SELF MADE MAN

He’s back – the man behind the classic rock mask.

And it seems all is well in the Self Made Man household with veteran rockers AC/DC responsible for a sea chance in musical tastes.

Our resident classic rock columnist is taking a couple of weeks’ break but he’ll be back – and firing on all cylinders – next month. 

So after almost 25 years of blissful marriage, my wife’s turned. She’s finally come out.

The announcement was actually made to our 14-year-old son while I was away from home. Maybe she was too embarrassed to say it to my face.

But the message has reverberated ever since.

For Sue is a rock fan. Or to be more precise, she’s finally into AC/DC. Loves ’em, she says to the delight of husband and sons one, two and three.

It’s young Michael who’s converted here after months of trying.

I hammered against a defiant wall of defiance for more than two decades. He’s cracked his Mum in weeks!

Perhaps she saw AC/DC as the lesser of two evils because the other band Michael plays almost constantly is Avenged Sevenfold.

But actually that is doing my better half a disservice. No, it’s not a case of her finally giving in, Sue insists. Familiarity, it seems, has bred content.

Now, there have been one or two clues over the years.

For example, I once spied her in the kitchen gently swinging her hips to Aerosmith’s The Other Side and there was another occasion when she was caught humming Doctor Doctor by UFO.

Sue admits to liking Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir and concedes that David Gilmour’s guitar solo on the Pink Floyd classic Comfortably Numb is pretty impressive.

And of course, she’s always loved The Who, saw them last year and will be seeing them again later this year.

But it’s AC/DC that’s struck the most spectacular chord if you’ll pardon the pun, not just a handful of their best known songs but nearly all of them. (She’s yet to be subjected to the aural mess that is Fly On The Wall, however).

Sue, however, is no rock chick, I have to confess. Not yet, at least.

There’s much in my music collection, she coldly dismisses as ‘hippy rubbish’.

Annoyingly, she hates Neil Young, thinks Geddy Lee is the worst singer she’s ever heard, labels Whitesnake’s music as sexist claptrap, says Dire Straits are boring and claims 75 per cent of rock music sounds the same.

So there is work to be done.

But her revelation does make our holiday plans so much easier as we embark on a car journey to Italy.

In the past, such trips required the diplomatic skills or Henry Kissinger as I compiled, what I hoped would be a set-list satisfying most of the passengers, most of the time.

Sadly, I failed – mostly. 

The job has become a whole lot easier now that I can increase the AC/DC output safe in the knowledge there will be few complaints.

Fair to assume that our next road trip won’t be a Highway To Hell.

Ian Murtagh