There is no band like AC/DC. There is also no bassist like Cliff Williams. “Jazz makes me feel kinda twitchy,” he confesses to Joel McIver
Photography: Getty, Sony, Ernie Ball
“Oh dear. Be kind!” quips Cliff Williams when I tell him that I’ve been carefully listening to the bass parts on his new album, Power Up, in preparation for this interview. He’s kidding, of course – you don’t play stadiums for 40 years without developing a thick skin – but at the same time, he’s definitely not on familiar ground today. This is because Cliff is in AC/DC, a band dominated since its inception by huge guitars and vocals, rather than bass, drums or anything else. The huge production of the semi-British, semi-Australian band’s shows, the cannons, the lasers, the inflatable ‘colleague’ Rosie, the pyro, the crowd participation, the massive sense of uncompromising heritage – arguably these are also more important to AC/DC... Or so you’d think, if you were less well informed on these matters than you and me.
This is superficial, of course. In reality, Williams’ bass parts are utterly integral to his band’s music. Listen to more or less any of the guitar riffs that anchor AC/DC, the majority of which were written by the band’s late leader and rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young: their staccato nature leaves loads of space for the bass. Listen to the sparse, impactful drum patterns; they don’t drown him out with rolls or flourishes. No, he’s all over the sound of AC/DC, and nowhere more so than on their new album, Power Up.
The key to his bass style is simplicity and economy. If, as we do today, we want to drill down to the philosophy behind his millimetrically precise playing, it’s actually easier to ask him what he doesn’t do. For starters, he doesn’t do five-string basses.
“I get lost with the damn thing,” he chuckles. “That bottom string – what is it, a B? I only play a five-string bass when I’m out somewhere, and someone’s playing, and they say ,‘Come and have a play on a couple of songs’ and the bass player has a five-string. I don’t know where the hell I am, because I instinctively go to the bottom string. Wrong! Ha ha!’
He doesn’t bother looking at YouTube for the next big thing in bass. “I’m stuck with the old stuff that I know and love. I still listen to Little Feat. There’s probably a lot of great young bass players out there, b
