The knife story between AC/DC’s Malcolm Young and Geezer Butler has been told many times from different perspectives. The story begins with the collaboration of AC/DC and Black Sabbath for their Technical Ecstasy Tour. During the 1977 tour, the brand-new items for one of the shows were heavily damaged due to technical problems, causing the band to stop the show for a while.
After the show was over, Butler became drunk due to the problems that happened during their set, which also caused the problems between the two members.
In 2020, Angus shared the incident in the ‘Talk Is Jericho’ podcast from his perspective. He claimed that Butler had a knife and that while they were drinking, he flashed it at Malcolm Young. Young took it from his hand, flashing back it to him and saying:
“What are you going to do now?”
Apparently, Young felt bad after the incident and wanted to apologize the next day. On the road to apologize, the guitarist came across Osbourne. When Osbourne asked Young what he was up to, he explained the situation, to which the Black Sabbath frontman advised him to stand his ground:
“Him and that f*cking knife; don’t apologize to him, Mal, tell him to f*ck off!”
According to Butler, it was a misunderstanding, and he didn’t pull up the flick-knife to flash him, he was just flicking it since he had just bought it there and was excited to get one after a long time. He also shared that those knives were banned in England, and they were performing in Switzerland at that time and made it clear that it was why he got excited about the knife.
According to Young’s version of the story, Butler was extremely drunk, and when the two couldn’t agree on one thing, Butler tried to attack him with the knife. He also stated that Osbourne stopped the two by calling Butler a ‘f*cking idiot’ and advising him to go to sleep.
Though the story has many different versions, it’s still uncertain which is true.
See the interview below.
