Eddie Van Halen’s favourite AC/DC album was Powerage

By Steve Newton

I’ve long held the opinion that AC/DC’s Powerage is their best album.

Keith Richards agrees, and he knows a thing or two about rockin’. And more importantly, Malcolm Young himself has named Powerage as Number One.

When I met Young backstage after an AC/DC show in Vancouver back in 2001 I mentioned that the band hadn’t played a single cut from that album, and he seemed slightly confounded by the fact.

“That’s my favourite album, too,” he claimed while autographing the insert from my Powerage CD. “That’s the real deal, right there.”

The accolades for Powerage keep on coming. In a new post on loudersound.com titled “Wolfgang Van Halen: 11 albums that changed my life”, Eddie Van Halen’s son revealed the late guitar god’s passion for the raunchy, Bon Scott-bolstered disc that kicked the rock world in the teeth back in 1978.

“The band that I was probably first obsessed with was AC/DC,” says Wolfie in the article. “My father introduced me to them with Powerage, and I was thinking of picking that one because it was his favourite album.

“But a little bit more than that, Highway To Hell is probably my favourite album of theirs.”

Hey, nothing against Wolfgang–he’s entitled to his own opinion, for sure. But in this case I’m just going to invoke that old adage, “Father knows best.”

To hear the 23-minute audio of my 1983 interview with AC/DC’s Malcolm Young and Brian Johnson subscribe to my Patreon page, where you can eavesdrop on over 500 of my uncut, one-on-one conversations with rockers since 1982.