AC/DC rock on without guitarist Malcolm Young

Also, Jenny McCarthy announces engagement on The View; Neil Young raises $6M in Kickstarter campaign for PonoMusic; playwright Phillip Hayes Dean dies.

AC/DC's lead singer Brian Johnson (centre), guitarist Malcolm Young (left) and his brother Angus Young (right). EPA / ENNIO LEANZA

Australia’s pre-eminent hard rock band AC/DC has announced they will carry on making music without their ailing rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young.

“After 40 years of life dedicated to AC/DC, guitarist and founding member Malcolm Young is taking a break from the band due to ill health,” the group said on their website, without disclosing the nature of his illness.

“Malcolm would like to thank the group’s diehard legions of fans worldwide for their never-ending love and support.”

The statement added: “The band will continue to make music.”

Formed in Australia in 1973 by Malcolm and brother Angus Young, AC/DC is famed for rock anthems Let There Be Rock, Whole Lotta Rosie and Highway to Hell.

Rumours about the band’s future began circulating earlier this week following an anonymous tip-off to a Perth radio station by someone calling themselves “Thunderstruck” who said that 61-year-old Malcolm Young was “very ill” and had returned with his family to Australia.

“That is true, Malcolm is sick,” Mark Gable, the frontman for Australian band Choirboys and a former record label mate, told the ABC on Wednesday.

“From what I understand, and it’s even been confirmed in part by his son Ross (Young), that it would appear Malcolm is unable to perform anymore.”

The band appealed for Young’s privacy to be respected and its website was full of comments and prayers for the guitarist and his family.

“If you return we will be here waiting,” said one message signed “xo”.

Reports in Australia said AC/DC, who have sold more than 200 million albums, would still keep a May date at a Vancouver recording studio.

The band is known for its blues-tinged rock’n’roll, pounding sound and the raw vocals of Briton Brian Johnson, who took over when Bon Scott died after a night of heavy drinking in 1980.

Among their historic albums are Highway to Hell (1979) and Back in Black (1980). – AFP

Jenny McCarthy announces engagement on The View

Jenny McCarthy had big news to share Wednesday on The View: she’s engaged to Donnie Wahlberg. McCarthy raised her hidden left hand from behind the desk, revealing an engagement ring.

“It’s a yellow sapphire,” she said. The View co-host talks about how Wahlberg, the star of CBS’ Blue Bloods and a member of New Kids on the Block, proposed to her last weekend. She said her son, Evan, helped with the proposal.

Wahlberg, 44, then came on the set of the ABC show and hugged and kissed McCarthy.

“I feel like the luckiest girl in the world. He’s so wonderful,” McCarthy, 41, said.

This will be the second marriage for both. — AP

Neil Young raises $6M in Kickstarter campaign for PonoMusic

Neil Young has raised more than $6 million through a Kickstarter campaign to fund the singer-songwriter’s digital music project PonoMusic.

Kickstarter closed the campaign on Tuesday after it raised $6.2 million through 18,000 supporters. The campaign is the third most-funded project for Kickstarter.

Young’s portable player will cost $399 when it debuts in October. PonoMusic will also launch an online music store. The project promises high quality audio compared with other digital tracks that feature compressed audio.

The Kickstarter campaign was launched last month.

Young, 68, named the company Pono after a Hawaiian word meaning righteousness. — AP

Paul Robeson’ playwright Phillip Hayes Dean dies

Phillip Hayes Dean, a playwright, director and theatre actor who wrote the one-man play Paul Robeson starring James Earl Jones on Broadway in 1978, died Monday in Los Angeles from a heart condition, according to a family spokesman. He was 83.

His plays include The Last American Dixieland Band, Moloch Blues, Freeman, The Owl Killer and Dink’s Blues and The Sty of the Blind Pig, which Time magazine called one of the best plays of 1971.

Dean’s most famous work is Paul Robeson, a powerful chronicle of the singer, actor and civil rights activist, which has had three Broadway productions and a London production, and has toured across the United States and Europe. The two revivals on Broadway — in 1988 and 1995 — both starred Avery Brooks.

Wren T. Brown, the founder of the Ebony Repertory Theatre in Los Angeles, where a production of Paul Robeson is currently playing, called Dean “a towering playwright and brilliant man of the theatre”.

He is survived by his wife, Patricia; daughters, Wendy and Karen; four grandchildren; and his brother, Howard. — AP