Angus Young Talks AC/DC Retirement: "At This Point, I Don't Know"

Currently enjoying a bit of a break from AC/DC's current Rock Or Bust world tour, guitarist Angus Young has opened up in a new interview about the iconic group's future, revealing that everything is up in the air once their shows wrap up late next month. 

Speaking to Rolling Stone, the AC/DC co-founder said he will assess where the band is at once the tour is over.

"At this point, I don't know," Young said.

"We were committed to finishing the tour. Who knows what I'll feel after? When you sign on and say, 'I'm gonna do this and that,' it's always good to say at the end of it, 'I've done all I said I would do.'

"That was always the idea, especially when we were younger – me, Malcolm [Young], Bon [Scott]. You had to show up and be on time. You'd be playing in a pub in the afternoon. Then late at night, you'd be playing a club. You got into that habit: 'If we don't play, we don't eat.'"

The 61-year-old also touched on singer Brian Johnson's decision to pull out from live touring earlier this year due to a serious hearing issue. 

"He was having problems when we were rehearsing for Coachella [in 2015]," Young revealed.

"He already had one bad ear. He damaged it in a car accident. The one good ear was rapidly dropping. We were in Australia, and he was seeing a specialist. Each show he did, he had to get monitored and treated. But it was becoming too hard for him."

It had been speculated that bassist Cliff Williams' recent decision to retire at the end of their current tour was related to Johnson's exit, however Young insists that it had been planned for some time. 

"Cliff made it known before we'd even started touring – this would be his last," he explained.

"Besides myself, Cliff has been there the longest, since 1977. Cliff and Brian are in the same age bracket. They like to go out, hit the pubs. They had the bond."

When asked about his older brother Malcolm, who quit the band in 2014 to receive treatment for dementia, Young considered that the band should have wrapped things up there. 

"That might be the case," Young said.

"But Malcolm was always one to battle through. He would look at me in times of crisis and go, 'We'll just go in and do some work. We'll sit and write some songs.' He had that drive, and I feel obligated to keep it going, maybe because I was there in the beginning with him."

AC/DC kick off the final leg of their world tour in North America later this month with Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose again serving as singer off the back of a very successful first run earlier this year.