Time & Perspective Quote by Angus Young

Angus Young’s line lands like a grin you can hear through a Marshall stack: a refusal to audition for relevance. “I wouldn’t know any newer bands” isn’t ignorance so much as a posture, the kind rock lifers adopt when the culture starts treating music like an endless feed. He’s not confessing he’s out of touch; he’s declaring he’s done pretending the chase matters.

The kicker is the tag: “We’re past the pimple stage.” It’s a teenager’s image used as a middle-aged flex. Pimples are adolescence, insecurity, the period where you’re defined by what you’re becoming rather than what you’ve built. Angus frames “newer bands” as that phase: eager, breakout-hungry, still proving themselves, still changing skin. By contrast, AC/DC is cast as fully formed - not evolving, not experimenting, not asking permission. Just delivering the product they’ve always sold: voltage, riffs, sweat.

There’s also a sly critique of how rock history gets narrated. New scenes are usually presented as threats to the old guard, a scoreboard of who’s “still got it.” Young dodges the whole competition by shifting the axis from novelty to maturity. It’s funny, slightly dismissive, and strategically brand-safe: AC/DC as the band that doesn’t need your playlist.

Underneath the joke is something almost tender: the relief of permanence. When you’ve survived decades of trend cycles, not keeping up stops being a failure and becomes a privilege.