Led by brothers Malcolm and Angus Young, AC/DC conquered the world in the 1970s and early 1980s with classic albums like “Highway to Hell” (1979) and “Back in Black” (1980). At the time, there were many incredible Hard Rock bands also releasing what would turn out to be their best-selling albums. Angus was well aware of what was happening in the music scene then, and over the years he has shared his opinions on several bands from that era, including Deep Purple. What is Angus Young's opinion on Deep Purple Angus Young's opinion might have changed over the years, but when he spoke about Deep Purple in interviews, he didn’t have good things to say about the band. “I saw Deep Purple live once and I paid money for it and I thought, ‘Geez, this is ridiculous.’ You just see through all that sort of stuff. I never liked those Deep Purples or those sorts of things. I always hated it. So I always thought it was a poor man’s Led Zeppelin,” Angus Young told Guitar World in 1984. AC/DC's first encounter with Deep Purple happened in 1975 and was not a pleasant one. They were supposed to play before the British band at a festival in Australia, but they ended up getting into a fight with members of Purple's crew as Angus recalled in an interview with ABC. "(...) As just as we got there all these cars and these Rolls-Royces all come pulling down with Deep Purple.” Angus Young continued: “They decided that they were gonna go on (on stage). We got out there and we were told that we were gonna go on at nine o’clock. Anyhow, everything was cool as far as we knew and then at the last minute something happened. I think it was our manager, somebody said that somebody threw a punch at our manager. (It) was one of the Deep Purple tour guys, so that was it. We were all bunched up in this caravan changing”. “I remember we all came running out and it was quite funny in a way. Because we arrived there and we got a guy who was like a forklift truck driver, just a working guy. I remember him coming and saying ‘I’ll help. So we got on stage, there was this big security people. But I remember he dropped some equipment on some big guy and knocked him out. Then Bon (Scott) had someone like in a headlock and this guy was sort of spinning him (in the air). Bon was yelling out ‘Don’t worry, guys. I got him’ (laughs).” He continued: “I suppose all chaos broke out. Then I got on, on the microphone and I said (to the kids) in front ‘Hey, we need a bit of a hand up here. So they started come over the fence and we had like a standoff. The promoter said: ‘Deep Purple go on, then you can go on after’. So we thought ‘All right, we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt’. So Deep Purple got on and they played their set. I think they cut their set short and they walked off.” “Then they started stripping the gear and the promoter started fighting with them. Because he said ‘It’s a continuous festival and the kids had been waiting to see this band (AC/DC) all day, you know. Then again, (the fight) started up again. We never got to play in the end. But the next day was all you read about: ‘AC/DC in brawl with Deep Purple’. So in the end, it actually elevated us and more people came to see us,” Angus Young said. David Coverdale, who was Purple's frontman at the time later said that there was no bad blood between them. He became a good friend of Angus and everytime they meet they laugh about that story. When Ritchie Blackmore supposedly tried to jam with AC/DC and they left him hanging Although their first time sharing a festival bill wasn’t a good experience, one year later, after Ritchie Blackmore had left the band and formed Rainbow, AC/DC became the band’s opening act in Europe. But curiously, sometime before those shows, Ritchie Blackmore supposedly showed up at the Marquee Club in London wanting to jam with AC/DC, but the band slipped out the back door and left him hanging. That story was told in the book "AC/DC: The Definitive History by Kerrang! Files", saying: "This residency (In London), and the band’s obvious popularity, led to an offer to support Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow in Europe during August. A three-week trek that took them to Germany, France and across Scandinavia. It was vitally important for AC/DC, as Blackmore’s standing ensured that they were appearing in massive theatres and arenas, not compact clubs." "Strangely, Blackmore is supposed to have turned up at The Marquee just prior to this tour starting and is alleged to have asked whether he could jam with the band. Yet, although Acca Dacca are said to have agreed, they apparently left Blackmore tuning up by himself onstage just before this liaison was supposed to happen, having left the venue by the back door! Needless to say the famed Man In Black (as Blackmore was affectionately known) was rather bemused by the whole affair," the book said. Ritchie Blackmore doesn't like AC/DC's music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4fDCwDiWJQ&list=RDt4fDCwDiWJQ&start_radio=1&pp=ygUQZGVlcCBwdXJwbGUgYnVybqAHAQ%3D%3D Blackmore once said that when AC/DC first appeared, he thought they sounded “incredibly dated.” However, he admired them for staying loyal to their sound. When the Rock and Roll scene took a different direction, AC/DC’s music ended up fitting what the audience wanted, and they became successful. However, he doesn't like their music as he told Fuzz’s Paul Guy in 1998. “I don’t like to do a lot of these tribute (album) things come along, but I usually turn them down. Cause you can get carried away with that nonsense. ‘A Tribute to AC/DC’ – it’s like, ‘”Wait a minute… I really don’t like that band!’ I think one or two is enough (Tribute projects),” Blackmore said. AC/DC was certainly not an easy band to follow on stage. So Rainbow had to step up their game at the time to put on a good show. According to the Susan Masino book "Let There Be Rock" (2009), "(...) One night, Ritchie Blackmore refused to let them do an encore. The fans were so upset, many of them walked out before Rainbow came on". Bob Daisley, who was Rainbow's bassist at the time believes that Blackmore actually might have felt a bit threatened by how good AC/DC was at the time. “They were treated OK, Ritchie didn’t really comment much. He sort of kept it to himself, which if he’d been really impressed, he probably would have said something, but he didn’t say much." He continued: "Maybe he felt a little threatened or something. I don’t know because they used to always go down well. It was only a few shows that they did with us where they opened up for us,” Bob Daisley told  Shockwaves Skullsessions in 2021. Although Deep Purple and AC/DC had different styles, they managed to do something extremely rare and difficult in music: replace a successful singer in the band and still remain relevant, releasing more classic albums.The post Angus Young’s opinion on Deep Purple appeared first on Rock and Roll Garage.