar when he wasn’t around to stop me, and generally making an arse of myself. It was Matt who gave me the tag of ‘Angus’, obvious though it seems in hindsight.

When Matt moved to Sydney to start uni, Jeff and I inherited most of Matt’s collection of music gear, and the three of us, or just Uncle Sam and I, used to jam together in the shed. In the summer holidays of 1992, McCarthy and I co-wrote our first song. The chord progression was a straight 12-bar-blues ripoff; the lyrics outlined the various failings and personality disorders which members of the teaching staff at our high school were clearly suffering from. As you’d expect, it was complete shit, as was most of our prodigious output of that summer.

This is not to suggest, though, that music was our main interest as maturing adolescents. Hell no. Nor surfing, cars, sports, or certainly not academic achievement. Our primary focus was, of course, girls, and the pursuit of same. And as with music and all the other stuff, we proved to be distinctly average at that as well. It wasn’t that we were particularly unattractive, nor overly nerdy (though McCarthy was more oriented that way; he certainly cared more about his academic results than me, scored it like any other form of competition we entered into, probably because he was able to win more often). Maybe our social station contributed - it wasn’t as though we were easily pigeonholed in any ‘cool’ subcultures. We surfed, but we weren’t ‘surfies’; we played guitar, but we weren’t part of the school rock band or their crowd of hirsuite hangers-on; we played football for the school, but it wasn’t league or union but the round-ball variety, so we were obviously latent homosexuals. (Random aside, first of many: McCarthy was a useful midfield general, yours truly a hard-tackling right-sided fullback who made up for less-than-optimal technique by running around a lot and axing the Jesus out of anyone who got goal-side of me. I did play a bit of union for the school in Year 11 but couldn’t keep up with the debilitating regime of training and/or drinking.)

No, I suspect our relative lack of success with The Ladies during much of our school years was mostly down to the fact that we had no fucking clue about women whatsoever.

Not to say that it was a goalless draw, of course. McCarthy, outwardly, was dismissive. He always claimed to be fairly picky, claiming high standards. Wouldn’t settle for less, he claimed. Convinced most of our circle of mates, maybe even convinced himself. In reality though he’d fallen heavily for a bewitching little vixen from our year 9 English class who’d only begun at the school that year, Christ knew where she’d been air-dropped from but she was one hell of a relief package for the starving cargo cult of McCarthy. In hindsight you could say she had this vaguely early-Charmed-era Alyssa Milano thing happening for her - cute round face, short dark hair, intense, feisty, seemingly a lot of hard work - which seemingly worked quite well on Uncle Sam. McCarthy’s problem, such as it was, was that she gave every impression that she liked him back. A lot. There’s a first time for everything, folks, and this was his. As such, he fell hard and fast for her. All year he chased her, and chased hard, and his immense emotional and spiritual investment looked like paying off as spring turned to summer and the holidays beckoned. Of course however, although Keating was prime minister, Murphy was clearly making the laws. At the end of that year, Talia (I think that was her name; answers on a postcard please) moved back from wherever she came from, her relationship with McCarthy consummated with nothing more than a goodbye hug and a sisterly peck on the cheek.

Our man Uncle Sam was left empty-handed and heartbroken. He pined for ages, in the head-shakingly pathetic way only lovelorn teenage boys can - Adrian Mole with a Dahlberg-shaped thruster (that’s a surfboard, kids) and a battered ol’ gee-tar. By ages, I mean I don’t think he ever really chased another girl seriously (i.e. for emotional involvement) until the end of his school days. He moped, he pined, he wrote mawkish songs about her, he despaired of ever finding another girl like her. To be honest, he seemed to find some sort of heroic sustenance in it all, like some sort of Bronte hero lost in modern times. The wronged man, facing grimly into the squall, stoic despite his heartbreak… Maximal respect for being noble, if a little misguided. Still, I’d have banged her.

My story was a bit different. For whatever reason, I was a bit more weatherproof than Samboy. Could have been my farm upbringing, following the role model of my laconic, no-bullshit, perpetually unaffected old man; could have been having a couple of brothers to beat up rather than an older sister playing dress-up - who knows. The upshot being that I was never the type to wear my heart on my sleeve or make massive emotional investments in things - girls, sporting teams, politics, opinions, whatever - the way he did. That’s not intended as a criticism, not to suggest he was he was manic depressive or bipolar or whatever (although I did wonder). Some times I would've liked to care about stuff as much as he could; sometimes he seemed to draw so much more out of simple experiences and little victories, like a well-ridden wave or a smile from a cute girl. He lived moments like those, wrung every last ounce of glad from them, rode them to death; I just enjoyed them, they passed, I moved on. Other times, like when the NSW Origin team lost or Ayrton Senna won, I was glad not to feel things in the visceral way he did. (You’ll remember Senna. He was the Schumacher of his era in Formula One. Very fast, very ruthless, and a completely unlikable fuckstain into the bargain. Neither of us could stand either of them. Senna, however, at least had the common decency to drop off the twig before his time, so the world at large could remember him as a champion, which he was, and not a cheating fucker who drove into people on purpose to win shit, which he also was.)

Anyway, spotlight back on me, dammit. I seem to recall having ‘girlfriends’ pretty much all the time, but not actually doing anything with them (or being permitted to do anything with them). Relationships of convenience, usually hers. Practice relationships, even. Even right from primary school I remember usually being in the position of ‘going with’ someone or other, linkages organised by the receipt of notes in class with prose along the lines of “Dear Andrew, Sheree says that Kylie says that Claire likes you, will you go with her? Tick love-heart-shaped box for yes”. And that would be it (pre-dating Kurt Cobain and his heart shaped box by several years) - Claire and I would supposedly be together, at least in a classroom context. (Big shout-outs to Claire, if you’re reading this. Always thought you were cutest in our class at Broadwater Public.)

The thing is, this fairly juvenile state of affairs didn’t seem to actually change or develop as the years progressed and puberty descended upon us all like a freight train of acne, bumfluff facial hair and misappropriated hormonal imbalances. Well, maybe not the bumfluff for the girls, not the ones I was interested in anyway. But I still seemed to be maintaining this habit of being somebody or other’s steady date or Significant Other, without seeming to get any kind of ‘action’ (whatever that was) to speak of. Naturally, I covered for this by relentlessly bullshitting my peeps as to my heroic achievements. (Sorry lads. That story about me and that girl from the Catholic school down behind the shelter sheds near the bus stop? Erm, somewhat exaggerated.) Given that we all wanted to believe they were true, including me, it seemed like a victimless crime. At least until the girls in question found out what I’d been telling my mates, at which point your correspondent became the victim. On multiple counts, given that I was missing out in the first instance as well then suffering for it afterwards. Not that I got a lot of sympathy from the likes of McCarthy who wasn't even in a position to pretend to be getting any.

All of this taught me the following, rightly or wrongly: women are compelled to be in relationships, not because they want to be in them, but because they see them as a necessary mark of status which they can impress other women with. A pretty cynical view for a fifteen year old to develop (about the age when that particular realisation hit), but a enduring one. Backing this perception, McCarthy and I saw his sister Anne date some pretty hopeless older guys - ‘cool’ guys, of course, football players and surfers and the like - all because it furthered her cause within her social circle. (Sorry Anne, but it’s true. Barry Barnett. I rest my case.)

We were helped I guess by having an ‘insider’ in our midst, an agent of the enemy who was prepared to exchange information. Sophie’s family were old friends of the family’s, having run the farm just along the river from ours ever since I could remember, and Sophie and I went a long way back - I have a memory of being fairly unwillingly co-opted into playing pretend doctors and nurses with her and her friends, at some parental get-together at her family’s farm. Given that we were all around kindergarten age, and I was fully aware of the dangers of contracting girls’ germs, the pleasure was all theirs. At least I got to be doctor. In coming years the opportunity to play real doctors and nurses with Sophie and her friends would have seemed a lot more appetizing, but the offer never came.

Anyway, by the time we were seniors in high school, Sophie became a valued source of information for us. She not only knew lots of girls, she was one, and a rather spunky one at that, truth be told. Plus she read Cosmopolitan and Dolly and Cleo and all those inane glossy you-go-girl mags which tell you how to have a self-empowering orgasm while accessorising next season’s killer looks - a priceless insight on the female mind. There was the added bonus that she didn’t have to see us misusing the intelligence we’d been given, nor that she’d suffer the embarrassment of having us hit on any of her friends at school, as her folks used to pack her off to one of the private schools in Ballina on a daily basis. As such she was prepared to tell us pretty much anything we wanted to know, and vice versa. Of course, knowing most of her dirty secrets also made me want to bang her, despite all our history. But hey folks, don’t judge me for that; I wanted to bang a lot of chicks dammit, I was an adolescent male for fuck’s sake. The fact that I’d consider sleeping with her if the offer advanced itself, didn’t seem to affect our friendship from my side; and I managed to keep it quiet enough such that it didn’t seem to affect our friendship from her side either.

So you could say for two guys who reckoned we knew nothing about women, it wasn’t any lack of understanding of the enemy or tactical nous which was holding us back, relative to the rest of the cattle we were competing with. The stark realisation was that our lack of success with The Ladies was probably down to the fact that we were just a little bit shit.