4 Famous Musicians Who Struggled To Play Their Hits Live

Even the greatest musicians among us occasionally struggle to play certain songs live. That’s certainly the case for the following four rock musicians, each of whom struggled to play at least one of their biggest hits live. Let’s take a look!

Angus Young

It’s hard to imagine AC/DC’s Angus Young struggling to perform anything on stage. Not only is he a talented guitarist, but much of AC/DC’s music is more or less easy to perform. However, that is not the case for the song “Thunderstruck”.

“Thunderstruck” is one of the band’s more complex songs, and a notably difficult one to play on the guitar. The song’s signature riff was originally just a warm-up that Young would play, but Malcolm Young convinced him to turn it into a song. It was a huge success, but Angus Young would later say that ahead of performing the song, he had to “sit down for an hour and make sure I’ve got my fingers warmed up to take on that track.”

Slash

Slash is the GOAT of classic rock guitar. Unlike AC/DC, a lot of Guns N’ Roses’ songs were quite complex. Guitar solos that blew your eyebrows off were at the heart of their sound. Slash made it look easy to perform much of the band’s music. However, he personally said that the song “Estranged” is the hardest song to take on live.

“Playing that live, it demanded a lot of concentration,” said Slash. “It’s not your typical sort of turn up the volume and crank it up sort of thing. It took a lot of concentration to get all of the nuances throughout the whole song and there’s a lot of arrangements and stuff going on in there, so that was definitely the most challenging.”

Billy Joel

Billy Joel doesn’t struggle with performing “Just The Way You Are” because of any technical or skill-related issues. Rather, he hated performing the song live because of how personal it was. The song was written about Joel’s first wife, Elizabeth Weber. The two divorced in 1982. After the divorce, the song became almost painful to perform in front of audiences. Which is a shame, considering it is a massive fan favorite from The Stranger.

Brian Johnson

An AC/DC member makes our list of musicians who struggled to play certain songs live, this time for Brian Johnson. After taking over for the late Bon Scott, Johnson had some big shoes to fill. And some songs were just too difficult to take on. That’s not because those songs were hard to perform physically, but some of them were too closely associated with Scott and his self-destructive tendencies. As a result, Johnson avoided performing “It’s A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘N’ Roll)”, thinking it was in poor taste.

Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

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